Lost and Found

2015, Shenzhen, China

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In our recent shopping sprees, we felt compelled to ask some of our purchased objects a noteworthy question: why are you here? On the occasion of the 2015 Shenzhen Biennial, we will bring home urbanism full of lost souls, paraded neatly with cordial gaps between them like a team of misfit school friends. We particularly looked for objects that are either made in the Pearl River Delta, or passed through it at one point in time. Through a rigorous set of rules we carefully drafted, we established a shopping guide to help us acquire objects with particular architectural and urban qualities. In particular, we were keen on identifying objects with the potentials of communicating cute, friendly, yet dark and mysterious atmospheres.

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By juxtaposing several personalities next to one another, we are able to choreograph a network of possible relationships. The non-linear shapes against an orthogonal grid produce gaps that contract and expand, evoking many possible activities at the urban scale. Perhaps the mixture of many types of gaps between the many personalities is exactly the type of collage that makes city and culture dynamic. Relooking at No Stop City (1969, Archizoom), we were very much taken by the idea of camping in an office space. Not because sleeping in the office is fun, but because the misuse of the prescribed architectural program is an interesting soft-violation of social etiquette. The high-contrast world of the brightly colored objects against a blank backdrop is the white tectonic of collage without the glue.

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For: Shenzhen Biennial, curated by Aaron Betsky
Team: Jimenez Lai, Steven Martinez

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The Lost and Found Objects will find their home inside a 15' x 15' x 4' Lightbox. The interior of the lightbox is governed by a 7'x7' grid of white acrylic, as well as 18 columns. The two interior walls are clad with mirrors. While the two exterior walls will be clad with transparent plexiglass, revealing a truss structural system. The box will be pure white in order to juxtapose the variance of color in the found objects.