HAMLET

Text by Shanzhai LyricImages by Solveig Qu Suess and Shanzhai Lyric with Yi Xin Tong

Shanzhai, the Chinese term for counterfeit, literally means “mountain hamlet”. It references an enclave on the outskirts of empire where bandits would abscond with stolen goods to redistribute them among those living on the edges of society.

Parallels emerge between several hamlets throughout history that operate on the periphery of global economy: the Jura region of the Swiss Alps, where rebel watchmakers produced luxury goods beyond the reaches of centralised authority and Mount Lu, the proverbial birthplace of Chinese landscape painting in which emptiness invites a mode of collective inscription that challenges the terms of individual authorship. In this lineage, New York City’s beloved Canal Street – built on the informal trade of oysters and today a hub for counterfeit goods – casts a critical light on the contradictions of property, which concentrate resources in the hands of the few by framing those who share the goods more widely as thieves.

Considering the double entendre of the word “hamlet” as both an outlaw stronghold and Shakespeare’s iconic sad-boy prince of privilege, imagery of water, ghosts, and kings form an adaptation in pieces of Shakespeare’s “original” Hamlet – itself a pirated text whose status in the canon destabilises binary assumptions around East and West. ◉