itinerant space

As Guy Debord suggests, situations can be constructed, and this very act of construction is itself a form of situatedness (Debord, 1957). The act of publishing in independent art publishing in China carries an irreplaceable temporality, particularly within art book fairs or similar settings, where, under certain conditions, publishing becomes an ongoing process rather than a fixed outcome.
Michel Foucault’s concept of problematisation, as rewritten by Clive Barnett and cited by Jane Rendell in Sites, Situations, And Other Kinds of Situatedness (Rendel, 2020), suggests that problems do not pre-exist but are constructed within specific situations. In this sense, situatedness can be understood as the creation of conditions through which problems emerge. I attempt to argue that graphic design inconsistency functions as a meaningful methodological strategy in Chinese independent art publishing. It reflects the fragmented, hybrid, and context-dependent nature of these practices, challenging dominant design paradigms that prioritise coherence and standardisation, and positioning design as a dynamic participant in the construction of publishing discourse.
Promised Land works as a board game in art book fair to continuously construct such conditions, testing whether it can serve as a site for the emergence of problems within the fragmented communicative environment of art book fairs. It is a non-traditional publishing project that can also be understood as a single-player board game. Players move through a sequence of events by rolling dice, eventually reaching the endpoint and obtaining a ‘“promised land’.” However, rather than relying on strategy, arrival at the endpoint appears to be guided more by chance or fate. Even when the player reaches the end, they encounter only darkness, which seems incapable of fulfilling any expectations. As such, the author does not take responsibility for the playability of the game; instead, the experience lies in the partial and fragmented narratives encountered along the way. Each sentence within the grid is drawn from my personal experiences but abstracted into non-specific statements, allowing space for interpretation. The act of interpreting the game thus becomes an immediate and ongoing form of publishing.