The Book of the Thing: Remarks on Politics, Art, Morality, and Taiwan
By James T. Hong
Published by Theory of the Partisan and Empty Gallery, Hong Kong, 2019

John Carpenter’s 1982 film The Thing uses science fiction and horror to unpack many themes relevant to America during that decade, from the AIDS epidemic and an insurgent counterculture, to more abstract ideas about the paranoias that are entrenched in our minds, at the time heightened by the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

Taiwanese-American filmmaker and artist James T. Hong references Carpenter’s film and loads its disquiet into a pocket-size monograph. The Book of the Thing: Remarks on Politics, Art, Morality, and Taiwan was published to accompany “The Thing,” an exhibition at Hong Kong’s Empty Gallery in which the artist explored how objects and concepts are interpreted and exist in our consciousness, tying into the present age of rampant misinformation and disinformation.