Beijing, CN weather for 12 august 2008: sunny with blue skies, afternoon chance of scattered clouds, high 30° C – low 22° C.

above: Are Fuwa dolls allowed to speak on the job? Only if you look them in eyes. “你那里面热不热？“ “还好！“

“In the field of telecommunications, a communications protocol is the set of standard rules for data representation, signaling, authentication and error detection required to send information over a communications channel.” (wikipedia)

above: the “Official Spectators’ Guide”

Thinking of protocol in terms of means, ways of doing… de Certeau’s perruque [1] implies a way of using time within the standards of protocol. What loopholes do we find as individuals, within the “Official Spectators’ Guide”？

above: Volunteers make arrangements for people who need to change their seats at Olympic events.

Where do we abide by a protocol, but where do we always end up finding our own ways of getting there, of doing this or that? As we said before, this is by no means a way to pursue subversion—-we laugh in ignorance at the same time as we act. Living in beijing as 老百姓 laobaixing, as everyday citizens, what modes of protocol do we embody, and where do we meander without noticing?

above: Portable cutlery and chopsticks are not allowed on the Olympic green. You can check them in, however, with a simple sticker purchased from any local stationery store and an identifying signing of whatever you want.

above: Lip gloss is allowed, so long as you put it on before you enter the stadium.

The trace has a very distinct path, a protocol of following someone else’s footsteps or keeping to the line that has been set before… But it is only a slip of the hand, a slight nudging off the solid foundation of following, that sets us into a realm of possibility. Deligny does not neglect his own presence as tracer within the mapping of the traced. Nor can we deny responsibility as creators or thinkers upon those that we engage with, no matter what exchange may be made, or not. Is it a nothing to take notice? Is possibility too open a format? No. Because the protocol is always there; there are hundreds of routine paths and familiar faces that pass here everyday.

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[1] “…la perruque is the worker’s own work disguised as work for his employer…” (Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life)