FREEDON (and On and On)

The Shanzhai Lyric mini publications are published by Display Distribute and each represent the culmination of a particular body of research by Ming Lin and Alexandra Tatarsky, the duo behind Shanzhai Lyric. 

This issue, titled FREEDON, includes brief ruminations on mimicry and theft, who has a right to steal, and how notions of property affect our conceptions of freedom. Alongside an array of experimental text-based art practices, these shanzhai lyrics provide an ongoing frame for re-thinking notions of ownership and authorship. Printed on the occasion of preliminary research carried out in residence at clearview, in consultation with the Women’s Art Library at Goldsmiths, London.

Shanzhai Lyric is a body of research focusing on radical logistics and linguistics through the prism of technological aberration and nonofficial cultures. The project takes inspiration from the experimental English of shanzhai t-shirts made in China and proliferating across the globe to examine how the language of counterfeit uses mimicry, hybridity, and permutation to both revel in and reveal the artifice of global hierarchies. Through an ever-growing archive of poetry-garments, Shanzhai Lyric explores the potential of mis-translation and nonsense as utopian world-making (breaking) and has previously taken the form of poetry-lecture, essay, and installation.

2018, Chinese/English
Author: Ming Lin and Alexandra Tatarsky
Published by: Display Distribute (Hong Kong)
Softcover, 210 x 297 mm, b+w on color paper