Where There Is No Room for Fiction

It is a romantic cliché to imagine that each flickering window in the urban skyline holds a hidden story. Yet, in this Chinese urban slum, even this cliché becomes a luxury. Here, amidst the darkness, there is no room for fiction, either literally or metaphorically, outside of the sanctioned narrative. In fact, as soon as an apartment is vacated, all its window frames and even some exterior walls are removed by demolition workers, even if parts of the building are still occupied. This practice aims to prevent squatters as well as to maximize pressure on resisting owners and residents.

Rather than merely documenting the urban landscape, this project explores the potential of critical aesthetics. It not only captures China’s uneven urban development but also projects images of the urban enclave’s everyday life onto its ruins at night, raising the timeless question of figure and ground within the context of urbanization and gentrification. By literally casting light on the city’s spatial ruptures using common darkroom techniques such as dodging, burning, and masking, my site-specific installations turn the enclave into an open-air darkroom. This process allows me to engage in a dialogue between the practice of photographic manipulation and the spectacle created by the state and capital. I propose that in societies where state-sanctioned facts are inseparable from spectacle, critically constructed fictional images may ultimately come closer to revealing the truth. Lastly, considering that light boxes are frequently used to display real estate commercials in Chinese public spaces, the final products of this project are light box installations that ‘advertise’ the unreal estate of this enclave’s dystopian present.