Experiences of the City城市生活经验

Experiences of the City is an ongoing observation of everyday urban spaces, public infrastructure, and the traces left by ordinary life. The works move between street bollards, illuminated advertising boxes, abandoned factories, online nicknames, and handwritten messages left by workers. Although these subjects appear unrelated, they collectively record how people understand, use, and leave their presence within the city.

I often focus on elements that have clearly defined functions yet remain visually overlooked. Bollards are installed to control vehicles and divide space, while their scratches and impact marks register repeated friction between human movement and urban order. Advertising light boxes continue to alter the appearance of streets and pedestrians even after their commercial images have disappeared. Writing found inside abandoned factories preserves traces of workers who once laboured, rested, and communicated there.

The series also considers the movement between physical and digital identities. In Everyone Has an Online Nickname, a nickname becomes a new name chosen when entering online space. It conceals aspects of a person’s offline identity while revealing how they wish to imagine and present themselves. Urban life therefore extends beyond streets, buildings, and workplaces into spaces structured by screens, accounts, and information.

Through photographing and reorganising these subjects, I approach the city as a surface that is continuously written upon and overwritten. Planning, commerce, and production assign spaces their initial functions, while everyday actions modify them and leave behind scratches, words, gestures, and temporary uses. Urban experience takes shape through these small encounters: how a body moves around an obstacle, how a sentence remains on a wall, how artificial light transforms the night, and how a person chooses another name for themselves.

“城市经验”是我对城市日常空间、公共设施与生活痕迹的持续观察。作品从街道上的石墩、夜间广告灯箱、废弃工厂，到人们使用的网络昵称和工人留在墙面上的字迹展开。这些对象看似彼此分散，却共同记录了人如何理解城市、使用城市，并在其中留下自己的存在。

我关注的往往是城市中功能明确、视觉上却容易被忽略的部分。石墩原本用于限制车辆和划分空间，表面的碰撞与刮擦却记录了人与城市秩序之间持续发生的摩擦；夜间广告灯箱在失去商业内容后，仍以光线改变街道和行人的面貌；废弃工厂里的文字则保存着劳动者曾经工作、休息和相互交流的痕迹。

这些作品也涉及现实身份与数字身份之间的转换。在《每个人都有一个网络昵称》中，昵称成为个人进入互联网空间时重新选择的名字。它既隐藏现实身份，也显露使用者对自我形象的想象。城市生活由此不只发生在街道、建筑和工作场所，也延伸到由屏幕、账号和信息构成的空间。

在拍摄和整理这些对象时，我试图将城市理解为一层不断被书写和覆盖的表面。规划、商业和生产赋予空间最初的功能，人们的行动则持续改变这些功能，并留下划痕、文字、姿态与临时用途。城市经验正是在这些细小的接触中形成：一个身体如何绕开障碍，一句话如何被留在墙上，一束光如何照亮夜晚，以及一个人如何为自己选择新的名字。