Paul Chan
Biographic Data
| ID | 3594053 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Paul Chan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Paul |
| FAMILY NAME | Chan |
| SIGNATURE | CHAN P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Delft University of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0609-4250 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 8 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Content
Paul Chan examines the concept of “content” as it has come to dominate contemporary cultural production, tracing its implications for art, expression, and human flourishing in the age of generative AI and the attention economy. Chan begins by observing the flattening effect of the term “content,” which collapses distinctions between artistic forms and privileges scalability and immediacy over quality and meaning. Drawing on traditional understand…
Navigating lock-ins for adaptation
Lock-ins are typically seen as barriers to sustainability transitions, particularly in the energy sector, where they can impede the radical changes needed for decarbonization. This study, however, argues that lock-ins can also act as catalysts for innovation within grid operators’ operational practices. Focusing on a Distribution System Operator (DSO) in Central-North Netherlands, the research explores how material, behavioural, and institutional…
Infrastructure in Transitions
Understanding the current status and historical path dependencies of infrastructures is crucial for planning future interventions in sustainability transitions. However, studies that examine the interplay between sustainability transitions and civil infrastructures remain limited. This paper presents a systematic review of 97 empirical studies that analyze how infrastructure systems and sustainability transitions influence one another. Infrastruc…
The Arts at Risk
Given the current administration's simultaneous assaults on so many of the pillars of democracy, it would be easy to overlook the degree to which culture is being targeted. But compiling a list of President Trump's radical policy prescriptions-however partial-helps us to comprehend the scope and focus of this concerted, multi-pronged effort to control the American cultural landscape, one unprecedented since the McCarthy era. The blizzard of recen…
The Arts at Risk
The following essays by Vincent Brown, Paul Chan, and Kim Lane Scheppele are edited versions of talks given at the panel discussion "The Arts at Risk: A Convening" on May 27, 2025, at the Miguel Abreu Gallery in New York, organized by members of the October editorial board.1 We asked these thinkers to address the issue of "rewriting history " in the first months of Donald J. Trump's second term as president. Censorship of the arts in the service …
Ars
A standard interpretation of the Latin phrase "Ars longa, vita brevis" is that it takes a long time to master an art or technology. Another interpretation is that art lasts, longer even than a human life. Paul Chan suggests a third possibility: that art extends life itself. To support this reading, he discusses the work of Chris Marker and the artist duo Arakawa and Gins, as well as describing experiences from his own private research in the doma…
Machina Aesthetica
Paul Chan reflects on his experiences as an artist working in and out of domains of technology, from truetype fonts and pirated software to datasets and machine-learning frameworks. He recounts periods of his artistic life when he abandoned technologies as instruments of production. And he offers an idiosyncratic account of a lineage of artists and writers he admires who used and abused technology in aspects of their work-including Agnès Varda, C…
How does learning drive sustainability transitions? Perspectives, problems and prospects from a systematic literature review
Learning has been put forward as a critical aspect to achieve sustainable transformation of societal systems. However, there is a lack of a systematic review of empirical evidence on how learning is related to sustainability transitions. To bridge this gap, we systematically reviewed 113 empirical papers that addressed the role of learning in transitions. Our results show that the complexity of the relationship between learning and transitions is…
Low Behavioral Intention to Use Any Type of HIV Testing and HIV Self-Testing among Migrant Male Factory Workers Who Are at High Risk of HIV Infection in China
This study investigated the prevalence of and factors associated with behavioral intention to take up any type of HIV testing and HIV self-testing (HIVST) in the next six months among male migrant workers, who were at high risk of HIV infection, in Shenzhen, China. This was a secondary data analysis. A total of 363 subjects who had sexual intercourse with non-regular female sex partners and/or female sex workers in the past six months were select…
An Online Intervention Promoting HIV Testing Service Utilization Among Chinese men who have sex with men During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Play-based parent training programme supporting Hong Kong kindergarten children in social competence development
It is vital to foster children’s ability to cooperate with others, communicate effectively, and exercise self-control. These competencies represent a set of transferrable skills required in many aspects of daily life and along any career path. In Hong Kong, a play-based training programme was launched to support parents to target these areas of social competence. The programme taught 414 parents to use group games that foster social skills develo…
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms in Covid-19 Survivors 6 Months After Hospital Discharge
COVID-19 survivors who had acute respiratory symptoms might experience prolonged post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to further rehabilitation, somatic symptoms and related distress. The conservation of resource (COR) theory is a well-developed theory to understand how people develop PTSD symptoms in traumatic events. The current study aimed to examine the potential factors of PTSD symptoms and interrelationships among this factors among CO…
Behavioral Intention to Get a Booster Dose of Covid-19 Vaccine among Chinese Factory Workers
China started to offer a booster dose of COVID-19 vaccine to members of the adult population in October 2021. This study investigated the behavioral intention to receive a booster dose of COVID-19 vaccine among factory workers who had completed their primary vaccination series. Participants were full-time factory employees at least 18 years of age in Shenzhen, China. In Shenzhen, factory workers need to receive a physical examination every year. …
Effectiveness of a Novel HIV Self-Testing Service with Online Real-Time Counseling Support (HIVST-Online) in Increasing HIV Testing Rate and Repeated HIV Testing among Men Who Have Sex with Men in Hon…
HIV self-testing (HIVST) with online real-time counseling (HIVST-online) is an evidence-based intervention to increase HIV testing coverage and to ensure linkage to care for men who have sex with men (MSM). A community-based organization (CBO) recruited 122 MSM who had ever used HIVST-online (ever-users) and another 228 new-users from multiple sources and promoted HIVST-online. A free oral fluid-based HIVST kit was sent to all the participants by…
A Questionnaire on Monuments
A Questionnaire on Monuments" features 49 responses to questions formulated by Leah Dickerman, Hal Foster, David Joselit, and Carrie Lambert-Beatty: "From Charlottesville to Cape Town, there have been struggles over monuments and other markers involving histories of racial conflict. How do these charged situations shed light on the ethics of images in civil society today? Speaking generally or with specific examples in mind, please consider any o…
The Potency of Art
There are many arguments today about why art matters. It is a form that authenticates what is most human about humanity, it celebrates and affirms the diversity of cultures and identities, it upholds values of individual freedoms, it is a good pedagogical tool for teaching social and political ideas, it is a sound economic investment, it gives pleasure, and so on. Among these competing claims, I want simply to add one more, and a fairly prosaic o…
Second Nature
Paul Chan's speech, first delivered on the occasion of Engage More Now! A Symposium on Artists, Museums, and Publics at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (November 2015), proposes that artistic experiences be understood as forms that vividly emblematizes the relationship between cunning and reasoning. It considers the ways in which this relationship echoes within the broadest arenas of social life and how such an outlook could upend what have beco…
The Cat and the Owl
In October 2010, I emailed Chris to ask if he was interested in taking part in a special issue of E-flux Journal that art critic Sven Lütticken and I were editing. The issue focused on whether contemporary art had addressed the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, the US, and elsewhere, and how these largely nationalistic, homophobic, and xenophobic movements impacted culture and art. With the ascendance of the Tea Party, Sven and I wondered if…
Occupy Response
Waiting for Godot in New Orleans
Waiting for Godot in New Orleans was a series of site-specific performances that took place in New Orleans in 2007. Conceived and organized by the American artist Paul Chan, it embodies his creative response to the city's ongoing dysfunction as well as its inhabitants' collective tenaciousness in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Visiting New Orleans for the first time in November 2006, the artist was struck by the disquieting stillness of what…
The Spirit of Recession
In 1991, I was at once too poor and not poor enough to be caught up in the last great American recession of the twentieth century. Living far from the coastal epicenters of culture and capital, and being too young and naive to know, much less care, about life beyond my meager horizons, the idea of a phenomenon that throws entire societies into dire phrases like negative growth and depression was as abstract and remote to me as the actual reasons …
Next day, same place. After Godot in New Orleans
December 01 2008 Next day, same place. After Godot in New Orleans Paul Chan Paul Chan Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Paul Chan Online ISSN: 1531-4715 Print ISSN: 1054-2043 © 2008 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology2008 TDR/The Drama Review (2008) 52 (4 (200)): 2–3. https://doi.org/10.1162/dram.2008.52.4.2 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Fa…
The Political Economy of Urban Squatting in Metropolitan Kuala Lumpur
During the pre-colonial period in Malaysia, there was no problem of squatting as it was needless for the peasants to do so. The agrarian economy of that time had evolved a tenurial system which was technologically and economically appropriate to the demographic situation. Any one could claim proprietary right to land as long as he had invested labour services in it (Chan 1980). Generally, land was a means of production rather than an asset for ac…
The Energy Crisis and Asean
Energy problems have thrust themselves firmly on the global stage in recent years; escalating real energy prices and the possibility of the rapid exhaustion of non-renewable energy resources have seen to that. There is also the correlation that exists between economic development and energy use, which is clearly depicted in Table 1. Table 1 shows the close similarity between world shares of gross national product and of energy consumption; the in…
A Questionnaire on Monuments
A Questionnaire on Monuments" features 49 responses to questions formulated by Leah Dickerman, Hal Foster, David Joselit, and Carrie Lambert-Beatty: "From Charlottesville to Cape Town, there have been struggles over monuments and other markers involving histories of racial conflict. How do these charged situations shed light on the ethics of images in civil society today? Speaking generally or with specific examples in mind, please consider any o…
The Political Economy of Urban Squatting in Metropolitan Kuala Lumpur
During the pre-colonial period in Malaysia, there was no problem of squatting as it was needless for the peasants to do so. The agrarian economy of that time had evolved a tenurial system which was technologically and economically appropriate to the demographic situation. Any one could claim proprietary right to land as long as he had invested labour services in it (Chan 1980). Generally, land was a means of production rather than an asset for ac…
Navigating lock-ins for adaptation
Lock-ins are typically seen as barriers to sustainability transitions, particularly in the energy sector, where they can impede the radical changes needed for decarbonization. This study, however, argues that lock-ins can also act as catalysts for innovation within grid operators’ operational practices. Focusing on a Distribution System Operator (DSO) in Central-North Netherlands, the research explores how material, behavioural, and institutional…
Waiting for Godot in New Orleans
Waiting for Godot in New Orleans was a series of site-specific performances that took place in New Orleans in 2007. Conceived and organized by the American artist Paul Chan, it embodies his creative response to the city's ongoing dysfunction as well as its inhabitants' collective tenaciousness in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Visiting New Orleans for the first time in November 2006, the artist was struck by the disquieting stillness of what…
The Energy Crisis and Asean
Energy problems have thrust themselves firmly on the global stage in recent years; escalating real energy prices and the possibility of the rapid exhaustion of non-renewable energy resources have seen to that. There is also the correlation that exists between economic development and energy use, which is clearly depicted in Table 1. Table 1 shows the close similarity between world shares of gross national product and of energy consumption; the in…
The Political Economy of Urban Squatting in Metropolitan Kuala Lumpur
During the pre-colonial period in Malaysia, there was no problem of squatting as it was needless for the peasants to do so. The agrarian economy of that time had evolved a tenurial system which was technologically and economically appropriate to the demographic situation. Any one could claim proprietary right to land as long as he had invested labour services in it (Chan 1980). Generally, land was a means of production rather than an asset for ac…
Next day, same place. After Godot in New Orleans
December 01 2008 Next day, same place. After Godot in New Orleans Paul Chan Paul Chan Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Paul Chan Online ISSN: 1531-4715 Print ISSN: 1054-2043 © 2008 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology2008 TDR/The Drama Review (2008) 52 (4 (200)): 2–3. https://doi.org/10.1162/dram.2008.52.4.2 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Fa…
Waiting for Godot in New Orleans
Waiting for Godot in New Orleans was a series of site-specific performances that took place in New Orleans in 2007. Conceived and organized by the American artist Paul Chan, it embodies his creative response to the city's ongoing dysfunction as well as its inhabitants' collective tenaciousness in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Visiting New Orleans for the first time in November 2006, the artist was struck by the disquieting stillness of what…
The Spirit of Recession
In 1991, I was at once too poor and not poor enough to be caught up in the last great American recession of the twentieth century. Living far from the coastal epicenters of culture and capital, and being too young and naive to know, much less care, about life beyond my meager horizons, the idea of a phenomenon that throws entire societies into dire phrases like negative growth and depression was as abstract and remote to me as the actual reasons …
Occupy Response
The Cat and the Owl
In October 2010, I emailed Chris to ask if he was interested in taking part in a special issue of E-flux Journal that art critic Sven Lütticken and I were editing. The issue focused on whether contemporary art had addressed the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, the US, and elsewhere, and how these largely nationalistic, homophobic, and xenophobic movements impacted culture and art. With the ascendance of the Tea Party, Sven and I wondered if…
The Potency of Art
There are many arguments today about why art matters. It is a form that authenticates what is most human about humanity, it celebrates and affirms the diversity of cultures and identities, it upholds values of individual freedoms, it is a good pedagogical tool for teaching social and political ideas, it is a sound economic investment, it gives pleasure, and so on. Among these competing claims, I want simply to add one more, and a fairly prosaic o…
Second Nature
Paul Chan's speech, first delivered on the occasion of Engage More Now! A Symposium on Artists, Museums, and Publics at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (November 2015), proposes that artistic experiences be understood as forms that vividly emblematizes the relationship between cunning and reasoning. It considers the ways in which this relationship echoes within the broadest arenas of social life and how such an outlook could upend what have beco…
A Questionnaire on Monuments
A Questionnaire on Monuments" features 49 responses to questions formulated by Leah Dickerman, Hal Foster, David Joselit, and Carrie Lambert-Beatty: "From Charlottesville to Cape Town, there have been struggles over monuments and other markers involving histories of racial conflict. How do these charged situations shed light on the ethics of images in civil society today? Speaking generally or with specific examples in mind, please consider any o…
Effectiveness of a Novel HIV Self-Testing Service with Online Real-Time Counseling Support (HIVST-Online) in Increasing HIV Testing Rate and Repeated HIV Testing among Men Who Have Sex with Men in Hon…
HIV self-testing (HIVST) with online real-time counseling (HIVST-online) is an evidence-based intervention to increase HIV testing coverage and to ensure linkage to care for men who have sex with men (MSM). A community-based organization (CBO) recruited 122 MSM who had ever used HIVST-online (ever-users) and another 228 new-users from multiple sources and promoted HIVST-online. A free oral fluid-based HIVST kit was sent to all the participants by…
Play-based parent training programme supporting Hong Kong kindergarten children in social competence development
It is vital to foster children’s ability to cooperate with others, communicate effectively, and exercise self-control. These competencies represent a set of transferrable skills required in many aspects of daily life and along any career path. In Hong Kong, a play-based training programme was launched to support parents to target these areas of social competence. The programme taught 414 parents to use group games that foster social skills develo…
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms in Covid-19 Survivors 6 Months After Hospital Discharge
COVID-19 survivors who had acute respiratory symptoms might experience prolonged post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to further rehabilitation, somatic symptoms and related distress. The conservation of resource (COR) theory is a well-developed theory to understand how people develop PTSD symptoms in traumatic events. The current study aimed to examine the potential factors of PTSD symptoms and interrelationships among this factors among CO…
Behavioral Intention to Get a Booster Dose of Covid-19 Vaccine among Chinese Factory Workers
China started to offer a booster dose of COVID-19 vaccine to members of the adult population in October 2021. This study investigated the behavioral intention to receive a booster dose of COVID-19 vaccine among factory workers who had completed their primary vaccination series. Participants were full-time factory employees at least 18 years of age in Shenzhen, China. In Shenzhen, factory workers need to receive a physical examination every year. …
How does learning drive sustainability transitions? Perspectives, problems and prospects from a systematic literature review
Learning has been put forward as a critical aspect to achieve sustainable transformation of societal systems. However, there is a lack of a systematic review of empirical evidence on how learning is related to sustainability transitions. To bridge this gap, we systematically reviewed 113 empirical papers that addressed the role of learning in transitions. Our results show that the complexity of the relationship between learning and transitions is…
Low Behavioral Intention to Use Any Type of HIV Testing and HIV Self-Testing among Migrant Male Factory Workers Who Are at High Risk of HIV Infection in China
This study investigated the prevalence of and factors associated with behavioral intention to take up any type of HIV testing and HIV self-testing (HIVST) in the next six months among male migrant workers, who were at high risk of HIV infection, in Shenzhen, China. This was a secondary data analysis. A total of 363 subjects who had sexual intercourse with non-regular female sex partners and/or female sex workers in the past six months were select…
An Online Intervention Promoting HIV Testing Service Utilization Among Chinese men who have sex with men During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Ars
A standard interpretation of the Latin phrase "Ars longa, vita brevis" is that it takes a long time to master an art or technology. Another interpretation is that art lasts, longer even than a human life. Paul Chan suggests a third possibility: that art extends life itself. To support this reading, he discusses the work of Chris Marker and the artist duo Arakawa and Gins, as well as describing experiences from his own private research in the doma…
Machina Aesthetica
Paul Chan reflects on his experiences as an artist working in and out of domains of technology, from truetype fonts and pirated software to datasets and machine-learning frameworks. He recounts periods of his artistic life when he abandoned technologies as instruments of production. And he offers an idiosyncratic account of a lineage of artists and writers he admires who used and abused technology in aspects of their work-including Agnès Varda, C…
Infrastructure in Transitions
Understanding the current status and historical path dependencies of infrastructures is crucial for planning future interventions in sustainability transitions. However, studies that examine the interplay between sustainability transitions and civil infrastructures remain limited. This paper presents a systematic review of 97 empirical studies that analyze how infrastructure systems and sustainability transitions influence one another. Infrastruc…
The Arts at Risk
Given the current administration's simultaneous assaults on so many of the pillars of democracy, it would be easy to overlook the degree to which culture is being targeted. But compiling a list of President Trump's radical policy prescriptions-however partial-helps us to comprehend the scope and focus of this concerted, multi-pronged effort to control the American cultural landscape, one unprecedented since the McCarthy era. The blizzard of recen…
The Arts at Risk
The following essays by Vincent Brown, Paul Chan, and Kim Lane Scheppele are edited versions of talks given at the panel discussion "The Arts at Risk: A Convening" on May 27, 2025, at the Miguel Abreu Gallery in New York, organized by members of the October editorial board.1 We asked these thinkers to address the issue of "rewriting history " in the first months of Donald J. Trump's second term as president. Censorship of the arts in the service …
Content
Paul Chan examines the concept of “content” as it has come to dominate contemporary cultural production, tracing its implications for art, expression, and human flourishing in the age of generative AI and the attention economy. Chan begins by observing the flattening effect of the term “content,” which collapses distinctions between artistic forms and privileges scalability and immediacy over quality and meaning. Drawing on traditional understand…
Navigating lock-ins for adaptation
Lock-ins are typically seen as barriers to sustainability transitions, particularly in the energy sector, where they can impede the radical changes needed for decarbonization. This study, however, argues that lock-ins can also act as catalysts for innovation within grid operators’ operational practices. Focusing on a Distribution System Operator (DSO) in Central-North Netherlands, the research explores how material, behavioural, and institutional…
Art (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Medicine (7 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Aesthetics (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Visual arts (5 works) · Art history (4 works)