Mongkok is a lively and captivating district in Hong Kong where anything goes. It operates 24/7 and is highly connected physically and digitally, making it a metaphor for a futuristic state similar to a neo-Babylonian civilization. It is a bustling hanging garden where traders thrive, and vice is commonplace.
This single-channel video installation portrays a sci-fi version of the futuristic Mongkok. Here, the state has implemented an all-pervasive surveillance system infiltrated by espionage and state agencies. Citizens are compelled to behave and comply with the state agenda, and their rights have been eroded. Nevertheless, many have become indifferent to the dire circumstances and continue to benefit from the status quo.
As a virtual revisitation, the visual here narration is visceral but intentionally out of sync with real-time and reality. The scenes are created from the artist's residual memories over the past twenty years and his online obsession with Hong Kong, using found footage, available data, and computer graphics. The result is a series of provocative, bizarre, and convincing incidents where characters, datascapes, and soundscapes travel back and forth in time, speculating what a futuristic Mongkok might be in an otherworldly state of flux.
