vershy versh
Well-known member
"The official story of Huaqiangbei and Shenzhen is a narrative of China’s economic miracle and socialist reform success. The messy, inconvenient fact that whatever is made will need, at some point, to be repaired rarely gets a mention. But things degrade just as they upgrade. That’s where the repairers come in. A relatively small part of the Huaqiangbei community—where most people are engaged in the trading and manufacturing of new devices—repairers are concentrated in two Akihabara Electric Town–style electronics wholesale market buildings. These lively, hectic malls specialize in second-hand phone trading and refurbishing, creating a niche demand for repairers and carving out a small place for broken objects amid Huaqiangbei’s general theme song of the new. This is a place where everything looks like a mesmerizing mishmash of a Jodi game modification, headline-grabbing shanzhai handphones, and Deng Xiaoping–style grassroots entrepreneurship. Technicians in stall after stall, together with their myriad self-developed tools, encryption-hacking devices, and informally sourced components, look at the “warranty voided if removed” warning with a side eye."

The Unauthorized Repair of the World - Journal #146
Yifan Wang and Changwen Chen argue for repair as a new organizing principle for political struggle.
www.e-flux.com