Dislocation from globalization and technology determines the space inhabited by all individuals. Where we belong must first exist spatially, in three-dimensional terms, before a deeper inquiry into what creates a ‘home’ eversus a foreign space
However, the New York City train projection is significantly different from the one in Guangzhou, in large part based on the images outside the train windows. The spaces delineated by train cars are relatively homogeneous, but the experience of the culture inside that train car and the projected reality from the screen of the window creates an entirely different psychic boundary to the passenger. From my own experience, there is a sense of home found on both trains. Yet, there is also a sense of the foreign and the motions of modernization, even in my ancestral Guang Dong. Within the movement of the work, the in-between notion of globalization and rootlessness is also brought to the surface.
There is an inherent artificiality to this artwork, based on the projection of both train car experiences for audiences. Since each experience is captured, although juxtaposed continually in a confined space, there is an evident layer of illusion and artifice. This same effect exists in any photograph, regardless of how convincing or emotive the final product. As Susan Sontag articulates, while photos are “a way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it - by limiting experience to a search for the photographic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir (12). Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs).” Photography and video projection in the era of globalization have a distinct way of creating a feeling of belonging and recognition while simultaneously creating a sense of alienation for the viewer.
Globalization is also confronted in the work through the presence of a form of diaspora. For someone such as myself who exists in a diaspora, this is an important aspect of the conceptual work. Through the projected digital footage, the audience enters into their own simulation of a diaspora: to them (for the most part) it is the Guangzhou train that is the foreign counterpart instead of the NYC subway. Various levels of dislocation and defamiliarization nonetheless exist through the simulated motion, linguistic differences in train announcements and psychological disarray from the combined experience of disparate train rides occurring simultaneously.