Bootlegging Nonsense, an Interview with Shanzhai Lyric By MICHAEL NARDONE “Shanzhai Lyric is a body of research focusing on radical logistics and linguistics through the prism of technological aberration and nonofficial cultures. The project initiated by Ming Lin and Alex Tatarsky takes inspiration from the experimental English of shanzhai t-shirts made in China and proliferating across the globe to examine how the language of counterfeit uses mimicry, hybridity, and permutation to both revel in and reveal the artifice of global hierarchies. Through an ever-growing archive of poetry-garments, Shanzhai Lyric explores the potential of mistranslation and nonsense as utopian world-making (breaking) and has previously taken the form of poetry-lecture, essay, and installation.”