Yang Che-yi (楊哲一), a Taiwanese photographer serving an arts residency at Berlin, held an exhibition titled "Empty City Strategy (空城計)” at the Bethanien Contemporary Visual Art Venue (Künstlerhaus Bethanien) from Nov. 18 through Dec. 11.
From the angle of environmental sociology and education, the exhibition interpreted the idea of an empty city through photographs, videos, concrete models, flyers, performance arts, and phonetic transcription of Taiwanese-language poems transmitted through an installation device.
Set against the backdrop of unfinished buildings in Ordos City of Inner Mongolia, the photographs feature Kangbashi District and Ejin Horo Banner, two of the poorest areas in Inner Mongolia, to reflect the consequences of human exploitation and the global phenomenon of ghost cities.
Kangbashi District used to be one of China's most rapidly developing cities that boasted a higher GDP than the capital Beijing because of its coal mines. However, the dream city that planned to accommodate a population over 1.5 million is now a ghost metropolis with a population less than 30,000 people due to the global financial crisis and the Chinese housing bubble.
Inspired by the large number of child immigrants who have arrived in Germany, Yang also collected related news reports to make newspaper collages for covering the concrete models of unfinished buildings made for the exhibition. He chose to make the collages based on German flag colors, in which black represented wrath, red for the spirit of freedom, and yellow for perfection.
During the exhibition, four children from a nearby refugee center in Berlin were invited to the venue and create their ideal home on site by painting directly on the exhibition displays. The photographs overlaid with the children's paintings were then showcased as part of the exhibition.
"Empty City Strategy” provoked people to reflect on the contradiction between millions of empty houses and the millions of homeless people around the world, and how these children's dreams of an ideal home stand in stark contrast to the empty reality of ghost cities.
Situated by the Yellow River in the region of Inner Mongolia, ghost metropolis Ordos was once touted as one of China's most prestigious infrastructure projects and a model of economic success.
Children from a nearby refugee center painted over photographs of empty skyscrapers to symbolize their desire for a home of their own.