Mongkok is a buzzing and captivating district in Hong Kong; anything can go within this dense, unruly area. 24/7 in its hyperconnectivity, both in the physical and digital realm, Mongkok is a metaphor for a sino-futuristic Babylonian state. Drawing a parallel comparison of Mongkok and the rising phenomena of “digital Babylonian”, where all things exponentially amplified, accelerated. Mongkok is a dense miniature version of a hanging garden where trades flourish and vice is omnipresent.
This installation is a sci-fictitious reconstruction of a futuristic, neo-Babylonish version of Mongkok. Under the state’s power, the futuristic Mongkok has been subjected to an omnipresence surveillance system, infiltrated by espionage and state agencies. Citizens are obligated to behave and comply, constantly under the bombardment of state propaganda, yet their rights have eroded. But in spite, many are desensitized to the dire circumstances. In indifference, some continue to trade and benefit from the status power to their prosperity.
As a virtual revisitation, the narration is visceral but intentionally out of sync with real-time and reality, inherently fragmented and non-linear. The scenes are created based on the artist’s imagination from his residual memories over the past twenty years and his ongoing online obsession with Hong Kong. Using found footage, available data, and computer graphics, resynthesize a series of provocative, bizarre, and convincing incidents. Where characters, data scapes, and soundscapes travel back and forth in time, speculate what a futuristic Mongkok might be in an otherworldly state of flux.
