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In the sprawling conurbation of Metro Manila, electricity is conducted along power lines that provide visual, spatial and temporal structure to urban life. The infrastructure both connects and segregates, shifting with constant reconfiguration and maintenance. As the distribution utility seeks to manage electrical consumers with "smart" technological solutions, meters monitor and transmit information about energy use, but also create profiles of customers. Residents develop their own intelligent awareness of electricity through intimate entanglements with appliances, bills and other companions in domestic life. A complex array of material, organic, atmospheric and social actors generate surges, flows and interruptions in a capricious current. Meanwhile, a fan peers out half-hidden from view, continuously unsettling the wider structure.
The installation, accompanies Kwang Lin’s research in Metro Manila and was displayed at the In Practice II exhibition at the UCL Urban Room, 2024. The video poem is available here.