Title
In Case Of Fire 万一火灾
Author
Bz Zhang 张迪
Size (inches)
7.5 x 5
Pages
Year
2022
Edition
1
Production
Handmade
Construction
smythe sewn
Printing
Inkjet
Materials
architectural bond paperconstruction paperlinen threadPVA glue
Note

Created as part of a pilot Artist In Residence series in Fall 2022.

About

This book contains traces, reconstructed memories, multi-directional storytelling, searching, and unraveling sourced from archival maps, film photographs, drawings, engravings, and photos from my phone. These sites were inscribed and reinscribed into land by a succession of US white settler colonial infrastructures: the California Trail (established 1811–1840), the First Transcontinental Railroad (constructed 1862–1869) – which exploited Chinese bodies and labor to dispossess Indigenous peoples and lands and to suppress Black resistance and liberation – and finally, Interstate 80 (constructed 1956–1986). Their sequence was traced again in 1988 by recently arrived Chinese students, my parents in the Beautiful Country, and in 2022, by me, searching. In nearly every case of Chinese diaspora along these inscriptions, Chinatown is set on fire and burned to the ground. In nearly every case of Chinatown burned to the ground, I search for and unravel traces of us in the insurance maps they drew in case of fire.