PUBLIC MARKS with tags chine & hutong

Mass demolition of old districts is something of a “normal” thing in China, but to people who imagine that the large-scale destruction of historic city centres is a thing of the relatively distant past, the fate of Tianjin’s old chinese city serves as a sobering case.

Instant Hutong art project investigates the borderline case of Hutong districts in old downtown Beijing. The work explores both spatial and social aspects to screen the uniqueness of a urban tissue made of lanes and courtyard houses and the community of people living in it. It is organized as a series of art pieces and installations on the border between art, social investigation and urban research in the aim to generate and stimulate an open debate. The work is currently involving questions such density, unstructured reappropriation, gentrification, relationship between people and their physical space, property speculation, disappearing community and identity.