Absurdity, Allegory and China

In case you missed it – I did – on May 31, 2008 Nike projected a slideshow on four sides of the two-legs of the CCTV Headquarters Building. Twenty-six years ago when Ridley Scott gave us Bladerunner, China wasn’t geared up enough to show it (something tells me that, given the opportunity, SARFT would do their successful best to keep it from even being shown today). For a video of the Nike show have a look here .

You have to wonder how many accidents will eventually be explained, “I was on my cellphone, watching the CCTV Building when out of nowhere he just hit me!” Then again, in the late afternoon dark of winter all of those who are parked with their motors running on the East Third Ring Road will have something to watch as they wait for something to happen.

And there’s this from Eikonographia (April, 2007) concerning the other building, the Television Cultural Center, as a large-scale model of the process of image-making.

How amazing would it be if the image, the eikon or icon, of the building would actually refer to the process of image making! Every hotel room would be another frame, a potential scene in the continuous film of the city. It would be exhibitionism, powered by OMA.

All sorts of new things to dream about when stuck in traffic.