A Mapping Box of Getting Lost (Vol:1 Island Line)
Try Try Zine Residency, Asia Art Archive
Mar-June 2025
Endless tools exist to prevent us from getting lost—maps, apps, signs—all promising certainty, efficiency, and the shortest path from A to B. But for a commuter in this relentless city, what if navigation could mean something else? Departing from observations, thoughts, and questions drawn from her daily commute through subterranean MTR spaces, this zine, 迷路盒: A mapping box of getting lost, is a series of map boxes that each serve as a portal, and an invitation to find fragments of imagination hidden in transit. These boxes interact with readers to re-encounter their daily commuting journey, and to mobilise their senses in the seemingly homogeneous space and the passive stillness of being inside a moving train.
Workshop photos by Dory.
https://aaa.org.hk/en/collections/search/library/a-mapping-box-of-getting-lost-vol1-island-line
A series of mapping box, miniature zines within a larger box, an atlas drawn from daily commutes through subterranean MTR spaces. Each box is a portal, as an invitation to find fragments of imagination hidden in transit. These boxes invite readers to reimagine their commuting journey, to mobilize their senses of navigation in the seemingly homogenous space and the passive stillness of being inside a moving train.
While making the zine, I envisioned them being read on a moving train, to become a transitory space inside a box and where the fragments inside also become mobilized, entangled, like a magnifying glass to interact with and to see the mundane space anew. The reading process is also non-linear, fragmentary, like taking a pause amidst the accelerated rhythm of moving through the city.
mapping in mtr.
The workshop begins with a drifting tour along the MTR Island Line, followed by a hands-on session where participants can create their own “mapping box for getting lost”. Un-navigating the signs and arrows we tend to instinctively follow, the mapping kit invite us to a journey of reimagining commuting: through detours, undesired path, imaginary routes. As we surrender to the possibility of getting lost, perhaps ending up somewhere stranger, but might we discover new ways of moving, sensing, and being in this city?
Box object 1. 墜落
這本漫畫小誌源自一個關於通勤的夢。每日的路程，總是先踏入電梯下到很深的地下，再走過長長的隧道，才到達月台，再坐上列車，周而復始的循環。有天晚上夢見自己像往常走進電梯，等待它帶著我緩緩落下，它卻猛然墜落。在突然失重的一瞬間，慣性崩解，終於感覺到自己在下墜，於是開始重新練習感受重力。
*小誌附帶的重物是一塊掉落的瓷磚碎片，上面黏著一張沿著島線拍攝的城市圖像。