A nonprofit research and media organization working at the intersection of urbanism, spatial practice, and public life. Through documentary film, publications, and cultural programming, it produces scientifically grounded, artistically ambitious work that is independent, rigorous, and made for public audiences.
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 abdandoned lots, and in places overlooked people constructed worlds of survival – the policy and police reaction to which constructed the frameworks of civic space that define the city today.
The project instrumentalizes phenomenological analysis of visual archives and contemporary comparative documentation, to produce a methodology for working with historic and contemporary imagery, film, and media in understanding the conflict between home making and urban policing.
Cities are complex, shifting, unplacable, 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 becoem the dominate mode of living.
Through a series of interviews, fieldwork, and spatial analysis, we intersect the conflicting inputs of cities and create an archive of understanding the urban condition. .
