The Fountain, the Shop, the Rhythmic Train Trailer

January 2022

DOUBLE DOUBLE January 2022 edition
The Fountain, the Shop, the Rhythmic Train
A Holly Lee and Lee Ka-sing Publication
First published in Canada by OCEAN POUNDS
January 2022
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Photography, Visual Art, Poetry, Literature, Culture
Authors: Lee Ka-sing, Holly Lee, Mak Fung, Sharon Lee
ISBN: 978-1-989845-23-3
Copyright © Ocean Pounds 2022
Individual Copyrights belongs to the Artists and Writers.
All Rights Reserved.
For information about permission to reproduce material from
this book, please write to mail@oceanpounds.com
DOUBLE DOUBLE was published as a weekly webzine from
January 2019 to December 2021. A total of 158 issues were
published. Full archives available online:
https://oceanpounds.com/blogs/doubledouble
Some of the issues were re-packaged and published as
print-on-demand paperback editions.
Since January 2022, DOUBLE DOUBLE has become a monthly
publication, released in both paperback (POD) and e-book
versions, available for orders online at BLURB (blurb.com),
or at OCEAN POUNDS in Toronto.
The Fountain,
the Shop, the
Rhythmic Train
Design and editorial by DOUBLE DOUBLE studio
www.doubledouble.org
Cover: Sharon Lee
End Pages: Lee Ka-sing
Some artwork featured in this publication might be available
through OCEAN POUNDS
(contact by email at mail@oceanpounds.com)
OCEAN POUNDS
50 Gladstone Avenue, Toronto,
Ontario, Canada M6J 3K6
www.oceanpounds.com

Lee Ka-sing
a work in two versions
I Hope You Are Well
(to a contemporary art
space in Beijing)

version 1
I Hope You Are Well (to a contemporary
art space in Beijing), 2014
a poem in 15 photographs
(2014)
52.5 x 3.5 x 1.5 inch
archival pigment print, spruce, acrylic medium
unique

Holly Lee
The Fountain
a novel

Early morning calls
Here they go again! Abek Keba.
A blessing, or a curse. The silence of the
waning night breaks, before the first ray of
sunlight hitting city buildings, before her spirit
climbs back to the body, suspending her in a
state of half-asleep and half-awake, and like an
overtly early alarm clock, without warning, a
sharp, harmonious duet punctures the air. Less
than a quarter of a mile away, on the northern
slope opposite where she lives, inside a cage in
the Zoological and Botanical Gardens, a pair of
siamangs, swinging from branch to branch, are
routinely performing their morning ritual cries
with a mix of deep booms and high-pitched
screams.
Ack! Just when I’m about to drift off…
Yes, her sleeps have been fragmentary since the
operation, her further struggle with radiotherapy,
and chemotherapy taking a visible toll on her.
The first night she started her chemo she was in
so much pain that, in between bursts of dreams,
she yelled for help from her grandmother,
forgetting that she had been dead for nearly a
year. The nights following are not any better;
she is often in a state of consciousness with
eyes closed. Then around dawn, she is almost
certain to hear calls from the gibbons, taking
her away, or dragging her deeper into the same
fuzzy dream; a wood so dark, primeval and
impenetrable.
She decides to visit the siamangs Abek and
Keba today. Secretly, and avoiding the keeper’s
watchful eyes, she will feed them popcorn for
a treat. Abek is male, seven years old, and
measures about 3 feet tall, weighing 25 pounds.
Keba, his wife, is three months younger, built
slightly shorter but weighs more since she is
pregnant. The couple is from different parts of
Sumatra and has been living in this enclosure for
almost a year. It is just a short walk uphill from
her apartment to the zoo through a lane called
Glenealy, a gated, minor entry point, one of the
eleven entrances to the central Public Garden.
Usually, this entrance is quiet and unstaffed.
She has to pass through the full-height, twoway
steel turnstile to take the path, a shady and
winding trail leading to the menagerie. Some
time ago, when she visited the couple, they were
sitting upright in the fork of a tree, huddling
together, comfortably taking their afternoon nap.
Another time when she passed by, Abek and
Keba were swinging and brachiating through the
branches with their long gangling arms, acting
in a way as if they were the top trapeze artists
of the animal world; and indeed their acrobatic
performance won loud applause from several
spectators, including hers. What will they be
doing today? She wonders. What will you name
your child, you king and queen of swing. Your
child, would you like it to be the prince, or
princess of the swing? In a habitual manner, she
combs through her thin hair with her fingers,
feeling instantly more hair falling out, her scalp
warm and tender.
The day’s forecast is hot and sunny, a
considerably fine day; it’s better for her to wear
a cap and bring along the blue umbrella with
light-green stripes. Her spirit needs uplifting,
her body needs fortifying, and this umbrella
provides both. She delights in spending time
with the siamangs and walks directly towards the
compound where Abek and Keba are staying. To
her surprise, she finds not two, but three primate
friends. Keba has given birth to a baby. On a
signpost outside the enclosure stated: Ekke,
female siamang, 6.5 ounces, born July 1, 1992.
Because it is a weekday, not too many people
are gathering there to watch the newborn, and
she’s able to get closer to her siamang friends. A
picture of family bliss, all tenderness and loving
care. The tiny baby is sprawling out on her
mother’s tummy, and Abek is gently grooming
his wife’s shaggy black fur with his long fingers.
She leans over and presses her face against the
cold steel fence, looks straight into the eyes
of the parents. They look back languidly, as if
floating on a cloud, as if lodging in their small
haven, so contented that they do not want any
disturbance.
She carries that picture with her as she strolls
further along the old trees trail, crossing the
pedestrian subway to the north-eastern side of
the park, passes by the Pavilion, and the bronze
statue of King George VI, a somewhat beautiful
area surrounded by aviaries, the air filled with
fragrant jasmines and all kinds of bird songs.
There’s a bench to sit down on, the weather so
bright, the constant breeze cools down streams
of heat waves as she sits under her umbrella,
well-sheltered from the mid-day sun. Minutes
later, resuming her strength, she descends
the stone steps, reaching an open square; the
fountain terrace. There, the sky, skyline of tall
buildings and some breadth of the harbour view
unfurled before her. Putting down her umbrella,
she inhales deeply, her arms stretching out, as
if trying to gather the spectacle all to herself. In
the middle of the courtyard sits the centerpiece
of the garden - the fountain, which, in its several
rebirths, has always remained in the same spot.
Now rebuilt for the fourth time, an irregular
polygon replaces the former round-shaped
fountain, having four huge, dandelion-like
spheres with rotating fountain heads, spinning
around gleefully as water jets out of the nozzles.
The view is captivating and refreshing. To

COLLECTION
Mak Fung
The Fountain, Botanical
Garden, Hong Kong
circa 1960s
a photograph

The Botanical Garden, Hong Kong,
circa 1960s, by Mak Fung
8x10 inch, gelatin silver photograph
printed in the nineties
Edition 4/10, signed and titled on verso

Sharon Lee
The Crescent Void

The Crescent Void
It begins with a worn-out photo.
Hiding in an album my grandmother left us after
she passed away is a photo that tells an untold
chapter of my family history: My grandparents
used to run a small grocery store in Chai Wan in
the 70s. Today, Man Lee Store, as it was called,
has already morphed into a run-of-the-mill
concrete wall structure facing an underground
train station.
Our city never ceases to change. As I turn the
found objects from grocery stores into specimens
in concrete, the disappearing urban tales
buried underneath the ever-taller high-rises
are given new forms. The absence in space of
the concrete boards makes a poignant remark,
moulds after moulds, as a that-has-been—an
uncanny presence against change. These halfmoulds-half-specimens
are then recast as
negative images. The photographic impressions,
with their light and shadow reversed, reflect the
achingly quotidian life lost in the fabric of space
and time. Their silence never ceases to speak
to us, as a void lurking in our city that seems so
close yet distant to us.
The stores and their stories may be remembered
and disremembered. Never are they too far from
our hearts, however. They are just around the
corner of the street that we pass by every day. A
once most familiar sight.
(Sharon Lee Cheuk Wun)

Lemon Tea 檸 檬 茶

The Crescent Void series was also published as
an artist book by Sharon Lee in 2020.
The Crescent Void
A box of 10 prints
Box size: 12” x 15” (30.48 x 38.1 cm)
Print size: 11"x14" (27.9 x 35.5 cm)
Printed on 110 g/m archival washi papers (Awagami
Inkjet Papers) with pigment inks
10 copies, printed in 2020
Sharon Lee 李 卓 媛 (b.1992, Hong Kong)
received an MFA from The Chinese University of
Hong Kong. Lee participated in several overseas art
residency and won the photography award WMA
Masters in 2019. She debuted her solo exhibitions
“The Presence of Absence” with the Lumenvisum
New Light Award in 2016 and “If Tomorrow Never
Comes” in 2020. She has collaborated with
several local and international art institutions and
festivals-Tai Kwun Contemporary, Art Promotion
Office, Hong Kong International Photo Festival,
Peer to Peer:UK/HK, The Listening Biennial. ‘R’ as
her artistic strategy conceptually and technically: in
the name of re-searching (family) history and recreating
memory; of examining “disappearance” as
an artistic means to challenge “disappearance” as a
cultural concept; of re-sisting empty photography in
the post-photography era. Lee has been engaged in
experimentations with analogue-digital hybrids as
well as transmutations involving various materials.
www.sharonleecw.com

158 covers
Double Double
(from 2019 to 2021)
With contents focusing on Holly and Ka-sing’s recent
work and archives (both photography and writing),
DOUBLE DOUBLE appeared as a weekly webzine
from January 2019 to December 2021. A total of 158
issues were published.
An archive of all the issues -
https://oceanpounds.com/blogs/doubledouble
The publication has become a monthly publication in
January 2022, published in Paperbacks (POD).
An electronic book format (epub) is also available for
iPad, Kindle and Desktop computer.

Istanbul. Three Poems (Holly Lee) / Istanbul Journal, photographs
(Lee Ka-sing)
Objects of Mythical Power. Five poems (Holly Lee) / TIME
MACHINE, photographs (Lee Ka-sing) / PAPER TALK - Posing
(Holly Lee)

50 Gladstone, photographs (Lee Ka-sing) / PictureWords - 月 如
鉤 Moon As (Fish) Hook, photographs (Holly Lee) PAPER TALK
- 看 樹 看 花 (Holly Lee)
A Potluck Song. Poem (Holly Lee) / MOBILE POETRY LAB - The
Psychological Journey While Taking a Colour Photograph of
a Dinosaur (Lee Ka-sing) / ARTIFACT - “camera works, holly
& wingo” / PAPER TALK - Bowlshit (Holly Lee) / VINTAGE -
photogram (Holly Lee)
50 Gladstone, photographs (Lee Ka-sing) / The Thinker. Poem
(Holly Lee) / VINTAGE - Friends, Artists and People I Know (Holly
Lee) / Sushi Grass in Paradise, a novel (Holly Lee) / PAPER
TALK - Ara Güler & Yau Leung (Holly Lee) / BOOKSCAPE - The
Language of Fruits and Vegetable (Lee Ka-sing)
50 Gladstone, photographs (Lee Ka-sing) / The Thinker. Poem
(Holly Lee) / VINTAGE - Friends, Artists and People I Know (Holly
Lee) / Sushi Grass in Paradise, a novel (Holly Lee) / PAPER
TALK - Ara Güler & Yau Leung (Holly Lee) / BOOKSCAPE - The
Language of Fruits and Vegetable 蔬 果 說 話 (Lee Ka-sing)
Sushi Grass in Paradise, a novel (Holly Lee) / VINTAGE - Twenty
vintage Test-strips / NEW STORIES, from Kai Chan and Lee
Ka-sing collaboration exhibition (Lee Ka-sing) / 50 Gladstone,
photographs (Lee Ka-sing) / PAPER TALK - Kenojuak Ashevak
(Holly Lee) / Kenojuak Ashevak. Poem (Holly Lee)

Share with us and collect a piece of our histroy
The 158 DOUBLE DOUBLE covers, each is available as
Archival Print, ready for you to put into a frame.
Available in two formats at lab cost:
8x10 inch sheet size, image 7x7 (US$50)
17x22 inch sheet size, image size 16x16 (US$100)
Appropriate tax and shipping may apply.
A print with autographs is optional.
To order: write to mail@oceanpounds.com
and indicate the issue number

View a full version
(180 pages) of this
publication ($1) at
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a paperback edition of
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