Special Edition: Shanzhai Lyric Runway Reading

Collaborators of Shanzhai Lyric read and wear poetry inspired by counterfeit T-shirts made in China, shaking up what we think about language and power. Endless Garment is a new poetry book composed by roving poetic research unit Shanzhai Lyric from text found on T-shirts, arranging these poems around recurrent themes such as landscape, gender, freedom and property. For this event, collaborators and co-conspirators model T-shirts from the Shanzhai Lyric archive of over 400 poetry-garments as local poets read corresponding excerpts from the book – part runway show, part poetry reading. Shanzhai Lyric (est. 2015) takes inspiration from the experimental English of ‘shanzhai’ (counterfeit) T-shirts made in China to examine how the language of counterfeit uses mimicry, hybridity and permutation to both revel in and reveal the artifice of global hierarchies. Through publication, installation and an ever-growing archive of poetry-garments, Shanzhai Lyric explores the potential of mistranslation and nonsense as utopian world-making (breaking).