Ghost Cities: Hauntology and Uninhabited real-estate developments in Asia

Abstract

This visual essay seeks to explore the connection between hauntology, ghost cities, memes, AI and the embodiment of financial assets. The images gathered were generated by an AI software edited in symbiosis with other images and memes. The essay juxtaposes the accelerated nature of viral internet memes with financial assets embodied as a decaying urban complex, unfolding the circular temporality of AI. The images feature exterior and interior spaces of a ghost city, as well as a specific sculpture: The Ring of Life, situated in Fushun, China. The misconceptions and fictions generated by AI content play with the ghost city’s own ambiguous nature, conceived with an idea of “future” in mind but inoperable in the present, stuck in a liminal space between entropy and a new horizon of generative possibilities.