“Why is working with people painful?”

People are complicated… There are just so many reasons. There are just so many reasons. There are just so many reasons. There are just so many reasons. In the project I did in New Orleans, I had to work with a lot of people in the city, and what you realize is however good your idea is, idea is nothing without a kind of alignment of interests. No matter how good the idea is, if it doesn’t align with a person’s interests, it’s not going to be that great of an idea, no matter how great an idea it is. The negotiation and sense of trust that comes from getting on board with that idea takes time, and frankly no one has that time. No one. Because if you give that time, the idea doesn’t matter anymore, because it’s about the relationship then. You see what I mean? And so that’s the complicated part. The complicated part is that if you want to work with people, it takes time. And no one knows if they really have that kind of time. Because they want to get things done.

— excerpt from “Why artist groups form and why they fail: a theory”, talk by Paul CHAN, 18 May 2012 at Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong （printed in 《附錄 Appendix》, published by 家作坊 HomeShop, 2013）