Representing Pasts – Visioning Futures
Abstract
If we use “Guiyang Culture and Art Center” as a keyword, then its popularity and clicks on various online short video platforms like TikTok can only be described as “mediocre”. However, if the hashtag – “#” is changed to “Guiyang White House”, we will find in short video platforms that its “likes” will reach tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands, making it an “online celebrity landmark”. As Guiyang Culture and Art Center, this huge building is obviously not operated and managed, and it is not open to the public usually. So, it is temporarily close to an anonymous existence and almost becomes a forbidden place in reality. There are even “urban legends” about its use, property rights and even the cost of its construction. But its image has become an urban symbol of the free-flowing on the Internet: since late 2018, thousands of citizens danced square dances in unison in front of the building every night, and the scene, while live streamed, got millions of likes. And Baidu map even included this building, with “White House” as its name. This paper will specifically investigate the time when ” Guiyang White House” appeared on social platforms and the distribution of keywords, try to understand the imaginative renaming process of Guiyang Culture and Art Center to ” Guiyang White House” by netizen, and analyze how its shaping the offline city and the public life from its citizens through the online urban landscape of live broadcast and network space.
ZHANG Cheng, born in 1990 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. She is a researcher and curator. She is a PhD candidate in History and Theory of Architecture at Southeast University(SEU) China and an assistant researcher at the Institute of Network Society of China Academy of Art. She graduated from the Institute of Contemporary Art and Social Thought(ICAST) of China Academy of Art(CAA) with a master’s degree. ZHANG Cheng, born in 1990 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. She is a researcher and curator. She is a PhD candidate in History and Theory of Architecture at Southeast University(SEU) China and an assistant researcher at the Institute of Network Society of China Academy of Art. She graduated from the Institute of Contemporary Art and Social Thought(ICAST) of China Academy of Art(CAA) with a master’s degree. Her research fields cover network society research, architecture and urban planning theory and practice, and contemporary art curation. She has curated and executed several large-scale exhibitions in Shanghai, Hangzhou and Hong Kong, China, and worked as an editor of related publications. Since 2018, she has focused on networked practice and research in the process of urbanization in China, and several papers have been published in journals such as New Art and New Architecture.
Dr. Chang has taken teaching positions in China since 2019. He is currently an Associate Professor of the Shaoguan University, Guangdong Province, China. His research interests are inter-disciplinary, covering topics from welfare and social policies, urban sociology, cultural studies, political philosophy, human geography and psychoanalysis.