Relocation

By Geneviève Flaven

He did not want to live in the high and modern buildings that were built beyond the outer ring. He would have received money, probably enough to buy a house but he preferred not to. He was told he was making a mistake, that such an opportunity would not happen again. His neighbors took the money. How much? A good deal, for sure. The mystery added a few zeros. When they moved, a man came to live in their deserted home. He was sent by the relocation company. A bad guy, he would pee, throw garbage in the yard and break everything. They paid him for that.

Rats came. A wall fell. The man left, his job done. The real estate promoter changed their mind and left things as they were. Like him.

Birds nest under the roof: pigeons and an invisible bird that sings every morning. He does not know its name. The house is aging. Time works inside and in secret. It brutally tears away a piece of roof or windowpanes. Like him. Some men get old in one night. Something breaks in them. The silent transformation of death happens, without notice.

Geneviève Flaven was born in Paris in 1969. In 2001, in Nice, she founded a design consulting agency, which she relocated to Shanghai in 2010. The city of Shanghai inspired her theater plays 99 women, a bag of tears; poetic prose: Shanghai Zen and illustrated children’s book Lisa and the red socks.

Evgeny Bondarenko was born in Rostov-on-Don in 1986. He studied at the Grekov School of Art and was artist in residence at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai in 2013. His work is mainly focused on urban landscapes.

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