Developing Frontiers: Photographies as Border work. The case of Xian Urban Village, Guangzhou

Abstract

In this presentation we use a visit to the urban village of Xian in Guangzhou as way to open up a conversation about a type of contemporary border. We use site writing from the visit and examine images made by others and ourselves. In this we talk not of national or recognized territorial borders as such but instead examine how urban spaces globally are being redrawn according to financial concerns, creating a new series of borders that demarcate the growing and shifting unevenness of wealth and poverty. The borders we are thinking about are something of a moving target, produced in the development process. As sociologist Sakia Sassen comments globally there are ‘sharp shifts’ in land ownership being brought about by what she terms a ‘savage sorting’. These shifting acquisitions amount to a systematic transformation in the pattern of land ownership in cities. In this we are going to consider the work that photography does in relation to depicting such spaces, how these photographic practices might constitute a form of border practice.