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Laurent GUTIERREZ
Associate Professor, School of Design
Hong Kong Polytechnic University, MAP OFFICE
Title: Bloody Haze: Urban Spectacle in Post (socialist) China and Other Illuminations (By Gutierrez + Portefaix)

Abstract:
I felt the city was drawing away from me, like a ghost [so much so that] for the first few days I was lost… I was continually and vainly looking for something to catch my attention for a moment – a detail, a square, perhaps, or a public building.[1]
This essay draws on phenomena of visibility, hyper-visibility and invisibility: three characteristics that we use to approach China’s current development. Celebrating constant illumination, the Chinese city is vanishing under the production of its own spectacle by the creation of an atmospheric condition. Foreseeing the future from past experience, we have used a set of strategies to perforate the haze surrounding the glossy picture. Therefore, our investigation proposes the production and use of optical instruments to reveal new perspectives and reify the characteristics of China’s urban spectacle.
These optical instruments support three paradigmatic strategies. They are derived from our fictional interpretation of critical tropes such as Marcel Duchamp’s dust [2], Walter Benjamin’s telescope [3] and finally Fernand Braudel’s wheel of capitalism [4].
Dust Breeding, a reference to a fictional dialogue between Le Corbusier and Marcel Duchamp, has allowed us to construct an informal planning tool, interpreted as Lean Planning[5]. The forms of life and the informal economy created Underneath[6] an elevated highway are illuminated to reveal the experience of Chinese migrant worker communities. In this case, the fleeting city escapes what is visible through Google Earth. Subsequently, we interpret Walter Benjamin’s telescope to constitute a hyper-visibility condition from which we propose a new set of fictional situations. Unreal Estates of China [7] became the domain of a small particle name PIXEL traveling in a hyper real China. To conclude the trilogy, the reference to Braudel’s analysis of capitalist civilization - the wheels of commerce - reveals a new approach to economy, away from the market and its goddess Fortuna. Another fictional dialogue between Fernand Braudel and Felix Guattari’s concept of Ecosophy serves as an ideological transposition towards the construction of a Socialist Domestic Economy and its possible level of invisibility. Guattari’s book The Three Ecologies [8] of the mind, society and environment could serve the goal proposed by current Chinese leaders and could eventually lead to the achievement of a harmonious society.
With the specific intention of enabling the illumination of China’s present and future urban context, the logic of this essay is to see through the Bloody Haze[9]. From an optimistic perspective, China’s urban spectacle can be seen as a mock-up for new forms of life and their creations, which may emerge as the model for a future civilization.

[1] Jean Paul Sartre, quoted in Annie Cohen-Solal, Sartre: A Life, New York, Pantheon, 1987, p.226 [2] Marcel Duchamp, Dust Breeding, 1933 [3] Walter Benjamin, letter to Werner Karft dated from October the 28th 1935, in The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910-1940, University of Chicago Press, 1994 [4] Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century 1: The Structures of Everyday Life, 2: The Wheels of Commerce, 3: The Perspective of the World, Harper and Row, New York, 1985 [5] Gutierrez + Portefaix, “PRD: Lean Planning, Thin Pattern” in Mobility, Luisa Calabrese, Francine Houben (eds.), Rotterdam: NAi, 2003. [6] Underneath is an art project by Gutierrez + Portefaix presented at the occasion of the exhibition the Future of Cities, 2005 [7] Gutierrez + Portefaix, Unreal Estates of China, Map Book, Hong Kong, 2007 [8] Félix Guattari, The three ecologies, The Athlone Press, London, 2000 [9] Walter Benjamin, op. cit.