Homeless — Chow and Lin

2018

Homeless investigates tipping points in the global society. Probing into Big Data that reduces individuals and societies into data points by problematizing multiple issues in society, it identifies the complexities of our lived socio-political environment which are integrated into the photographic series. Visual indicators of private and transnational economies are assembled alongside forced mobilities of communities under siege.

The data-plotting of these poignant indicators may, first of all, be representative of aerial views of the abstract notions of geopolitics at play on the global scale. The visualization is in fact inspired by Google Earth as this conceptual mapping is acknowledged as an initial entry into social facts. Enabled by the moments that are consequential to the use and function of such open-sourced platforms, this series begins to unpack the complexity of scaling first-generation wealth vis-à-vis the refugee crises. The technical tool of satellite imaging is employed by inquiries into fair use, and the understanding of this contemporary moment of open-access knowledge.

As political boundaries shift concurrently to daily life, Homeless also suggests the vagaries of social security, and the platforms that monitor and dictate them. Shaping this series is a consolidation of ongoing discourse together with scholars, policy-makers and non-government organisation leaders.