Infrastructure, narrative, impact : a counter-reading of belt and road

• Main Author: Vincent de Paul, Jegan Joyston
• Other Authors: Ute Meta Bauer
• Format: Thesis-Doctor of Philosophy
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Social sciences::Political science; Visual arts and music::Visual arts
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/151483
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This project is an experiment on the possibilities of artistic research to examine and represent large-scale systems and networks. Taking a critical subjective position, I interpret the phenomenon of “Belt and Road” as a fragmented narrative premised on infrastructure and constructed in realtime by a network of global entities. I begin with an observation of infrastructure as ideal sites of protest and consider its implications as a term and form. I question whether the noun “infrastructure” is used to depoliticise and necessitate the things and processes it denotes. I then propose that infrastructure is a physical embodiment of the state and can be read as a map of its extent across space. The central written chapter is an exposition of Belt and Road and how it is manifested in the process of interpretation and analysis, existing more as an instrument of communication and political discourse than a Chinese initiative to construct infrastructure. I use the concept of a “metastructure” to show how the many definitions, scopes and implications of Belt and Road function like archetypes of a story rather than factual descriptions. I finally focus my attention on Sri Lanka and the construction of Hambantota port by Chinese-state owned companies and the implications of this for local space and the end of the country’s civil war in 2009. The last chapter is a documentation of the methods I use to simultaneously research, represent and produce a counter-reading of Belt and Road. These methods are: collection of materials on Belt and Road, composition of text and images, and the transmission of collections and compositions via publications, talks and exhibitions. Taking art as a research methodology, my thesis is not argumentative or theoretical, but an exploration of Belt and Road as a captivating new subject and infrastructure as a personally meaningful topic. With this project, I hope to exemplify the expanded potential of art to investigate and critique complex global phenomena.