User:ZUZU/Thesis...
⊹₊⟡⋆unnamed thesis ⊹₊⟡⋆
Intro
I explore the concept of 'nearby', not just as a geographical proximity, but as a sociological and emotional construct. Inspired by anthropological discourse, 'nearby' reflects the complex relationships and dynamics between individuals and their immediate environment. The anthropologist Xiangbiao suggests that "the public mind tends to be preoccupied with the very near (the self) and the very far (the nation and the planet)."I try to enter from this concept and look at the daily life of the coordinating self and explore the forms that can be acted upon.
The nearby as a scope of seeing is fluid and generative. It is fluid because its internal relations are constantly changing; it is generative because it enables us to see and do new things. The nearby is, thus, very different from ‘community’ that is based on stable membership and homogeneity.--The Nearby: A Scope of Seeing by Biao Xiang |
Chapter One
The disappearance of the nearby and the urgency of reshaping it
The inspiration for this research stems from my observations of daily life, particularly connecting my life in Shanghai with my current experiences in the Netherlands. Through this journey, I reflect on how proximity shapes human connections, community interactions, and individual agency.
Living in Shanghai, a city characterized by its density and ceaseless pace, I often felt paradoxically distant from the people around me. Despite physical closeness, there was an emotional and relational void—a phenomenon I term "the disappearance of nearby."
During the COVID-19 lockdowns in Shanghai, this phenomenon became particularly stark. In a residential building where I lived for over three years, I encountered neighbors daily but never established meaningful connections. Our interactions, or lack thereof, reflected a broader urban trend: individuals existing side by side without forming genuine ties.
One vivid moment from that time stands out. I took a photograph of an elderly neighbour waiting for the lift, attracted by her outfit - a unique mix of quirky patterns that I found endearing. Although we lived in the same building, I didn't know her name or her story. Like many city dwellers, my neighbours and I shared a mutual indifference: during the lockdown, our building became a microcosm of imposed proximity. We were confined to the building for two months, unable to leave except for mandatory COVID-19 tests at unpredictable times - sometimes at 5am, sometimes close to midnight. The lifts, crammed with ten or more residents during these tests, became a surreal space of both enforced closeness and profound isolation.
When I reflect on this period of daily life, I realize I have almost no photos taken in the building where I lived for three years, let alone pictures of the elevator. The only one I took was because I found an elderly person’s pajamas pattern very interesting. My scattered collection of documentary photos often includes elderly people wearing outfits with peculiar designs. I took these pictures but never thought about making any connection with them. Perhaps it’s due to a societal convention in certain environments that approaching strangers will make you seem like a scammer. And I didn’t want to be seen as one. |
As time went on, I began to feel suffocated. The rules were arbitrary and often absurd, but no one questioned them. Eventually, I couldn't help myself. I posted a message to the group outlining several logically flawed policies and asking for clarification from the administrators. What struck me was the response - or lack of it. Out of some 300 participants, not a single person engaged with my message. It was ignored, quickly buried under updates about group food purchases and other day-to-day concerns.
Later, when I challenged the policy a second time, a neighbour finally approached me - not to discuss my points, but to accuse me of being a foreign spy sent to undermine the government. This was the first "conversation" I had had with a neighbour in my three years there, though "conversation" might be too generous a term. It was an exchange, but one rooted in suspicion and absurdity.
I developed a strong urge to run away, and it wasn't the city itself that I fled from, but a deeper sense of collective disillusionment - disappointment in those around me, which included disappointment in myself, and I was also an accomplice in constituting my nearby - how could I blame the apathetic masses if I never attempted to make a connection?
A common criticism on the Chinese internet is that people "don't care about specific individuals," becoming collectively obsessed with grand narratives. These grand narratives often attempt to instill a sense of national identity in the masses.
The policies that governed our lives during the lockdown were emblematic of a broader societal trend: the prioritisation of collective narratives over individual voices.The disappearance of the neighbourhood is not just a by-product of urbanisation, but also a symptom of systemic alienation, exacerbated by technology and governance structures that prioritise control over connection.
The erosion or weakening of close, everyday social interactions and the ability to take concrete, meaningful actions in the immediate, everyday context.For marginalized actors, who often lack representation in grand narratives and broad policy discussions, focusing on their day-to-day realities can highlight their specific needs, struggles, and strengths
A conscious or unconscious concern
In this section, I will describe how, during the process of writing this thesis, I reflected on the changes after coming to the Netherlands by following the threads of daily life. While working on the earlier special issue , I noticed that although the topics varied, I always consciously or unconsciously connected them to people and their nearby.
Special Issue 22
In Special Issue 22, I worked with Wang to develop the project. For the final post-apocalyptic theme, we imagined the audience as survivors of the apocalypse. Through the Rain Receiver, we analyzed the language of nature by capturing the frequency of rain to generate sounds. When survivors touch the Rain Receiver, they become part of an unfolding narrative. This intimate gesture, akin to the act of giving, triggers a cascade of experiences—rain sounds, fragments of stories, and stream-of-consciousness memories collected from the community
The concept of a gift economy became central to our exploration. For example, while a person can buy a wool scarf in a store, receiving a scarf hand-knitted by someone close carries a different emotional weight. Both serve the same physical function of keeping someone warm, but the emotional connection to a gifted item is far deeper. This realization resonated with my preference for the metaphor of a post-apocalypse picnic box. In a gift economy, community networks are built not on material wealth, but on connections that avoid disrupting the natural flow of resources for artificial scarcity.
As Ife, the creator of Third Space, mentioned in a previous interview, she gained a sense of belonging at WORM. This belonging carries a gift-like quality that naturally fosters gratitude, which in turn encourages positive reciprocity.
Special Issue 24
During our first class, when everyone shared memories of where they come from, I found this question to be quite conflicting for me. Physically, identifying where I come from implies that this place had the most significant impact on my upbringing. However, I struggle to claim a specific place name as my place of origin because I lack a sense of belonging.
In the context of "How to Do Nothing: Resisting The Attention Economy" by Jenny Odell，the author discusses how contemporary society's emphasis on efficiency, productivity, and digital media's fast pace continually disperses and manipulates people's attention.Odell proposes the idea of "doing nothing" as a means to counteract this attention economy, which is characterized by the ubiquitous spectacles of attention-seeking in urban environments, as described in "Society of the Spectacle" by Guy-Ernest Debord. These spectacles incessantly attract attention and contribute to feelings of exhaustion and disillusionment with the surrounding environment
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A specific psychological and emotional state developed by individuals living in highly urbanized modern cities. The urban environment bombards people with a plethora of visual, auditory, and activity-based stimuli, leading to sensory saturation. Individuals lack strong emotional responses to events and experiences that would typically elicit a reaction.The concept was introduced by Georg Simmel in The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903).
While walking in Rotterdam and engaging in activities like observation lists and coded walking, I find unconventional behavioral patterns intriguing. I am exploring my connection with this city by deviating from traditional map representations, discovering how unconventional walking can forge connections within typical routes (such as from home to school or home to the market). |
The elevator project
The objective is to develop small-scale projects that shift the focus to the mini-moments of everyday life. This project focuses on the elevator, a space that was identified as a crucial hyperspace medium in my previously life experience. The existence of such a space within the context of daily life is a subject of considerable interest to me. In these confined spaces, individuals frequently share a common destination, whether it be a residence or workplace within the same building. However, despite this physical proximity, their interactions often give way to awkwardness and silence. It is noteworthy that this particular form of social awkwardness only became apparent to me after my arrival in the Netherlands
When I first moved to the Netherlands to study English in a northern student city Leeuwarden, I lived in a typical student dormitory. It was there, for the first time in my life, that I began interacting with strangers in elevators—though passively. I vividly remember one encounter. A young person, deeply focused on her phone, quickly murmured something like, "I’ll be done in a moment," as the doors opened. A few seconds later, she slipped her phone into her pocket and naturally started a conversation with me. While I no longer recall what we discussed, I distinctly remember being impressed by how effortlessly she shifted her attention from her phone to engaging with a stranger. This seemed like a personal gift of hers, the ability to turn an awkward moment into a genuine connection.
Mini Moment: Elevator Theater is an interactive exploration of how we inhabit shared spaces and express ourselves through body language and behavior. This project invites participants to reflect on their own experiences in the elevator, a small but intimate environment that often brings out different aspects of our personalities. |
Inspired by this memory, I chose elevators as the site for exploring connections between space and proximity. For the Public Moment , I created a small role-playing experiment. Each person entering the elevator was assigned a character to interpret and embody freely. This experiment drew from Erving Goffman’s _The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life_, where he argues that people consciously perform varying versions of the self in different everyday spaces. I was curious whether such performances could transform the atmosphere of a closed space like an elevator or influence people’s physical behavior within it.
As an extension of this project, I began developing a personal Self-Protocol plan. I called it the Elevator Sunflower Protocol, imagining myself as a sunflower—bright, open, and welcoming. Over time, however, I noticed something unsettling: I felt less like myself and more like an actor performing a role. In elevators with others, I experienced pressure to “deliver” the protocol as if on stage. When alone, I felt a strange relief, as if retreating behind a closed curtain. This performative nature made me question the authenticity of my experiment. Was I truly fostering connection, or merely acting out an idea?
the Elevator Sunflower Protocol diary As I stepped out to lock my door, another door at the end of the hallway opened. I remember this room once housed a cat-loving tenant who moved out last week. This time, a new tenant emerged—a stern-looking person with a red hiking stick. We entered the elevator together, but the person quickly turned to face the door, avoiding any interaction. I missed the chance to smile and greet ta. When the elevator doors opened, ta rushed out toward the subway station. It was raining outside as I returned from the supermarket, and at the front door a person in front of me was carrying two heavy shopping bags and struggling to find the keys. I offered to open the door and, of course, we got into the lift together. I realised that I had seen this person before - once with immaculate make-up. The person smiled shyly and jokingly said, "My bag is always badly organised. |
I realized I needed to invite others into the process to bridge this gap, transforming it into a collective experiment. Inspired by Edward T. Hall’s The Hidden Dimension, I wanted to explore how the immediate surroundings—both physical and social—shape interactions. I considered designing simple invitation cards to explain the project and include a link to a digital space, an "elevator diary network," where participants could record and share their experiences. These cards could circulate beyond my control, transforming elevators everywhere into nodes of connection.
Elevators, often characterized by rigid unspoken rules, could become experimental sites for small acts of defiance—redefining proximity, reimagining social scripts, and fostering hidden yet interconnected communities. As an experimental space to explore how bodily actions and spatial contexts might disrupt social norms and open pathways for subtle resistance.