When space is considered ‘Tabula rasa’, is never really empty, in fact, many times it is reborn and relived. There is a tendency of planning and designing for organisations that have land-use rights. They decide the future usage of a place, instead of giving the on-ground users the right to build up the purpose for a place. So why then, if a place is developed by the unorganised masses, it is seen as a ‘dirty, mess, and unregulated’ place which needs to be ‘cleaned up’ during the renovation of a city by the local authority?

‘Qiujiang Road’ is disappearing! ‘A dirty, mess and unregulated’ place is disappearing.>

‘Qiujiang road’ was a second-hand market, formed around the 1950s, and demolished by the government in January 2021 as a result of the recent renovation plan of Shanghai. This place was known for gathered many refugees after the Chinese Civil War. It later became a neglected place by the government's management and was called 'the naked district' due to its location between the colony and the original districts. Therefore, it became a sort of ‘Tabula Rasa’. This special environment provided a chance for product trades of all kinds; secondhand products, electricity spare parts, CDs, and smuggled products. The site’s unique energy derives from its bottom-up organic development contributed by those original residents and businessmen.

Qiujiang Road market is being erased again, the price tags are the only evidence of its previous existence.

By focusing on the photos of the products’ price tags in the market, it questions the contemporary way of who is deciding upon the usage of this space (usually need to meet commercial value under top-down management from the government or authoritative organisations) and the evaluative criteria of this space. By hand cutting out the handwritten price the number from the photos, I want to show these edited photos as if they are the last remaining traces of a crime scene. Between regulated and unregulated, this video and a ‘5-minutes exhibition’ on-site for a singular viewer captured the temporal evidence of the act and space.