Central Union Railroad & Saint Denis (2022-2024) investigates the history of Chinese migrant workers during the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad between 1863 and 1869. Through a series of darkroom contact prints with digital negative transfer film made out of video game screenshots, this body of work experiments with the materiality of photography across the digital and the analog and examines contemporary racial representations and historical narratives in the video game industry. Today, the advancement of video game technologies, virtual reality, augmented reality, facial and voice recognition, and wearable device, are extending our sensory perception and transforming our knowledge of nature, history, and personhood. This work explores how the pieces of the real and virtual world interact, fit together or clash, generate complex unforeseen consequences, and reinforce cultural references.
This project also includes a series of short films. Although these films are made in the form of traditional ethnographic film with images and text, the collage of screening recordings, found footages of game streaming, and users’ comments questions the depiction of the racial and cultural otherness with sexual and racial violence.