SCROLL:
FLOATING, DISSOLVING, RIPPLING
Permanent Collection at the Architectural Association
London, United Kingdom
Since 2019
London, United Kingdom
Since 2019
The installation pairs the scroll drawing with a short film, both depicting a looped double journey. On one hand, it is a personal journey that we undertook countless times during multi-year fieldwork: from central Wuhan, through its industrial outskirts, suburban districts, and the rural town beyond, to Shigushan village—and then back again to the city centre. On the other hand, it echoes the cyclical journey taken by many villagers from Shigushan to make a living—they are rural migrant workers, known as the floating population.
Their constant floating between the city and the countryside has resulted in a missing middle generation in more than 80% of China’s rural families today. These rural households are dissolved, fundamentally challenging the nuclear family model. What has emerged is a rippled way of life that settles in liminality—demanding constant attentiveness to others, as well as anticipating negotiation, mediation and association. This liminal mode of living has shaped intergenerational and cross-household dependency, which is vital to forming resilient assemblages of social and economic security for the marginalised.
Ripple Ripple Rippling
Structured Ambiguity: Scroll as Method, in AA Files 79 (special feature), 2023
Rippling: Towards Untamed Domesticity, The Journal of Architecture, 2022
Collectivisation, Paradox, and Resistance: The Architecture of People’s Commune in China, The Journal of Architecture, 2022
Installation Photo: Chen Zhan, Anne Tetzlaff
Lightbox Fabrication: Install Archive
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The installation was made possible thanks to the AA Archive and the AA Public Programme. Fieldwork supported by the Architectural Association (AA) Wuhan Visiting School and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.