The Incomplete Poem

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The Shanzhai Lyric is an inquiry into global logistics and linguistics through the prism of technological aberration and monofficial cultures. By collecting, archiving, and studying the experimental text that often appears on shanzhai clothing coming out of China and proliferating across the globe, the project looks specifically at how the language of counterfeit uses mimicry, hybridity, and permutation to both revel in and reveal the artifice of global hierarchies. This work seeks to contribute to a post colonial discourse surrounding non normative language use as a strategy of resistance. Through an ever growing archive, the Shanzhai Lyric explores the potential of mis-translation and nonsense as utopian world making.