The “Bonfire” spatial installation, created by MAT Super Architecture for the 2019 Shenzhen-Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism& Architecture (Shenzhen) Dapeng Xiyong sub-venue, is part of the “Post-Collective Era” exhibition section. The design took 30 days and the on-site construction took 7 days. The Biennale lasted 90 days. The work, titled “Bonfire”, is located in an abandoned barbecue area at the Xiyong Workers’ Vacation Village in Dapeng New District, Shenzhen. The site is surrounded by trees on all sides and faces the sea and Xiyong beach to the south. This concentrated barbecue area consists of dozens of circular or square barbecue units. Its homogenous, repetitive, and anonymous overall appearance can serve as a perfect metaphor for the uniform “collective” way of life that once existed in the era of planned economy. Moreover, the collective consumption behavior of concentrated barbecues, a form of large-scale replication, is an unconscious continuation of collective behavior and an inexplicable echo of a once idealized world in the midst of a cultural crisis formed in a rapid and restless consumer society. Today, in social networks, the relationship between the individual and the collective is reshaping people’s understanding of public space. The anonymous “individual” is constantly facing the possibility of alienation, and the “collective” is being redefined through repeated transformations. In the conception of the work, we attempted to break away from the barracks-style layout of the barbecue area and shift to a temporary connection and reorganization of free “individuals”. Through the use of site-specific construction, we aimed to shape an immediate “collective” space within this barbecue area. The work “Bonfire” announces the birth of this new “collective”: in the forest by the sea, we built a series of continuous spatial installations based on the existing barbecue stove layout of the site. The image of the bonfire above the barbecue stove, as one of the earliest symbols of the “collective” concept in human society, serves both as proof of the past collective “presence” and as a spatial projection of the immediate “collectivity” arising in the present. In “Bonfire”, the continuous spatial structure, created by the interlocking yellow scaffolding, and the colored paint on the site together form a playful public activity space, transforming the abandoned and dull barbecue area into a vibrant playground. The continuous trembling of the elastic material under the action of the sea breeze seems to announce the passage of time and the presence of the collective. When night falls, the clusters of yellow flames in the forest under the twilight seem to be telling the story of the continuous cycle of human activities.
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