www.xiejiankun.com

We all walk, act and live on the same skin of the earth. We repeatedly and inadvertently accept scenes that look familiar to us. From the surface or turning inside out, city as the human body “is not like other objects being inside the space. It is not in the space either surrounding the space outside as well. Body and space is like the hand reaching to the tool.” (“Phenomenology of Perception”, Maurice Merleau - Ponty) In this world, body - subject open to the world of each other. There’s no antinomy between subject and object, inside and outside, soul and body.

On the other hand, city, for me is a temporary space. Wherever, it belongs to no one and each generation adds anther layer. Cities are mutable and changeable sites constantly in flux and transition. The desire to freeze them, if even for a moment is hard to resist. Sometimes I stand away, sometime I walk around and sometimes I feel it by being inside. I’m documenting the impersonal life and the shape of the city, as well as the generic roles at play within it.

back to top