Legality of Clinical Nuggets
SATOSHI FUJIWARA
24 pages, Take GA 104.7g
A4 variant (210 × 268 mm), softcover, thread-sewn binding.
Printed in Japan, 2025.
First Edition of 100
This publication is part of FEED
This publication is part of FEED
curated:
giovanni antignano ( zerofeedback )
editing:
satoshi fujiwara, kristel clément
design:
kristel clément, dstry evrtyng
In early 2024, I spent three months in Wuhan, a city that had become globally symbolic in the aftermath of the pandemic. My time there, both online and in the physical city, revealed a layered and contradictory landscape shaped by imagery, surveillance, and the rhythms of daily life.
Fragments of language surfaced as semi-formed images within the boundaries of the Great Firewall—through state-approved textbooks, real estate ads, and signage that echoed the propaganda posters (dazibao) of the 1970s. I collected and reassembled these fragments, merging and stacking them to reflect the convergence of information, commerce, and ideology in shaping the urban environment.
Scattered throughout the publication are phrases drawn from slogans, advertisements, and bureaucratic jargon: “Legality of clinical nuggets,” “10:37 Exclusive Offer [Domestic Products],” “Pastoral Power,” “Mother-tongue abduction crime,” “Flat Earthers Recum,” and others.
These snippets sit beside distorted maps, misaligned translations, and typographic anomalies, creating a textual landscape that mimics the noise of digital and physical information streams.
The result is a chaotic mesh of language and imagery, where absurdity and control coexist. Language here doesn’t serve to describe—it freezes ideology into momentary form. Even the most surreal phrases settle into mundanity through repetition, much like compressed images and slogans distributed with the regularity of frozen meals.
The photographs operate as hyper-clichés, aggressively repurposing visual stereotypes of Wuhan that have circulated globally since 2020. Beneath this surface, however, lies a counterstructure: street workers, informal networks, and “unregistered personnel” who maintain the invisible systems that official narratives omit. This informal labor economy, estimated to account for half of China’s urban workforce in 2024, remains largely unacknowledged in official data, yet it forms the essential infrastructure of daily life.
Satoshi Fujiwara, October 2025
Fragments of language surfaced as semi-formed images within the boundaries of the Great Firewall—through state-approved textbooks, real estate ads, and signage that echoed the propaganda posters (dazibao) of the 1970s. I collected and reassembled these fragments, merging and stacking them to reflect the convergence of information, commerce, and ideology in shaping the urban environment.
Scattered throughout the publication are phrases drawn from slogans, advertisements, and bureaucratic jargon: “Legality of clinical nuggets,” “10:37 Exclusive Offer [Domestic Products],” “Pastoral Power,” “Mother-tongue abduction crime,” “Flat Earthers Recum,” and others.
These snippets sit beside distorted maps, misaligned translations, and typographic anomalies, creating a textual landscape that mimics the noise of digital and physical information streams.
The result is a chaotic mesh of language and imagery, where absurdity and control coexist. Language here doesn’t serve to describe—it freezes ideology into momentary form. Even the most surreal phrases settle into mundanity through repetition, much like compressed images and slogans distributed with the regularity of frozen meals.
The photographs operate as hyper-clichés, aggressively repurposing visual stereotypes of Wuhan that have circulated globally since 2020. Beneath this surface, however, lies a counterstructure: street workers, informal networks, and “unregistered personnel” who maintain the invisible systems that official narratives omit. This informal labor economy, estimated to account for half of China’s urban workforce in 2024, remains largely unacknowledged in official data, yet it forms the essential infrastructure of daily life.
Satoshi Fujiwara, October 2025