Neo-Modernity

The modernity of today's Shanghai, “modernity 2.0”—or what Land calls neo-modernity—translates into an urban landscape that questions the very notion of temporal linearity. In her book Shanghai Future, Anna Greenspan wrote: “In [Shanghai's] bars, cafes, teahouses, parks and boutiques, urban inhabitants play out their roles in [a] time-travel fantasy. Through its architecture, design, self-image and style, contemporary Shanghai strives to remember, and to reinvent, the creative flourishing it once—too briefly—hosted. Driven by this fractured destiny, it is embedded in a spiral of time, actively trying to splice together its imminent future with a past futurism that never had the chance to play itself out.” Art production in Shanghai today triggers a similar “time spiral” via an ongoing debate concerning tradition and the achievement of modernity as expressed by “new” avant-garde languages.