From the shadows of the spectacular city: Zhang Dali's Dialogue and counter-spectacle in globalizing Beijing, 1995-2005

•This essay examines the graffiti work of Zhang Dali in Beijing.•It advances the idea of “counter-spectacle”.•Zhang's graffiti worked with and against urban spectacularism.•It shows cultural expression remains vital to contesting urban change.

This study advances a notion of counter-spectacle in current-day China by examining a graffiti project carried out in Beijing between 1995 and 2005 titled Dialogue by the artist Zhang Dali (张大力). The essay draws attention to the opportunities and limitations for resistance amid urban spectacle and examines them through a detailed case study in an aspiring “world city.” The paper argues that a theory of urban counter-spectacle that integrates the role of oppositional practices at the intersection of cultural and spatial change can help to explain the unstable nature of China's contemporary urbanism. More broadly, it expands debates on state-society conflict by demonstrating how urban spaces function as sites of social activism and as alternative fora for contentious politics through the production of meaning in specific spaces.