ABSTRACT
Visuality/Materiality emerges in this context as a collection which promotes the dialogues made possible in a space where these two modes of enquiry in their research are co-constructed. Visual culture has rapidly emerged as a privileged term for exploring the visual. The approach of the researchers in this collection is not concerned with applying the usual cultural logics in order to determine the meaning of objects and texts of visual culture. By tracing Yiwu's materialities from an atomic to a global scale we see how Yiwu inhabits a situation of being a contemporary cultural economy of consumption' which incorporates local grammars, and is powered and actively drives visualisations of ideologically driven notions of international consumption and identities that feature in our own locales visually and materially. Yiwu's contribution to aspirational politics are driven by the visualised futures of material living through the constellation of commodity opportunities and economy it innovates.
