“One’s most intimate contact with a city is often through a street, walking from a cross to a place, meeting someone at a cafe, and finally leaving a memory, good or bad,” said Wang Yiquan, a founding partner of Acts and Pathways. “Shunchang Road is such a street.”

In the city curating project Shunchang Road: An Opportunity for Discourse, Acts and Pathways took this century-old street as the starting point for the whole exhibition making. We compared Shunchang Road to a work of art, seeing the shops and residents on the street as creators, and presenting the history and current status of the street. Throughout the curatorial and design process, we used “one street, two exhibitions, and four shops” as the main storyline of the project.

The two exhibitions are a special exhibition on Shunchang Road and a photography exhibition situated within the Renmin Photo Studio. The four shops, Old Shandong Nut Shop, Heping Hair Salon, Shengxing Centennial Dumpling, and the Remain Photo Studio, are our exhibitors. In addition, we have invited architect Wang Yuwei, photographer Chen Zhen, Xu Ming, the founder of Urban Archeo, The Paper, the digital newspaper, and old customers of the Renmin Photo Studio over the past 50 years as our participating artists to showcase their works and stories about Shunchang Road.

“每一个人与城市最亲密的接触，往往是通过一条条街道，从一个路口去到一个地方，在一家店遇见某一个人，留下一段或好或坏的记忆。”活络的创始合伙人王懿泉如是说，“顺昌路，其实就是这样的一条街。”

活络在城市策展项目《顺昌路：一个对话的机会》展览中，以这条百年老街作为策展的出发点。我们把顺昌路比作一件艺术品，视街上的店家和居民都是创作者，进而去展现街道的历史与现状。在整个项目的策划与设计过程中，我们用“一条街，两个展，四个店”作为引领项目发展的主线。

一条街即作为公共空间的顺昌路，两个展分别是关于顺昌路的特展以及在人民照相馆内举办的摄影特展。参加展出的四家店分别是：老山东炒货、和平美发厅、盛兴百年老店，以及人民照相馆。此外，我们还邀请了建筑师王禹惟、摄影师陈真、城市考古创始人徐明、《澎湃新闻》、人民照相馆过去50年里的老顾客等等作为我们的参展人，共同去展示有关顺昌路的故事。