Intermediate Object (2024)

The series of photos depicts a sink with Chin and Khoi writing about things they frequently discuss while washing dishes. Then wash the dishes in that sink. The water gradually wiped the words away. They photographed the sink every day until the writing was gone.

Do all of the objects exhibited in a house represent the self of the people who live there? The actual link between the person and the belongings in the house is more intricate than it appears. The goal of this research is to explore the power of objects to structure and develop face-to-face interaction and micro-social processes more generally.

The interaction in general involves not only the whole body but also the person’s perception of objects and to various degrees of connection with them. In that sense, we are never alone. Objects in the home play an important role for self and society. On the one hand, the selective display of objects in the home establishes and reinforces personal identity. On the other hand, the living room, the exterior of the house, is part of the “front stage” of social interaction, where messages about the self are displayed to the public. So does it seem like the dishwashing area belongs to the “backstage of a stage” area? The “backstage” is often where people can show other sides that they shouldn’t show when standing on “stage”. But nowadays, after every meal or party, both the house owners and guests will help each other wash the dishes. Therefore, the scullery area, or specifically the sink, becomes the place or object that structures and develops face-to-face interaction within a small community.

The sink is a place that stimulates face-to-face communication, when two people (or a group of people) washing dishes talk, forming a small community. Face-to-face communication is likened by Ursula K. le Guin (in The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination) to amoebas exchanging genetic information with each other. People can form communities, through sending and receiving pieces of information from themselves and others, back and forth continuously, through talking and listening.

Nguyen Khoi and Chin behaved like cyberneticians, establishing a negative feedback loop in reaction to verbal disorder. This achieves negative entropy by restoring the kitchen sink to its original condition and reference value, resulting in homeostatic self-stabilization of the cybernetic system. At the same time, this work resonates with all the vibrations of Existentialism, conjuring concepts and presenting questions about rebellion, authenticity, absurdity, the uncanny, the self, form, absence and presence, and the relationship of Nothingness to Being.

• Stephen H. Riggins. 1990. Beyond Goffman: studies on communication, institution, and social interaction 

• Steve Dixon. 2021. Discovering Patterns across Disciplines: Cybernetics, Existentialism and Contemporary Arts. Journal of systemics, cybernetics and informatics. International Institute of Informatics and Cybernetics.

• Ursula K. le Guin. 2004. The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination.