Reimagining Affection in a Changing Shanghai
The article examines the dynamics of space surrounding Shanghai’s rampant urban change as experienced by the Chinese artistic duo known as Birdhead. Underpinned by the conceptual framework of the “affective turn”, this study reflects upon and addresses how the photographer’s chaotic photo-essay of S...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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University of Ljubljana Press (Založba Univerze v Ljubljani)
2023-05-01
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| Series: | Asian Studies |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.uni-lj.si/as/article/view/11091 |
| _version_ | 1827946050884730880 |
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| author | Joaquin Lopez Mugica Thomas William Whyke |
| author_facet | Joaquin Lopez Mugica Thomas William Whyke |
| author_sort | Joaquin Lopez Mugica |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The article examines the dynamics of space surrounding Shanghai’s rampant urban change as experienced by the Chinese artistic duo known as Birdhead. Underpinned by the conceptual framework of the “affective turn”, this study reflects upon and addresses how the photographer’s chaotic photo-essay of Shanghai’s new state housing (Xincun, New Village, 2008) can function as a nexus of place-making. With a claim to impetuous emotion in his works, Birdhead’s contemporary photography pervades a plane of subjects, objects, and affections, in which the city is imagined and experienced as space-body performativity. Understanding Birdhead’s everyday urban practices as performative, we claim that the visual performance of these photographs not just materially shapes the bodies, but also acts as a rhizomatic catalyst for both things-in-themselves and webs of social affection inside and outside Shanghai. As a contribution, this article’s theoretical application to Birdhead’s everyday networks of unruly and frenzied emotional tactics challenges the official formulation of realism. More importantly, their contemporary photography apprehends and territorializes elements of anarchy, at the very same time deterritorializing the omnipresent affective strategies of a propagandistic post-socialist apparatus that pressures the positive over “other” emotional representations of Shanghai.
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| first_indexed | 2024-03-13T10:53:15Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-51b638549eb44e9f9b90c1f44ebd1dcc |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2232-5131 2350-4226 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-13T10:53:15Z |
| publishDate | 2023-05-01 |
| publisher | University of Ljubljana Press (Založba Univerze v Ljubljani) |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Asian Studies |
| spelling | doaj.art-51b638549eb44e9f9b90c1f44ebd1dcc2023-05-17T07:16:30ZengUniversity of Ljubljana Press (Založba Univerze v Ljubljani)Asian Studies2232-51312350-42262023-05-0111210.4312/as.2023.11.2.263-294Reimagining Affection in a Changing ShanghaiJoaquin Lopez Mugica0Thomas William Whyke1Wenzhou-Kean University, Wenzhou, China University of Nottingham Ningbo, ChinaThe article examines the dynamics of space surrounding Shanghai’s rampant urban change as experienced by the Chinese artistic duo known as Birdhead. Underpinned by the conceptual framework of the “affective turn”, this study reflects upon and addresses how the photographer’s chaotic photo-essay of Shanghai’s new state housing (Xincun, New Village, 2008) can function as a nexus of place-making. With a claim to impetuous emotion in his works, Birdhead’s contemporary photography pervades a plane of subjects, objects, and affections, in which the city is imagined and experienced as space-body performativity. Understanding Birdhead’s everyday urban practices as performative, we claim that the visual performance of these photographs not just materially shapes the bodies, but also acts as a rhizomatic catalyst for both things-in-themselves and webs of social affection inside and outside Shanghai. As a contribution, this article’s theoretical application to Birdhead’s everyday networks of unruly and frenzied emotional tactics challenges the official formulation of realism. More importantly, their contemporary photography apprehends and territorializes elements of anarchy, at the very same time deterritorializing the omnipresent affective strategies of a propagandistic post-socialist apparatus that pressures the positive over “other” emotional representations of Shanghai. https://journals.uni-lj.si/as/article/view/11091Chinese contemporaneityaffective turnnew materialismrhizomatic sense of placeyoung “minor” bodiesperformativity |
| spellingShingle | Joaquin Lopez Mugica Thomas William Whyke Reimagining Affection in a Changing Shanghai Asian Studies Chinese contemporaneity affective turn new materialism rhizomatic sense of place young “minor” bodies performativity |
| title | Reimagining Affection in a Changing Shanghai |
| title_full | Reimagining Affection in a Changing Shanghai |
| title_fullStr | Reimagining Affection in a Changing Shanghai |
| title_full_unstemmed | Reimagining Affection in a Changing Shanghai |
| title_short | Reimagining Affection in a Changing Shanghai |
| title_sort | reimagining affection in a changing shanghai |
| topic | Chinese contemporaneity affective turn new materialism rhizomatic sense of place young “minor” bodies performativity |
| url | https://journals.uni-lj.si/as/article/view/11091 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT joaquinlopezmugica reimaginingaffectioninachangingshanghai AT thomaswilliamwhyke reimaginingaffectioninachangingshanghai |