One would like architecture to be a stable ground, a fixed set. It would be reassuring to feel that the bakery of our childhood is still here, that the building we used to pass by everyday will be standing here forever. But behind the certainty of a brick wall or a concrete slab stands the uncertainty of its use, its life, its inhabitation, its domestication. Impossible to predict, this softness invites us to think architecture as a frame, an open structure, a malleable playground.
Paper is a newspaper focusing on common places in Beijing. Paper investigates the multiple forms of inhabitation at the smallest scale, as accidents within a given structure. Paper focuses on the non-monuments constitutive of the city of Beijing. It unfolds 43 photographs taken in Dong-Cheng District, and a bilingual text in English and Chinese.
Paper is printed in 500 copies, and each copy is numbered. Paper has been printed in China on newspaper paper and format. The newspaper format becomes a daily tool for discussing issues of common places.
Paper was firstly launched on the 27th of October during a solo show exhibition ‘Common Places’ at the Institute for Provocation.