| Sumario: | Revisiting the romantic and ecological insights into artistic labor and Homo faber of embodied practice, this essay examines Han Song's 2010 novella "Regenerated Bricks" ("Zaisheng zhuan"). The narrative depicts how the victims of the Wenchuan earthquake, guided by an architect, produce a brick by using the debris, straw, and corpses. Regenerating lives and hopes of the victims and furnishing material for sheltering, the labor testifies to a practice that combines labor and art and a biological rebirth associated with the fertility of the Earth. The brick is not only useful but also aesthetically satisfying and emotionally resonant. Working closely with the workers in the fields and workshops of a cottage industry rather than from urban offices, the elite architect transforms into a "barefoot architect." Conversely, the culture market, neoliberal ideology, and digital media quickly turn the brick into simulacrum and consumer icon, alienating the brick and the creators from their vital connection with nature and Earth.
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