If someone cares to ask or wonder — “how can I make sense of this ‘zine’, or rather, piles of random photos?” Then you are already right on track, are you?

There is no right way to interpret or use this. Each photo can contain visual elements/signifiers/feelings that (I/you think) relate to another photo or another series of photos, which can also relate to another series of photos etc.; the process could go on and on and the images could be rearranged in indefinite ways while still forming a narrative that still arguably “makes sense”.

If I were to map out all these relations that my brain could make sense of, which are of course based on my subjective understanding and experience of reality, I will end up with a “garden of forking paths”; hence it is impossible to impose a single linear arrangement of these photos.While some may argue that the artist has the choice to just pick one narrative path and let the audience see what the artist wants them to see, I would rather not take the liberty from them, while imposing on them my frivolous and ungrounded claims and understanding of reality.

Before I lose everyone’s attention (probably already did) due to my lofty stream-of-consciousness writing, I shall quote from an essay that I have written but failed to submit in college:

As argued by Roger Fry in “An Essay in Aesthetics”, we are constantly experiencing material reality in real time, there is a constant "need for responsive action [that] hurries us along and prevents us from ever realising fully what the emotion is that we feel". Lacking real-time interpretation and mental organization of the experience, a fragmented reality results.

Perhaps this collection of photos (or any photographs that we all take) aims to remind us of our incomplete and incoherent material reality that we are unable to make sense of in real time; and only through the retrospective and introspective process of (re)mapping and (re)interpreting the past from a distance, we can then somehow make sense of our reality.

So, in the end, you may still ask “WHAT ARE YOU SAYING AND WHAT TO DO WITH THIS”? You are free to explore the endless possibilities of arrangements based on what resonates deeply with you: the stimulus, imagination, ideas, experience, your understanding of and feelings for our city, leading to your interpretation of the likeness and relations among the images and the underlying allusions (if existent), and ultimately, how we can make sense of this city.

Amidst the world’s ruthless chaos and before our minds are caged or put to sleep, let’s fully embrace and exercise our imagination.

Ending with two final quotes:

“[Our] world of the imagination is essentially more real than the actual world, because it has a coherence and unity which the actual world lacks.”— Christopher Reed, from A Roger Fry Reader, “Post Impressionism”

“Imagination~🌈🌈🌈” — SpongeBob SquarePants