Lamb’s blood, Bagua mirrors, doors and signs of passover. On Changping road, in north-east Jing’an, Shanghai, a whole street is sanctioned for demotion with ‘拆’ consecrating anti-passover above every entrance.
The character for demolition sprayed on the doors, 拆 (chāi), also describes the ifixit-style teardowns that follow the release of every new iPhone: meticulous dissection, sourcing every component and supplier.
A semantic split then, when 拆 calls simultaneously for community-levelling destruction, and attention to every hidden detail.
Space and experience in the age of electronic reproduction 