Mobile Phone
c2014
| Place of origin |
Mobile phones with dual sim card slot, 2013 collected on the occasion of the exhibition V&A in Shenzhen: Rapid Response Collecting, staged at the 5th Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture, The Value Factory, Shenzhen.
This fake iPhone 5S imitate the look of Apple’s iconic smartphone, but arguably improve on the original by integrating a double SIM card slot. This design removes the need for two separate phones for the many people who shuttle between Shenzhen and Hong Kong. It runs an Android operating system and unlike the iPhone, features a removable back to allow access to the sim card slots and battery. Mobile phones such as these are the product of the shanzhai industry of fakes that has been key to Shenzhen’s manufacturing success.
Shenzhen, China’s first special Economic Zone is located at the tip of the Pearl River Delta. The city grew from a modest fishing town into a vast, sprawling metropolis of more than fifteen million in just thirty-five years, through manufacturing, trade and relentless commercial energy. Today Shenzhen is the world’s third busiest container port, with a population with an average age of the less than thirty and almost entirely composed of recent migrants.
The invitation to participate in the Bi-City Biennale enabled the museum to engage with this fast-changing city and to road test the recently introduced Rapid Response Collecting strand. The museum asked more than sixty people in Shenzhen to propose a design object that told a story about their city and the result was an exhibition of twenty-three things and twenty-three stories about the place. By exhibiting everyday objects, the show placed centre stage the realities of urban life, of industry and of commercial and social change.
The Mobile phones with dual sim card slot were suggested by ffiXXed, an art and design consultancy run by Kain Picken and Fiona Lau in Shenzhen. For the two designers, ‘the dual SIM function addresses the problems of cross-border incompatibility between the Shenzhen and Hong Kong phone networks.’ This shanzhai design removes the need for two separate phones for the many people who shuttle between the two cities.
The Shenzhen exhibition was the first opportunity to test Rapid Response Collecting. This new approach to collecting is intended to make museum collecting more responsive to global events, and to situate design in immediate relation to moments of political or social change. The museum opened its own space dedicated to Rapid Response Collecting in July 2014.
This fake iPhone 5S imitate the look of Apple’s iconic smartphone, but arguably improve on the original by integrating a double SIM card slot. This design removes the need for two separate phones for the many people who shuttle between Shenzhen and Hong Kong. It runs an Android operating system and unlike the iPhone, features a removable back to allow access to the sim card slots and battery. Mobile phones such as these are the product of the shanzhai industry of fakes that has been key to Shenzhen’s manufacturing success.
Shenzhen, China’s first special Economic Zone is located at the tip of the Pearl River Delta. The city grew from a modest fishing town into a vast, sprawling metropolis of more than fifteen million in just thirty-five years, through manufacturing, trade and relentless commercial energy. Today Shenzhen is the world’s third busiest container port, with a population with an average age of the less than thirty and almost entirely composed of recent migrants.
The invitation to participate in the Bi-City Biennale enabled the museum to engage with this fast-changing city and to road test the recently introduced Rapid Response Collecting strand. The museum asked more than sixty people in Shenzhen to propose a design object that told a story about their city and the result was an exhibition of twenty-three things and twenty-three stories about the place. By exhibiting everyday objects, the show placed centre stage the realities of urban life, of industry and of commercial and social change.
The Mobile phones with dual sim card slot were suggested by ffiXXed, an art and design consultancy run by Kain Picken and Fiona Lau in Shenzhen. For the two designers, ‘the dual SIM function addresses the problems of cross-border incompatibility between the Shenzhen and Hong Kong phone networks.’ This shanzhai design removes the need for two separate phones for the many people who shuttle between the two cities.
The Shenzhen exhibition was the first opportunity to test Rapid Response Collecting. This new approach to collecting is intended to make museum collecting more responsive to global events, and to situate design in immediate relation to moments of political or social change. The museum opened its own space dedicated to Rapid Response Collecting in July 2014.
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Object details
| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Parts | This object consists of 8 parts.
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| Materials and techniques | aluminium and plastic |
| Brief description | Counterfeit iPhone 5s with dual SIM card slot running an Android operating system, including battery, case, headphones, USB cable, plug, instruction leaflet and box. |
| Physical description | Counterfeit iPhone 5s with dual SIM card slot running an Android operating system. Black phone, round home button is centre bottom of the screen with an ear piece centre top with a small camera to the left of this, on the left side edge there are a plus and minus circular buttons in silver with a small black a small faux switch above. There is a headphone hole on the top left ewdge with a silver button to the right. The charging connector hole is located on the centre of the bottom edge. The back of the phone has a silver apple symbol with the camera located to the top centre of this. |
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| Gallery label |
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| Production | 'Shanzhai'a networked process (directly translating to 'mountain bandit') that features more bottom-up production rather than top-down supply chain management (see: Silvia Lindtner and Seyram Avle 'Design(ing) 'Here' and 'There': Tech Entrepreneurs, Global Markets, and Reflexivity in Design Processes' (2016) and 'Digital Shanzhai: Connected Manufacturing, Memes and Our Hardware Future' An Xiao Mina (2016) |
| Summary | Mobile phones with dual sim card slot, 2013 collected on the occasion of the exhibition V&A in Shenzhen: Rapid Response Collecting, staged at the 5th Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture, The Value Factory, Shenzhen. This fake iPhone 5S imitate the look of Apple’s iconic smartphone, but arguably improve on the original by integrating a double SIM card slot. This design removes the need for two separate phones for the many people who shuttle between Shenzhen and Hong Kong. It runs an Android operating system and unlike the iPhone, features a removable back to allow access to the sim card slots and battery. Mobile phones such as these are the product of the shanzhai industry of fakes that has been key to Shenzhen’s manufacturing success. Shenzhen, China’s first special Economic Zone is located at the tip of the Pearl River Delta. The city grew from a modest fishing town into a vast, sprawling metropolis of more than fifteen million in just thirty-five years, through manufacturing, trade and relentless commercial energy. Today Shenzhen is the world’s third busiest container port, with a population with an average age of the less than thirty and almost entirely composed of recent migrants. The invitation to participate in the Bi-City Biennale enabled the museum to engage with this fast-changing city and to road test the recently introduced Rapid Response Collecting strand. The museum asked more than sixty people in Shenzhen to propose a design object that told a story about their city and the result was an exhibition of twenty-three things and twenty-three stories about the place. By exhibiting everyday objects, the show placed centre stage the realities of urban life, of industry and of commercial and social change. The Mobile phones with dual sim card slot were suggested by ffiXXed, an art and design consultancy run by Kain Picken and Fiona Lau in Shenzhen. For the two designers, ‘the dual SIM function addresses the problems of cross-border incompatibility between the Shenzhen and Hong Kong phone networks.’ This shanzhai design removes the need for two separate phones for the many people who shuttle between the two cities. The Shenzhen exhibition was the first opportunity to test Rapid Response Collecting. This new approach to collecting is intended to make museum collecting more responsive to global events, and to situate design in immediate relation to moments of political or social change. The museum opened its own space dedicated to Rapid Response Collecting in July 2014. |
| Collection | |
| Accession number | CD.2:1 to 8-2014 |
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| Record created | February 17, 2014 |
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