Shuyuan Chen 陈书缘

Zombie Car Movement 僵尸车运动

I build a new narrative based on the current problem of zombie cars in China, imagining a future in which the zombie car problem is left untreated for a long time in a state of barbarism.

I interviewed the lawyer and learned that there are currently no clear legal provisions for dealing with zombie cars, so the inability of the police to legally dispose of them and the lack of authority of communities to do so has led to their proliferation. 

In my fictional worldview, I set up the government, Remove Party and Occupy Party. Remove Party is inspired by an interview with a retired veteran from a community, like the interviewee, believed that zombie cars are taking up public space and resources and want to let the government move them out. Occupy Party is inspired by an interview with a zombie car owner who had traces of a homeless man living in his car. The members of Occupy Party are mainly from nonviolent anarchists, people who are against the social system, people who want to reuse the trash and people who are interested in the challenge. They are dissatisfied that zombie cars are left untreated and untouchable, and believe that since the zombie car problem cannot be solved, do they use these cars unspoken and without being noticed.

With the government's inaction and secretly balancing the contrary between two parties, in the end the zombie car problem will not be solved.

Zombie Car City 僵尸车之城

"Watch out, zombie cars have occupied the streets to become the new urban trash."

In most cities in China, especially those that are modernizing at a rapid pace, these cars are abandoned by their owners in all corners of the city, especially on the streets, in communities and in car parks. Originally belonging to someone, they are now forcibly occupying public space, scandalizing the urban landscape, sowing safety hazards and becoming a social problem in the gray area between private and public space.

A residue of the city's past or its ultimate hope? 城市的糟粕还是城市的希望？

Occupation is the oldest way of acquiring ownership of objects, the original desire of life. In the future of China's rapidly developing city, in the face of a cramped city, a city of consumption, in a grey area where the boundaries between public and private space are blurred and difficult to control is the last space to breathe, the occupiers look for urban freedom in zombie cars.

These cars, whose history may date back to China in the epidemic of the last century, have been piled up in public spaces due to factors such as lack of jurisdiction and the disappearance of their owners, gradually occupying all corners of the city and forming a unique urban landscape.