Hong Kong Photobook Club (known as Phoboko), which I initiated in 2020, is a monthly gathering of using photobooks as a medium to bring people together to converse about the topics they contain. To date, there have been a total of 35 iterations. 

Usually, there are three artists including myself, who adopt the facilitator role in these social events for the exchange of perception and knowledge of selected photobooks amongst everyone. For creating such social circumstances, I was aware of the conversation dynamics, the body languages of the participants, and the relational orders of the group in all sessions. I was also aware of the tone of voice, the vocal rhythm, the vocabulary choices, and the articulation style of each participant for sharing their perceptions of the photobooks. By observing closely, I would craft my responses accordingly for maintaining or creating new relational orders. Here are some of the conversation dynamics drawings I made for session #27, #28, and #29. 

However, often in these photobook club sessions we facilitate, the focus of the social experiences was on mental connection and information exchange. We did not consider to curate the relational aspects from the perspective of our bodies, or the elements in the space, for provoking thoughts, emotions and connections. Later the structure of the session evolved to giving specific instructions or questions to participants as guidelines to approaching the selected photobooks. This subsequently limited the chance for participants to freely associate with the photobooks, and instead, directed them to interpret the photobooks via the lens that the facilitators deliberately curated. In some way, deeper intellectual conversations and connections were stimulated, yet I felt it also injected an underlying split of roles of facilitators versus participants. In my opinion, the relational element became somewhat forced and hard bound structured, rather than felt as an aesthetic of being natural and in the flow.