51 personae: Journey to Wenzhou

Author: Gong Yi
English translator: Yuchen Fu
Graphic Design: Feng Feiteng
Page: 84
Size:163 × 230 mm
Chinese & English
September, 2024

Journey to Wenzhou explores anarchy and the concept of "de-production" through a dystopian future or alternate present, where chance, imagined consensus, supernatural forces, and disjointed fragments of life intertwine. After a year of unemployment, sustained by the dwindling costs of living and the co-dependence of friends, I have been increasingly with ease in the recognition of the ideas shaped by the state’s discursive framework, from which I have distanced myself. For example, the moral value of “being employed” (versus joblessness), the form of labor control and social obedience training driven by the idea of “outperforming others”, as well as with the moral underpinnings that encourage competition. As an Urban Planning major, I was disillusioned to discover the latent violence in state-driven government planning enforced by coercive power. Only by stepping away from these institutions was I able to observe the subtle strategies of escape employed by ordinary people against systemic violence.