Lin Ke's ghostivity, Adrift in the Obsolete

In Lin Ke’s creative logic, "reaching into the screen to grasp colors" is no mere metaphor. His mouse indeed modifies hues on the display according to his will—much like a hand selecting tomatoes at a market stall, fingertips grazing flesh of varying ripeness, the same brain transmitting both rational and sensory signals. If the parameters of image-processing software represent a ruler of rationality, what he performs is an intuitive improvisation upon its graduations. To go further: Lin’s "rebellion" targets neither technological rules nor their deliberate subversion. Rather, he allows gestures like adjusting the transparency slider to pierce irrational impulses into already disordered pixel layers, all while maintaining their absolute grid-like order. When he materializes checkerboard patterns—even using UV printing to delineate their precise borders—he inadvertently dissolves standardized technical syntax through medium conversion. Take his treatment of RGB printing: under his adjustment, colors morph into muted white-grey tones. This liminal state, hovering between obstinacy and compromise, crash and reboot, becomes an alternative manifestation of Derrida’s undecidability—a technological aporia where binaries (digital/analog, control/chaos) bleed into each other.

The curator situates Lin Ke’s work within the German theoretical framework of spectrality 【1】—a concept suggesting temporal deferral and repetition, while also engaging with postmodern critiques of logocentrism. Here, it deftly avoids hollow lamentations about the loss of aura or redundant expositions on how the artist extends and proliferates "obsolete" PS files. Instead, it finds the most precise language to articulate these ideas anew. Simply put, Lin’s deliberate preservation of visual discrepancies and dislocations allows his works to demonstrate how material interfaces continue to write and sense. Yet intriguingly, when his watercolor transfers meet the rigid confines of wooden frames—their fragments seeping beyond the cut edges—the resulting seams generate a tactile quality that resists full assimilation into the German narrative of "digital archives whose ghosts forever escape." To go further: while spectrality might rationalize the last residues of the sensuous within technological rationality, Lin’s approach is far lighter and more improvisational. He neither mourns the disappearance of originals nor critiques technological violence. Instead, he playfully engages, time and again, with pixels and the viewer’s retina—initiating a game of perception that is as much about seeing as it is about unseeing.

To substantiate this line of thought, I posed the following questions to the artist:

ARTBBS: "This exhibition appears to emphasize 'unhesitating intuitive operations.' How do you view the relationship between precision and chance in your creative process? And in your eyes, is 'phantom technology' a representation of digital tools' inherent operational trajectories, or rather their subversion?"

Lin Ke: "The vocabulary of 'ghostlivity' in this exhibition was proposed by curators who deeply understand my work—an objective, external perspective rather than my own framing. Yet I find it apt. For me, technology is never rational; it’s mostly improvisation and chance."

ARTBBS: "You’ve once likened yourself to a Tibetan terma (hidden scripture) discoverer, retrieving images from the void. Does "phantom technology" extend this metaphor of the invisible? And to what degree would you attribute spiritual qualities to digital tools?"

Lin Ke: "To clarify—I didn’t compare myself to a ‘terma discoverer,’ but rather used it as a conceptual vessel, an image that inspired me to contemplate the boundary between visible and invisible visuals, and questions like: ‘Could this be another superimposed layer of reality?’"

ARTBBS: "Could this innovative reimagining of media be considered a form of media critique? You’ve mentioned reconfiguring parameters in closed Photoshop files to generate new works. Does this phenomenon of "resurfacing files," as a representation of digital archiving, constitute a subjective, deliberate act of memory modulation and archaeology? Further, might I interpret your new works as offering a humorously subversive alternative strategy for re-evaluating the artifacts and technological alienation of the digital age?"

Lin Ke: "I employ this ‘technology’ not to solve practical, conventional problems, but to navigate my own perplexities. Precise ‘parameters’ represent an external, rigid reality to me—yet when I manipulate them, their ‘spectrality’ emerges. I must ‘extend’ my hand to control these parameters, devising strategies to command them. In other words, ‘technology’ is, for me, an invisible hand. And this very strategy is itself unconventional."

ARTBBS: "In Classic Ghost (2024), the iconic checkerboard pattern of PS transparent layers is solidified onto nano-sponge through UV printing technology, where the material’s softness clashes with the digital grid’s precision. How do you now perceive the ‘materiality of the interface’?"

Lin Ke: "My images always undergo random transformations. In Classic Ghost , for instance, the watercolor file migrates into wooden frames, gaining fluidity. The cropped fragments overlap with residual images from the frame’s base—this irrational juxtaposition, with its disproportional correspondences and deliberate 'errors,' is precisely what I seek. Today, there’s a vast difference between experiencing an original work with one’s physical presence, viewing it digitally on screens, or encountering its printed reproductions. What I explore are these images-in-transmission—fluid entities that essentially renegotiate what Benjamin called aura. What I present is a reversal: digital images repatriated onto tactile, physical interfaces. And it’s through this spatial transformation that I reinterpret what an 'original' can be."

ARTBBS: "While the exhibition emphasizes intuitive operations, the works remain inextricably tied to precision industrial printing technology. How does this seemingly contradictory relationship resonate with the inherent tension you aim to express in 'ghostivity' itself?"

Lin Ke: "I don’t perceive these as contradictory. Intuition manifests in instantaneous, sensuous judgments—say, a ‘blue leaning green’ or a ‘red veering pink’—and such non-rational choices are central to creation. Industrial printing, meanwhile, serves to precisely ‘crystallize’ these intuitive acts into the physical world, using technical calibration to materialize perception. This tension, in a way, mirrors the very essence of ‘phantom technology.’ To go further: an original’s aura relies on the contingency of intuition, yet requires instrumental rationality to construct its tangible form. The ‘ghost’ emerges precisely where these two forces negotiate—neither pure impulse nor pure algorithm, but their unresolved interplay."

ARTBBS: "You’ve once likened yourself to a Tibetan terma (hidden scripture) discoverer, retrieving images from the void. Does "phantom technology" extend this metaphor of the invisible? And to what degree would you attribute spiritual qualities to digital tools?"

Lin Ke: "To clarify—I didn’t compare myself to a ‘terma discoverer,’ but rather used it as a conceptual vessel, an image that inspired me to contemplate the boundary between visible and invisible visuals, and questions like: ‘Could this be another superimposed layer of reality?’"