urijoe visual memories from my travels into daily life

without skyscrapers

CHINA | Monday, 8 July 2013 | Views [669] | View Larger Image

HEIGHT / We push cities up on a stairway to heaven, by giving for granted that heavens lies upon us. Mankind collects energy and strength in the horizontal flows, and pour it vigorously towards more and more high summit. We together strive for a newer peak, we rise on possibly infinitely long bamboo scaffolding, we work for an extended boundary: in the heights we look for more space, however by giving away the continuum of the horizontal space, by fragmenting our plane of equilibrium.

HORIZON / This story is about the geometry of cities, the dimensions of their spatial and immaterial structure, the shape of their souls. It is the story I tell myself whilst being exploring Shanghai and its maze, whilst continuously playing with the focalization adjustment between the physical space and the spiritual place that are melted together in the urbanization continuum.

We continuously perceive physical details of the space, by the glimpses of being travelers, citizens, flaneurs, nomads; we look up to the peaks of building, but our bodies move across, horizontally. We perceive cities by their altitude, but what we really see is at the level of the view, is the glimpse of the neighborhood that stills in front of us, is the shadow that stay longer when people come along with their carts. Looking up we perceive boundaries, looking horizontally we perceive inner motions: city lives horizontally, creatures and artifacts flows alongside and diverge at crossroads, when the horizon breaks the shadows.

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PROFUNDITY / Nevertheless, cities are rooted down. The highest the peak, the strongest has to be the ground. The long shadows of urbanization often hide its own backstage, that in China is undoubtedly rural, but with the same possibly infinitely long bamboo tools that allow mankind to get closer to the sky, someone keeps on digging deeper.
Horizontal flows are vigorously nurtured by the hearth, thanks to the humans that balance the city geometry in between peaks and abyss.

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urijoe visual memories from my travels into daily life

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