Dead Class: Shenzhen

Inspired by Tadeusz Kantor’s The Dead Class and rooted in Hito Steyerl’s theory of Poor Image, Dead Class, Shenzhen is a three-part video performance asking what it means to inherit memory in the digital age. While the “poor objects” of Kantor bear the trauma of being worn out, the low-resolution footage of Shenzhen from the 1980s to today bears the traces of endless transmission. The degradation is not loss but proof of use. In Kantor’s post-war Poland, the past could not be re-experienced; it could only be staged. In the digital present, the past never disappears: it returns continuously through archives and pixels. We live and relive in the ever reinforced reality of the past.