This book combines autoethnographic reflections, poetry, and photography with the aim to bridge the gap between creative practice and scholarly research. Drawing on an innovative combination of different forms of knowledge, creative writing and street photographs are presented as means to reflect on the development of knowledge and self-knowledge through a thought-provoking dialogue with Roland Barthes’ post-structuralist work. What does it mean to be a creative practitioner in a world traversed by values of capitalism and artificial intelligence? What does it mean to teach creative practices in such an environment?

The urban landscape of Singapore, with the Jewel Changi mall, the Universal Studios, and Little India in the background, is the stage where the capitalist demands of modern city life grapple with the solitary act of writing poetry and taking photographs through the personal experience of the author. Capitalist realism and depression realism entwine with Barthes' notion of vita nova in a mesmerizing phantasmagoria that drags the reader to the bowels and secret pleasures of the creative process.