VOGELFREIMedia & Information

In a Dong village in southern China, plans for a memorial to the protective goddess Sà stall when the ancient site collides with the modern placement of family homes, a budding tourism sector, and modernization's impact on ancient customs, forcing a negotiation between sacred tradition and economic survival.

The project moves across three layers: an empirical layer of expert interviews and archival research; a sensorial layer of experiential, docu-fiction narrative following day-to-day dynamics; and a mythological layer of stylized puppet theater bringing Dong mythology to the screen.

Under the streets, in abandoned lots, and in places overlooked, people constructed worlds of survival — and the policy and police reaction to them built the frameworks of civic space that define the city today.

The project uses phenomenological analysis of visual archives alongside contemporary documentation to produce a methodology for working with historic imagery, film, and media in understanding the conflict between home-making and urban policing.

Cities are complex, shifting, unplaceable, and clearly evident things. Oscillating between stage, destination, myth, and character, we try to understand what cities are and who they call us to be as they become the dominant mode of living.

Through a series of interviews, fieldwork, and spatial analysis, we intersect the conflicting inputs of cities and build an archive for understanding the urban condition.