{"product_id":"shanzhai-lyric-endless-garment","title":"Shanzhai Lyric, Endless Garment","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis poem was composed entirely from text found on garments mostly produced in China and distributed globally. The words move across bodies and landscapes, often ending up in landfills. An infinite scroll. An endless garment.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShanzhai is the Chinese word for counterfeit or copy. The term translates literally to “mountain hamlet,” and is said to derive from the Song Dynasty tale \u003cem\u003eWater Margin: Outlaws of the Marsh\u003c\/em\u003e, in which rebel-bandits stockpile goods stolen from the imperial center to redistribute among people living on the margins. Beyond the reach of authorities, at the edges of empire, property and authorship are redefined. Alternate forms of relation emerge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTraditional lyric poetry expresses the feelings of a singular “I” in songlike fragments. Shanzhai lyrics, by contrast, are collectively generated, blurring individual authorship through copy, collaboration, theft, creative mistranslation, and errata. Their designs embody the tensions within globalized supply chains. With irreverent disregard for standard English, shanzhai lyrics offer a fractured language that reflects and refracts the absurdity of consumption.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe stanzas here draw from several sources: our roving physical archive of over 500 shanzhai poetry-garments, images of found T-shirts sent by readers worldwide, and poems transcribed from clothing seen in Beijing, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and in Chinatowns from Sunset Park, Brooklyn and Flushing, Queens to Barcelona, Panama City and Luang Prabang. Many of these sequences are transcriptions of live poetry readings composed and performed from heaps of shirts, often coalescing around subjects such as empire, time, fashion, mountain, and Hamlet—itself a bootleg text composed of stolen and collaged fragments. We are not the writers of \u003cem\u003eEndless Garment\u003c\/em\u003e, but its custodians.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c!----\u003e","brand":"Pioneer Works","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57938636505423,"sku":"PK2181","price":17.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0774\/3068\/6031\/files\/PKB_4583.jpg?v=1781617561","url":"https:\/\/publicknowledgebooks.com\/products\/shanzhai-lyric-endless-garment","provider":"Public Knowledge","version":"1.0","type":"link"}