FLOATER: BLURRING BASKETBALL LINES, Chinatown Basketball Club's first book that celebrates CBC past 5 years (2019-2024) unique blend of competitive basketball and aesthetic experimentation, with essays contributed by Herb Tam, Lu Zhang, Reef (Harith Liew), Sean Catangui, Alex Zhang, Chiarina Chen and Dustin Lin.
Through documentation of its graphic production and critical texts, FLOATER offers a collective, de-centered, and Asian approach to re-imagining basketball aesthetics, a space dominated by corporate expressions of aggression, masculinity and elitism. It traces how CBC has cultivated collective creativity over five years of collaborative poster art, graphics, and events—addressing questions such as: Is there an alternative, distinctly Asian (diaspora) way of experiencing basketball? Could there be a basketball aesthetic rooted in Asian (diaspora) that exists outside mainstream basketball culture?
In anatomy, “floater” refers to tiny specks or shapes that drift across one’s field of vision—never fixed, always in motion. More broadly, the term describes something that remains suspended, either on the surface of water or in the air. In basketball, a floater is a short-range, high-arching shot above the reach of a taller defender. In many senses, floater suggests a suspension of outcomes—full of possibility, hovering just out of reach.
6.25x9in, 287 pages.
The book is made possible with support from TRF.
Designed by Xinyuan Qu. Co-published by Chinatown Basketball Club and linlin Plum.
