Samuele Pellecchia, Francesco Merlini, and Alessandro Zanoni. Urban China
21.1.2021, 9:00 PM
Lab27 is pleased to announce the third installment of INCONTRI DI FOTOGRAFIA, which will take place on January 21 at 9:00 PM, live online on the Lab27 YouTube channel.
We will explore urban expansion in China through two photographic projects and editorial investigations. With Samuele Pellecchia and Francesco Merlini, we will discuss the exhibition China Goes Urban, organized by Prospekt and the Politecnico di Torino in collaboration with Tsinghua University in Beijing, hosted from October 20 at the MAO – Museo d’Arte Orientale in Turin. With Alessandro Zanoni, we will examine the publication The Post-War Dream, a visual journey and investigation into the dusty and euphoric transformations of China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
In 1978, only 18% of China’s population lived in urban areas. Since then, the number of city dwellers has grown by roughly 1% per year, reaching 60% of the total population today. New infrastructure and settlements have gradually reshape the landscape, altering property rights, erasing administrative boundaries, and consuming rural land and villages.
Before our eyes unfolds the rapid and disruptive process of Chinese urbanization. Understanding it is not simple. The categories and models at our disposal are insufficient. Reducing Chinese urbanization to exaggeration or fault obscures an epochal transformation that redefines roles and relationships—not only in economic and geopolitical terms, but also culturally, imaginatively, and in terms of human possibilities. This transformation is made even more acute by uncertain times marked by the pandemic.
China Goes Urban invites us to shift our perspective, to observe reality rather than impose pre-existing categories or models. It is an invitation to re-explore the world—a journey through the city, its architecture, and the very concept of urbanity: a concept that seems simple, familiar, and understood, yet shatters under the multiplicity that characterizes contemporary cities. Tongzhou, Zhaoqing, Zhengdong, and Lanzhou are the “new towns” the exhibition encourages us to explore.
The Post-War Dream is a “visual journey” through the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, documenting the ongoing transformation of urban areas driven by China’s profound economic and social changes. The photographic series captures the essence of urbanization processes in industrial and post-industrial societies. Each shot shares visual patterns with other urban landscapes, despite being separated by different contexts, cultures, and geographies. The images also evoke post-war Italian modernization, recalling the intense, desolate landscapes captured by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Francesco Rosi, whose visual patterns are surprisingly similar to those photographed in Ordos, Baotou, and Hohhot.
By transcending the temporal boundaries of recent history, this project captures the geological scale of the era we inhabit—the Anthropocene—where landscapes, processes, and dynamics of the Earth system are profoundly altered by human activity. These visual notes document the “absolute detail” [Barthes, 1980] of sweeping socio-economic transformations, turning the remnants of rural exodus into the hope for a richer future defined by asphalt surfaces and modern housing. Light and shadow shape the architectural forms, defining empty spaces where skyscrapers dominate, becoming totems. Human presence is sparse, yet it sets the rhythm of social adaptation to change.
Yet the power of urbanization represents more than architectural transformation—it marks humanity’s footprint, the human consumption of natural resources. These images do not pass judgment on growth or development models; they are purely visual observations of the Anthropocene, documenting how humans transform and shape the environment in which we live.
Samuele Pellecchia, Francesco Merlini, and Alessandro Zanoni. Urban China
21.1.2021, 9:00 PM
Lab27 is pleased to announce the third installment of INCONTRI DI FOTOGRAFIA, which will take place on January 21 at 9:00 PM, live online on the Lab27 YouTube channel.
We will explore urban expansion in China through two photographic projects and editorial investigations. With Samuele Pellecchia and Francesco Merlini, we will discuss the exhibition China Goes Urban, organized by Prospekt and the Politecnico di Torino in collaboration with Tsinghua University in Beijing, hosted from October 20 at the MAO – Museo d’Arte Orientale in Turin. With Alessandro Zanoni, we will examine the publication The Post-War Dream, a visual journey and investigation into the dusty and euphoric transformations of China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
In 1978, only 18% of China’s population lived in urban areas. Since then, the number of city dwellers has grown by roughly 1% per year, reaching 60% of the total population today. New infrastructure and settlements have gradually reshape the landscape, altering property rights, erasing administrative boundaries, and consuming rural land and villages.
Before our eyes unfolds the rapid and disruptive process of Chinese urbanization. Understanding it is not simple. The categories and models at our disposal are insufficient. Reducing Chinese urbanization to exaggeration or fault obscures an epochal transformation that redefines roles and relationships—not only in economic and geopolitical terms, but also culturally, imaginatively, and in terms of human possibilities. This transformation is made even more acute by uncertain times marked by the pandemic.
China Goes Urban invites us to shift our perspective, to observe reality rather than impose pre-existing categories or models. It is an invitation to re-explore the world—a journey through the city, its architecture, and the very concept of urbanity: a concept that seems simple, familiar, and understood, yet shatters under the multiplicity that characterizes contemporary cities. Tongzhou, Zhaoqing, Zhengdong, and Lanzhou are the “new towns” the exhibition encourages us to explore.
The Post-War Dream is a “visual journey” through the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, documenting the ongoing transformation of urban areas driven by China’s profound economic and social changes. The photographic series captures the essence of urbanization processes in industrial and post-industrial societies. Each shot shares visual patterns with other urban landscapes, despite being separated by different contexts, cultures, and geographies. The images also evoke post-war Italian modernization, recalling the intense, desolate landscapes captured by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Francesco Rosi, whose visual patterns are surprisingly similar to those photographed in Ordos, Baotou, and Hohhot.
By transcending the temporal boundaries of recent history, this project captures the geological scale of the era we inhabit—the Anthropocene—where landscapes, processes, and dynamics of the Earth system are profoundly altered by human activity. These visual notes document the “absolute detail” [Barthes, 1980] of sweeping socio-economic transformations, turning the remnants of rural exodus into the hope for a richer future defined by asphalt surfaces and modern housing. Light and shadow shape the architectural forms, defining empty spaces where skyscrapers dominate, becoming totems. Human presence is sparse, yet it sets the rhythm of social adaptation to change.
Yet the power of urbanization represents more than architectural transformation—it marks humanity’s footprint, the human consumption of natural resources. These images do not pass judgment on growth or development models; they are purely visual observations of the Anthropocene, documenting how humans transform and shape the environment in which we live.
