Of Haunted Spaces: An Essay Film on Ghost Cities

The research Of Haunted Spaces investigates the contemporary Chinese urban development shaped through global capitalism. These new cities are an effect of hypermodernity always coming to a head to something excessive. The phenomenon of the so-called ghost cities is an unresearched area in view of the distribution and circulation of global cultural and social capital. One of the main questions will be how global capitalism is effecting and thus haunting the living conditions of our times. Urban spaces are turned into void, exhausted and empty ruins, when once the collective fantasy had the grandiose vision of boosting prosperity but have now become anachronistic non-sites where histories are forgotten. The complexity woven among the investigation can be best realized through art-based research to find the intertextual significance in exploring the enigmas of how we live today. The method of the investigation will be the experimental poetics of an essay film in creating a cinematic narrative that crosses over different genres and is capable of telling the untold story of Chinese ghost cities. The paradoxical spatial logics inscribed into these haunted places call for the development of a genuine filmic language and new forms of narratives. The genuine solution for the narrative of this film cannot be a straightforward documentary, but a performative one which combines acting, reenactments and found footages in between the real and the fictional to show the social spectacle in reflexive mode, with double-references and comments regarding the making-of of the film as well as that of capitalism. Departing from authenticity, identification, and empathy in favor of experiment, staging and artificiality of the subject, the poetics of cinema are devised as the meta-critique in bringing together image and real world in one entity. Essay film is used not only to reflect the true social reality, but also to critique the normative representation. Film in that sense becomes an instrument of organic interpretation, much as what Jacques Derrida called hauntology, the present is haunted by the lost futures of modernity. The uniqueness and novelty in this artistic research done by Ella Raidel is to fabricate a discursive space by bridging between art and knowledgethis will require interrogation, method, thought and referencesbringing about a narrative which combines the documentary with the performative, and acting with acting-out to create the link that is usually missing in the visible worlds.

Of Haunted Spaces - An Essay Film on Chinese Ghost Cities investigates the production of the global capitalism on China's urbanscape through an arts-based research in film. This research is an endeavour to create an essay film to interpret the paradoxical urban phenomena where in China cities are built for millions, yet lived-in by no one. In this research it is not only necessary to scrutinize the social reality and to render the social discourse, but also to reflect on the convention of filmmaking and to challenge its normative representation. Film in this sense can be regarded not only as a model of thought which analyzes and interprets the external reality, but as referring and commenting on itself in reflexivity. The narrative of this film with the title A Pile of Ghosts, is not straightforward documentary, but a performative one which combines acting and reenactments in between the real and the fictional to show the social spectacle in a reflexive mode. By the same token, the making-of of the film is shown as a social comment on the current capitalism in China through double-referencing. To take it bluntly, the poetics of A Pile of Ghosts are devised as the meta-critique in bringing together the imaginary world and the real one. Several research trips to different locations in China were undertaken not only to search for the ghost cities, but also for protagonists, who can represent the working conditions in these places. A casting is staged, shot on the sets of commercials, on construction sites and the real estate showrooms, to illustrate the capitalist reality as a ghostly illusion, that follows a predetermined script. The actors take on the roles for the job interview or casting, and reenact in performative acts the previously witnessed situations. Scenarios are staged, to tell about reality, and then reality often turns out to be a staged spectacle. The main protagonist runs a hotel in Chongqing intended for demolition. He is obsessed with a Hollywood Classic and imagines himself as a star in it conducting imaginary dialogues with a female visitor. There Alice from the wonderland China meets Charles, the hotelier of a ruin, and together they are haunting, ghost-like, through the bizarre landscapes, destroyed cities and absurd architecture - a ghost story in-between the real and the fictional as a time document of the radical urban change in China. This essay film not only explores the reality of the Chinese ghost cities as places haunted by capital but also illustrates the mechanisms of the society of the spectacle as a global world view of the present.