Elaine ML Tam

Coming up in June | Writing Rage with Elaine ML Tam @deep_frill , Fieldnotes @fieldnotes_london Tuesday 23 June, 7–9 pm How do we square the urgency of our political moment with the slow care typically required of traditional publishing? What modes of address are conducive to critiquing and proposing reform to the institutions we exist within? ‘Writing Rage’ uses the ongoing construction at Pushkin House as a backdrop for questions of textual dissent and institutional critique, drawing inspiration from guerilla publishing formats and strategies. Taking cues from Jenny Holzer’s ‘Inflammatory Essays’ (1979–82), John Giorno’s poetry posters and Paul Virilio’s Speed and Politics (1986), among other examples, we will use this setting to consider urgency and furore, and its mobilisation in writing and language. Materials supplied; no prior experience required. Elaine’s fee for convening this workshop will be donated in its entirety to ‘Rescue Now’ @rescue.now , a charity providing rapid, essential aid to Ukrainians affected by war.  This workshop is part of ‘Under Construction’, a monthly series curated by artist and PhD researcher Alisa Oleva @alisaoleva . #PushkinHouse #PushkinHouseWorkshop

‘The dessert finishes the cycle of regression… one last sin.’ Letter exchange detailing Baptiste’s four-course gourmet meal, and four severe medical events in the slow death of Rosanna’s mother voiced by @sadiecoleshq !! #DiegoGarcon, ‘La Gola’ (2024) @lafayetteanticipations

When/ a New York minute/ dirty martini/ cannibals and the extra-canonical: #RobertGober ‘X playpen’ 〰️ ‘patient notes’ by #ShogoShimizu 〰️ unassimilated MTA ‘outsider art’ 〰️ #RobertMapplethorpe entry hall kink

LA we’ve been doing this for so long but this time I think I felt something 〰️1. Pippa Garner 〰️2. Jon Serl 3. 〰️Eve Babitz, I quote: ‘Attitude was the word they used for someone that knew what they liked.’ 〰️4. Sophie Calle’s ‘Cash Machine’ images (1993–2003) 〰️5. Fiona Connor casts and facsimiles 〰️6. John Giorno, ‘Welcoming the flowers’ (2004)

C̵͉͋̔͞U̠҉̷̙ͦR͉̜̎͡͠R͉̜̎͡͠Ḛͭ̉̇͟N̺̻̔̆ͅT̨͈͗̌ͥ O̖̼ͩ͌͐B̩͎͍̾ͅS̵̙͕̀̃Ḛͭ̉̇͟S̵̙͕̀̃S̵̙͕̀̃I̍̅̀̎̊O̖̼ͩ͌͐N̺̻̔̆ͅ D̶͔̭̪̻I̍̅̀̎̊G̩̱ͩ̏͜I̍̅̀̎̊T̨͈͗̌ͥA̷͙ͭͫ̕L̸̖̽̌͂ P̧͕̒̊͘U̠҉̷̙ͦB̩͎͍̾ͅL̸̖̽̌͂I̍̅̀̎̊S̵̙͕̀̃Hͥ̽ͣ̃̔I̍̅̀̎̊N̺̻̔̆ͅG̩̱ͩ̏͜ ‘MORE IS MORE! Fetish Nirvana’ by Elaine ML Tam @deep_frill advances this year’s UNDERWORLD venture. After our stint examining urban ruins, this article guides our attention towards a different type of architecture: the architecture of the dead – more specifically the Nirvana Memorial Garden columbarium in Singapore. Tam turns to the phenomenon of the Chinese afterlife, rife with joss paper stamped with luxury market monograms, to interrogate the aesthetics of ‘desire after death’. In the opulent excess of the Nirvana columbarium, Tam discovers an antithesis to the stripped-back ‘sophistication’ of Western ideals: a maximalism that invokes the divine. The sub-theme PERMEABLE BODY explores bodies as porous entities. Focusing on how information crosses spaces and membranes to transfer from one body to another, from outside to inside or vice versa, the permeable body is ultimately relational. The published articles remain open to all readers for one month from the date of publication and thereafter become part of the CO archive available to subscribers only. 🔗 Link in the bio! Edited by @isabelwangpontoppidan & @dszmidt0320 📸 1.-2.Nirvana Memorial Garden, Singapore, 2022. Photographed by Elaine M.L. Tam; re-touching by Lidija Kononenko.

the new (and unbelievably the 7th) issue of @fieldnotes_london is v v x v good, not least because it includes work by Jak Skot, Gelare Khoshgozaran, Tatum Howey, Richard Siken, Julius Eastman (excerpted), among others. I’m grateful to FN and our contributors to be reminded that to publish is to amplify voices, to edit is to care for idiosyncratic expressions and personal-political enunciations, a with-ness. It’s urgent work but slow production, one of many contradictions I struggle to square. No less, our open call closes in 5 days on 9 March: submit

After years of being like idk, who knew I would ~;*finally kinda get Bernd & Hilla Becher’s typologies thru its rather inadvertent pairing with Ryan Trecartin’s 2013 ‘Junior War’ @spruethmagers …certainly Not I /Having a moment

never better than little things at the weekend with my funny valentine ♥️ constellations @maewhen @thesundaypainter

Wednesday 4 February, 7pm, at @icalondon 〰️ I’m v excited to be moderating a discussion on the role of images in a ‘fragmentary portrait of the contemporary moment’. I’ll be picking the brains of researcher-editors (Drs!!) @geistek @itspauliuspetraitis and artists @vytautaskumza @julijasteponaityte , who are celebrating their book ‘And then it fades (away)’ published by @sixchairsbooks 〰️ together we’ll discuss the ‘heroism’ of vision, the unstable image, verisimilitude in a post-truth world, representation and hypermediation… who knows what else! If that’s your jam, grab a ticket via @icalondon or dm me 💋 Slide 1: image by the great @saulegerikaite Slide 2: my wild rant-style book review up on @echogonewrong , Barthes ofc

Lesson for 2026: Worrying about whether Lucy Lippard will reply to you is *not* going to make Lucy Lippard reply to you. (But she did, and I’m v proud to have edited this ‘handsome’ (her words) little monograph on the work of the great African American artist and activist Howardena Pindell feat. new writing by Rosanna McLaughlin, Christina Sharpe (!!) and ofc Lucy herself. Designed by @kellenbergerwhite , available via @whitecube 🖤)

Hehe drove h/er into the/ woods 〰️1. @ybdg_4 @manu_anima with chariots to start, soup kitchen to finish 〰️2. Pope.L when visiting @information_art_ 〰️3. Cosima von Bonin’s Eeyore tail @raven__row 〰️4. #LeeMiller as statue in #JeanCocteau’s 1932 ‘Le Sang d’un poète‘ 〰️5. Co-edited #TildaSwinton’s @eye_film @rizzolibooks with/ thnx hunny @juliaa.koz !! 〰️6. #GhislaineLeung’s schoolgirl portrait (with Cantonese note verso), reproduction, at Cabinet 〰️7. @vultures_peck not in the mood but making me sparkle 〰️8. #WolfgangTillmans frosted sunrise @maureenpaley 〰️9. American drawls and self-quotation in @oliver_leith ’s and Matt Copson’s ‘Last Days’, closing out an opera convert

We’re pleased to share 𝘔𝘺 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘯 𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘶𝘮, a text written by Elaine M.L. Tam @deep_frill for the current exhibition at KRUPA London under the same title, curated by Radek Brousil @radekbrousil Elaine M.L. Tam is an itinerant writer, editor and occasional curator from Hong Kong currently based in London. She dayjobs at White Cube, a leading contemporary art gallery, and nightjobs at Fieldnotes, a publishing project supporting non-conforming creative practices. At both, she collaborates with artists and thinkers to create new forms and forums for critical engagement. Her research interests include psychoanalysis, media theory, and performative writing. Her essays, short stories and poems have been widely published in anthologies, artist monographs and as exhibition text. Moving between intimacy, memory, and the architecture of loss, Tam’s writing is a companion to the artworks on view. “My heart is an old museum and the museum guard with his girded belly would never know you tore up the morning streets with cries the size of kitchen knives, once, before silently rearranging the room to make sure it left no gaps where your furniture had been removed. It was done to perfection; only the books looked a little crestfallen where their twin editions were abducted. There you are, idling in the corner of reason when I turn a folding screen and approach you and see how carelessly you let your breath gather up on the glass, in luminous, feathered circles. Your turn seems unusually well-timed when I sidle up to you with hopes of planting a small kiss on your brushed cheek (you were always master of the artful dodge)." the full text is now available to read online: /my-heart-is-an-old-museum/ 𝘔𝘺 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘯 𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘶𝘮 brings together work by eight artists — Greg Carideo, Henrik Potter, Jungwon Jay Hur, Kamil Dossar, Marlon Kroll, Minh Thang Pham, Viktor Timofeev, and Radek Brousil. The exhibition considers how personal and collective memory can be preserved and reimagined through artistic gesture. On view now until 26 January, 2026. KRUPA London 1 Pakenham Street London, WC1X 0LA Wed—Sat 12—6 PM