Eileen Feng + Chaeheun Park
December 13, 2024 - January 23, 2025
Opening reception 7-9pm
…theme is cyberflânerie, modern living ("a city, a world in miniature"), cityness, cult of oneself, commodity fetishism... To quote Benjamin himself, “Empathy with the commodity is fundamentally empathy with the exchange value itself. The flâneur is the virtuoso of this empathy.”
Excerpt from email correspondence between hardboiled and the artists
The title is taken from writer Eileen Chang’s novella ‘Love in a Fallen City,’ a love story that triumphed during the wartime Hong Kong and Shanghai in the 1940s. What happened between the British and the Japanese forces on the battlefield during the Sino-Japanese War was concealed by the pretense of melodramatic romance. The city becomes the space and object of Chang’s writings. She captures the flavors of urban life the same way as Benjamin tries to understand the captivating appeal of cultural commodities.