“Attempting a history of (new) media arts for Hong Kong: archaeology, literacy and education for artists”
Hong Kong Visual Arts Yearbook 2007, the Fine Arts Department, the Chinese University of Hong Kong; Chinese University Press, 2008.
〈为香港（新）媒体艺术构筑初步得的历史：考古、公众的认知、艺术家的教育 〉，《香港艺术年鉴2007》，香港中文大学艺术系，香港中文大学出版社，2008年。
[Excerpt]
A key motive of this essay is to recount the many players and their pursuits within the 29-year span, to gain insight into the local art community’s perception of what media art is, the kind of exemplary works they had in mind, and what makes media art what it is in Hong Kong. With such a reading, I want to outline the many issues that would lead to an elaborate agenda for the crafting of an informed history of local media art. Rather than providing a comprehensive interpretive history (story), I take this piece of writing as an opportunity to generate a situated discussion to show the many missing research projects that need to be in place before a sensibly adequate account can be formed for critical usage. As someone much concerned with writing such a history for Hong Kong, I have attended to many fragments of events, loose literature and discourses in formation, and felt that any attempt for an overview should begin with what Michel Foucault called “archaeology” -- the activities to “unearth,” to return to broader terrains to locate the dispersive traces of media art before it became an identifiable institution. This hinges on a rigorous effort to describe, to recount, and stock-take what happened, before discursive formation. I cite as many events as I have come across to create a list of observable fragments for more archaeological work in future, while the brief commentaries I provide for each event are meant to invoke questions for further verification.
（節錄）
本文旨在收集並記述這二十九年間出現過的許多媒體藝術玩家和他們的追求，瞭解本地藝術社群對定義媒體藝術的看法、典範作品的印象以及媒體藝術在香港構成的因素。透過這樣的閱讀，我試圖勾勒出眾多問題，為下一步本地媒體藝術歷史的塑造，引申出一份可行的議程。在此，我將不會提供任何全面的詮釋或歷史的論斷。相反，我希望借本文去引發各種針對當下處境的討論，以指出在一個全面而理性的本地媒體藝術發展故事出現之前，還有很多必須而未有人問津的研究計劃要進行，去發掘各種遺漏了的人事物，現在談歷史批判真有點言之尚早。如此關心為香港寫作這麼一套歷史的我一直留意著很多瑣碎的事件、零散的文字資料、當下流傳著的論述及形成的脈絡，同時覺得對此歷史概要所作出的任何嘗試都應該由米歇爾‧傅柯所謂的「考古學」出發：回到媒體藝術成為一個被確認的建制之前去「發掘」，回歸到一個更廣大的領域藉以找出媒體藝術散佈四周的存在痕跡。這得靠我們在論述產生前費點心力去形容、記述、調查所發生過的事情。在本文的下半部，我將援引我所遇過的事件、碰觸過的資料，為未來更多的考古工作列出一些觀察得到的｢歷史碎片」，而我對每個事件所作的簡短回應或分析，都旨在提出疑問，為未來的｢有心人｣進一步的考證放下一些路標。