motionscapes: motionscapes vii

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.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

motionscapes vii - ix

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