[solo-show postscript01] Unfolding Micro Narratives 翻開「微敘事」

“Folds, Wrinkles & Crevices of the Everyday" - postscript01: Micro Narratives 微敘事

During the month of solo show “Folds, Wrinkles & Crevices of the Everyday” (2025.10.18-11.22, LSK School of Creativity Gallery, Hong Kong). many people asked about my use of the term “micro narratives,” which was cited in Kai-chun Yip's curatorial statement and Vennes Cheng's special feature. “Micro Narrative” was also the core of my two post-screening discussions with Sui-fong Yim, Wai-lok Chan, Van Den Troost and Elysa Wendi, in which I exapnded my videography grammatology to incorporate the vocabulary and creative principles of sounds and bodily movements. 

Is “micro narratives” a theory, a kind of narrative, or a “small-size” story-telling? 

“Micro Narratives” (MN) is my nomenclature for an on-going research agenda. MN embraces a range of research activities, from critical reading of film theories and histories to arriving in a new ontology of moving-image creation of contemporary relevance. It is at once critical, intermedia, trans-disciplinary, performative, and therefore open-ended and productively speculative. What is micro is experimentally videographic, and expands to general attitudes of writing, art and the many activities that involve narrativity, such as history-writing and, by extension, the activity of collecting and archiving.

“Micro Narratives” was conceived to be a 39-hour concept-driven laboratory on experimental video for the Critical Intermedia Lab at the School of Creative Media in 2002 and taught until 2023 with many rounds of theoretical evolvement along the process. The full title is “Micro Narratives: Invented Time & Space.” MN's conceptual trajectory, in the context of a pedagogic experiments, has evolved from Early Cinema historiography, Critical Theory and the histories of the avant-garde to embrace Intermedia theories, to the use of phenomenology, new materialism, and speculative philosophy in general. In the context of sight-and-sound creation, micro-narratives are about retraining our attention to embrace the complexity of our existence, and to tie this to human-tool co-agency. 

Since its inception, MN has evolved into a much broader trans-disciplinary critical research agenda. While keeping videography and expanded cinema as its core creative activities, I have also integrated the conceptual dimension of MN into my historiographic experiments, by which I seek to unfold the textures of everyday life. While history and the past are typically conveyed and passed on through narratives, I question the conventional narrative methods that are partial to monumental history and grand discourses. In my research, the “micro” speaks of the ”small“ in everyday life that is impregnated with concrete doings and purposes left out in accounts of regime history and economic success stories. In this sense, what is micro and small in fact more powerfully points to the grand, revealing the many almost visible and invisible linkages that form the network of contemporary global living. The micro-histories of the everyday are paths to reveal our agency or the lack of it. Nothing “micro” or small is trivial. 

The question remains, how does a new sight-and-sound ontology provoked by a MN agenda afford our envisioning of a critical agenda for contemporary living?

「微敍事」是我進行歷史書寫和創作實驗的理念載體，以敍事模式為起點，着重「微」多於「大」，更微的敍事，還是可以充滿排序和厚度的。從歷史書寫的角度，「微敍事」擱置碑誌式的史觀和大論述，全神貫注於日常的細活、個人經驗，朝代政權更替以外的存在；「微」也能觀照出「大」，也比由「大」俯瞰多了一份觸得到的仔細實在。着重日常生活眾多的「微」，我們也連線到紛繁而若隱若現的「大」歷史，重新梳理歷史，調較如何日常造作，如何活下去。一切其實無小事。那麼，聲影創作和歷史書寫有甚麼關係？是歷史書寫的一種嗎？「微敘事」的聲影創作又會是怎樣的呢？

**To keep these questions alive for the purpose of pushing the boundaries of our practice of art, I have organized Unfolding histories: Being Micro Narratives《翻開故事的皺褶：歷史的微敘事》, a 2-part event at Floating Projects – an hour-long lecture by myself,  "Why Micro Narratives: a Critical Agenda" 反轉「微敘事」 will be followed by a free walk-in tea gathering "My Micro Narratives" 「我的微敘事」for open conversations. 

13 December 2025: 15:00-16:00 | 16:00-18:00 @ Floating Projects