History of a Future
by Renée Reynolds
Renée Reynolds is an artist and writer, currently based in Shanghai China, who is a longtime collaborator of Catalysis Projects member Veronika Krausas. This is an excerpt from her forthcoming work on her impressions of China.
Old people walking backward, posing brides in funeral white, swans eating Styrofoam cups, trees growing root-ward, million-dollar watches that don’t keep time, Poverty Chic, mobile phone stock traders on a high-school-bound metro, the art of the copy; the copy of the art, skin whitening lotions next to tanning creams, North South East West, West East South North, poisonous vitamins, a gold-plated beggar’s cup, toxic medicine, hazardous housing, flawless empty eggshells for 10 quai, eco-friendly car alarms, warm baijiou with green tea, death by foot traffic, cloud seeding, overeducated baristas serving undereducated engineers, Awarded Nobel Peace Prizes deemed blasphemous, the terms over-educated and disposable income, Earthworm-scented perfume, flower-pot Rodins, Corporate Social Responsibility of Defense Weaponry Designers, melamine for babies, Nuclear Bomb Health Insurance, Free Money, acrobatic blow-jobs cheaper than a steak dinner, bowling Olympians, a stolen copy of The Economist, carbon credit auctions, heart-shaped birth control pills, Over-capacity, 100% Cotton-free Polyester, A Pure Blend, stylish bikini with matching wimple, A Global Tradition, ‘My other personality is a winner’ reads the T-shirt of a toothless cherry vendor, platinum-plated dildos, accidental assassination, night-shadows sharper than the day ones, Sunday Marriage Market in People’s Park, Muslim-themed Barbie, ‘Gan bei! Want to see our pet Orca now?’
Armageddon-themed multi-million dollar blockbusters, Christmas in Baghdad, Luxury Logo Tattoos, Ugly is the new beautiful; Persuasion the new Truth; Green the new Black, Coercion the new Kindness; Disruptive the new Eye-catching, Chaos Theory, Cost of Living, Waking Dreams, Anti-matter, Subject Verb Object, Object Verb Subject, Reverse Psychology, Structural Analogs, Palindromic Sequences, Human DNA.
Shanghai 2010