motionscapes

Friday, July 31, 2009

4/6 1:00 pm, July 30, 2009. Room 3017, Cambridge

Suggestions and Critiques

the Modernists - know the discourse, the awe and critique, of Modernism by Benjamin, Kracauer and Simmel.

Photography - use as tool for investigation of mood and atmosphere.

Film - know the work of Wim Wenders and Krzysztof Kieślowski in Wings of Desire and the Decalogues, and how they are saturated in the melancholy of non-space.

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About Motionscapes

Jiangnan is on the brink of revolution: a network of bullet train lines will re-territorilize this region of China, including Shanghai, drawing its 80 million inhabitants within a single hour’s commute of one another. From the train, the boundaries between Jiangnan’s ancient cities, villages, and countryside appear to dissolve into a momentary smear of colour. At the very moment the earth has shrunk by the bullet train, Jiangnan’s new mega-city status will erode a sense of community rooted in long stable demarcations of place. The humanity that endures will likely be atomized, lost in a vast, blurred, and indecipherable landscape that has sacrificed community for the high-speed design of a relentless modernity.

Motionscapes, the blog, documents a project in progress. It collects experiences of contemporary Jiangnan. The project also aspires to describe and imagine moments of cultural resilience and rootedness in a landscape otherwise derationed, homogonized, and sacrificed by a manically technologic modernity.

Friday, July 31, 2009

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