[Video Essay] Locked City

Link: https://youtu.be/STxc8lsaU58

Title: Locked City —– How’re people’s lives during a community lockdown?

Site: Gawa Impression Residential Area, Beijing

To fight against the pandemic, China has been implementing strict covid-zero policies. Recently, there was one positive case in our residential area, and as a result, our community was forced to be locked for two weeks or more, depending on the situation. During this lockdown, the community became a vital or the only place for residents to conduct different activities, which reflected a new lifestyle under the lockdown policy.

“What is community? Why community?” —– Initial Analysis

Based on different meanings of the word “community”, through this video essay, I’m focusing on “community” as space inside the residential area but excluding the living houses.

In 2001, John Fawell focused on Rear Window and argued that it serves as a “commentary on the alienation of urban life”. Particularly he pointed out that in the courtyard in the movie, people were doing their own business without social interaction, which depicted the alienation of modern urban life. His idea inspired me to rethink the function of residential areas in our daily life. The community serves as a transition between home (inner space) and destination (nature; e.g., workplace, school), which acts as a “transition space” or “grey space”, according to Kisho Kurokawa. And to Walter Benjamin’s (2008) theory, when learning without paying attention, building concepts are vague and loss-in-detail. Thus, I decided to record different elements in the community that are usually ignored in our daily lives, and reflect on the changed lifestyle under the community lockdown situation.

“Deep into elements of everyday life” —– Findings and methods

Lockdown life follows a fixed schedule. At 7AM, 12AM and 5PM, staffs start to sanitize all the activity areas, including inner buildings and lanes. All the residents are forced to take COVID19 tests in the morning (from 9:30AM to 11:30AM) or afternoon (from 2:30PM to 4:30PM) on a regular basis. Deliveries are gathered throughout the morning and distributed in the afternoon.

This is what a lockdown life looks like from an outsider’s view. However, deep into observation and communication with residents, I surprisingly found out that under these rules and regulations, elements in the same space were reborn in a new way – Plants in the courtyard were being taken more care of. Even the weeds besides had been trimmed. In an open area, middle-aged residents initiatively gathered together and exercised with the square-dancing music, which constantly attracted passersby to join in. The lanes, which had cars moving from time to time, now became new entertainment spaces like walking, running, riding bikes, and skateboarding. Besides, to connect two separate spaces (locked buildings and the delivery on shelves), people spontaneously formed a volunteer group to help with printing, delivery, etc.

This video is intended to make the audience an outsider at first, and then change to an insider and get to know the actual situation under the lockdown step by step. Thus, it starts from the very general scenes with a public bias to the lockdown, e.g., sanitizing and COVID19 test. I shot them by long take and in black and white filters and added tense background music. All these aim to create a simple/boring atmosphere. After that, I tried to separate sounds and colors in the same space from everyday life. Through the combination of these quick-passed elements, the colors of the scenes started to show out with light music. With all the foreshadowing, in the end, the gaze focused back on human activities, which brings a series of new experiences to the lockdown.

“What can we learn from this research?” —– Reflection

In 2011, Efrat Eizenberg compared two models of urban community gardens in New York City. To some degree, I understood the locked community based on these two categories, where one is managed on a built space, and another preserves the undeveloped urban space. For example, rope skipping, square dancing, and a series of new activities in the area of exercise equipment can be understood as the former model, which doesn’t change the original function of the space. On the contrary, lanes during lockdown have similar concepts to the latter model, with emerging new functions that are not the original space attributes. Despite the differences, these two models both helped to achieve an autonomous community space.

To conclude, the community as a “transition place” in modern urban life has been paid less attention and without interaction among people. However, due to community lockdown, residents’ lives were limited within the community and home, which revitalized the community as a space to conduct everyday life. New elements arose. Alienation weakened. Community as space expanded in terms of functions, relationships, and management.

-Shiqing, Li 3035772456

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