
Why a ‘Protocol Book’?
Exhibition catalogs always tell the slickest lies. Just as the White Cube isolates an artwork within an eternal present, conventional archives tend to leave behind only the finalized results, erasing the conflicts, errors, and long periods of waiting that existed behind them. As performance theorist Peggy Phelan noted, the moment an act is not recorded, it disappears into the realm of the invisible. In particular, “non-visual practices” that leave no tangible outcome—friction with the space, disputes with artists, and unresolved technical glitches—have often been concealed in the name of efficiency.
Therefore, this book refuses to be a polished collection of works. Instead, we aim to be a record that testifies to the events occurring in the darkness outside the exhibition hall, or within the suspended time before an exhibition takes form. We record not the finalized ‘Form,’ but the ‘State’ that is still in the process of formation. In a digital age where everything is forced to connect seamlessly, we willingly choose ‘friction.’ What we focus on is not the aesthetic value of the exhibited object, but the ‘Condition’ designed to allow that object to exist.
The time spent from December 2024 to November 2025 at the curator’s workshop ‘Unoccupied Gaps’ was a record of ‘Symptoms’ that prove the reality of the project, rather than its successful outcomes. This is because variables such as physical constraints were not failures to be corrected, but ‘productive frictions’ with a physical reality that virtuality cannot replace. This record also serves as a ‘tactical manual’ for colleagues enduring an era of uncertainty. A curator should not be a judge who passes verdict on artworks, but a ‘Condition Designer’ who builds a foundation where vulnerable creative subjects can fail safely.
This book is a result of ‘Spatial Translation,’ moving a three-dimensional physical space onto two-dimensional pages, and a site of intense care where deficiencies were shared for mutual survival. The rough pillars and narrow gaps that once supported the space have now been replaced by the book’s format and binding. The act of turning the pages synchronizes with the phenomenological experience of discovering hidden meanings while moving through the interior of the exhibition hall.
Of course, this is a highly microscopic attempt, and it may remain a record full of unfilled gaps. However, the reason the title of this book is ‘Protocol Book’ rather than ‘Archive’ is that we hope the small gaps we have navigated will become a starting point for yet another set of possibilities. Just as the curators and artists who passed through this space found new methods amidst deficiency, we hope that those who open this book will also discover their own ways of survival within the gaps between the lines. This is not a closed conclusion, but an Open Source Code left open for you.