Houses (Las Piñas)

In the Philippines, over 4.5 million people live in makeshift dwellings within dumpsites, roadside towns, slums, and graveyards. These informal settlements arose in the aftermath of forced evictions, peasant worker suppression, land grabbing, and rural property. Contradictorily, cybersquatters are protected and the internet is pictured as a safehaven for those without offline security, yet the same impetus of imperialism and expansionism lies at its roots–each glorifying the other.

Kevin's house

This is a generative, networked net art piece of informal homes, within exteriors of homes claiming webpages (almost virus-like) and interiors in cramped, hoarded homes growing denser and more monstrous within routine. The homes are hosted on strangere's sites as iFrames, slowly overtaking the pages and settling, making visible the rotting, dense, sickness of the internet (as inspired by Mac Andre Arboleda). Each household is generative, where generational family routines fall into disarray within their interiors, becoming their own microcosmic sanity, sanitation, and security simulators. When we take space on the internet, do we settle? Do we displace, fill, demolish?

The piece is currently in the works; expanding across 60+ settlements on the internet. As each house is uprooted, removed, displaced, or seized by another, these bodies will move and resettle.

zhayitong's house