In Shenzhen, China, the term “urban village” refers to a vernacular urban typology that has emerged out of village settlements that no longer, or only partially, exist, and continue to expand today. In these dense, urbanized spaces, the preservation of village terminology allows us to explore a vernacular geography of “modernized”, “urbanized”, and “everyday” spaces within a larger discourse about China’s urban growth and Shenzhen’s history, its development trajectories, and governmental interventions in its built environment.

This talk focuses on speaker Mary Ann O’Donnell experiences co-curating an experimental art and ethnographic space called the “Handshake 302 Village Hack Residency” that engages the living history of the urban village of Baishizhou and Shenzhen’s history more generally. Handshake 302 exploits the semiotic discrepancies between art space programs and low cost housing to provide an accessible sociology of an urban village. The talk explores how the definition, rezoning, and rebuilding of these neighborhoods simultaneously evaluates the history of urban modernity (and the ordinary people who made it) and posits the city’s future (and the people who are welcome there).

This event is sponsored by the India China Institute at The New School.

Event is free! Register here: http://www.indiachinainstitute.org/ai1ec_event/99747/?instance_id=83223