Griffiths, D., 2014.

The plain our bed the stars our blanket

Mongolian cosmology depicts a bed made from dust for the Lord of the Upper World, which his jealous brother stretches in all directions to create the land. Since 2004, Kangbashi New Area has developed on the Ordos steppe of Inner Mongolia. Exploding on former herding lands, fuelled by mineral wealth and a neoliberal Chinese property boom, Kangbashi is only sparsely populated and continues to build empty houses and infrastructure. Economists call it a lost cause. It's a living ghost-town, an oxymoronic space of potential caught between accelerating GDP and imminent decline. Dave Griffiths walked Ordos to capture half-built apartments, splendid gardens, malls, migrants, mines and archaeological echoes of ancient nomadic culture. These photocollages imagine the future remains of Kangbashi's utopia as compressed fragments archived on microfiche. In an online edition, viewers can browse these images in close-up detail.