Under Construction

"Every generation has to build its own city," Italian futurists cheered in the 1910s. In Europe, their ideas perished during World War I, but in Shanghai they are still implemented every day. Old neighbourhoods get wedged in between taller skyscrapers, and as soon as these neighbourhoods have disappeared from sight, they get demolished. Every year, some 100,000 people are forced to move to make room for the wrecking balls and tower crannes of the property developers. combines digitally remastered photographs with documentary video footage. In a flowing movement, we float right through windows and across walls and we watch the miserable lives of the last inhabitants of a dismantled old district of Shanghai. The skyscrapers at the end are silent witnesses to something that has vanished forever.