Date: 12/05/2015 – 02/28/2016

Curator: Linda Vlassenrood, International New Town Institute

Following the successful event of the exhibition Da Lang Fever, organized at the 2013 Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, INTI now presents Da Lang Fever 2.0. It proposes urban strategies to empower migrant workers in Da Lang Neighborhood (Shenzhen).

Curator Linda Vlassenrood has invited Ekim Tan (gaming method Play the City), the architecture office space&matter and photographer Lard Buurman to develop an action plan for real urban interventions in one of Da Lang’s fast changing industrial areas, the so called Fashion Valley. It is one of the nine industrial parks in Shenzhen and an attempt to attract the creative industries. It hasn’t been entirely successful yet. As top-down urban planning is losing favor worldwide, also in Shenzhen, these three participants offer more collaborative alternatives, meant to emancipate migrant society.

First and foremost, Da Lang Fever 2.0 will function as a gaming room where Play Da Lang will bring together migrants from Da Lang to collaboratively rethink a partly vacant site inside the Fashion Valley. An iconic feature of the site is a three-year-old, but still vacant hotel. The Amsterdam-based office for architecture and urbanism space&matter presents possible scenarios for programming the building to empower the self-organizing migrant society. Finally, the exhibition will be complemented by photographs of photographer Lard Buurman, depicting Da Lang workers in their neighborhood.

Da Lang Fever 2.0 is part of the exhibition Pearl River Delta 2.0, curated by Doreen Liu and Hubert Klumpner and has been developed in close collaboration with the Da Lang Government. The exhibition is generously supported by Creative Industries Fund NL, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Guangzhou, Mondriaan Fund, Design Trust, and 2015 Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture.