A descendant of migrants and anti-fascist resistors brings their memory to the metaverse
You can have a virtual home in Hangars Liquides, the massive and awesome cyberpunk city in Second Life which boasts a skyline of skyscrapers before which Oprah Winfrey once gave a speech, and William Gibson himself once praised. But why pay to live in a well-appointed penthouse of a dystopian future, when you can live in a tent from our near-dystopian present?
Click here to visit, and if you like, find a free place for your avatar to squat, in Hangars Liquides’ new homeless encampment.
“I know there are quite a few wanderers in SL that like to go around, so they could have a little spot in a place that is community-oriented to get together and talk and just have simple good times,” Hangars creator Djehan Kidd tells me. “And of course I hope people will reflect on the subjects of current homelessness and migration crisis.”
Djehan spent many days creating the camp, not only making sure it worked as an immersive space, but that it evoked the homeless camps that have sprouted up across the real world in recent years:
Djehan (at left) and Hangars' creative muse, Janus
“It is the darkest, most dystopian work I ever did, more than the post-apocalyptic ones because of its social-realist side,” as she puts it. “It is happening in real life, next to us; I see Los Angeles also has a lot of these camps. In the EU, it is the refugees and other migrants in these camps, while I saw in the USA it is a bit of everything like veterans, and even poor workers.”
Writing now from LA, I am sad to say this is true. It makes Hangars Liquides more reflective of the Los Angeles of today, as opposed to the LA of 2019 depicted in another cyberpunk classic, Blade Runner -- a vision from the future now relegated to the past.
Djehan imagines that her homeless camp hints at “wars raging somewhere, even in unexpected places, and even silent wars." And in this sense, the camp reflects the history of her own real life family, which was cast asunder by war:
“Now my family is all dispatched throughout the world,” as she put it, “[Some in] Brazil, some stayed in Egypt, and me in France.” And as the recent migrant crisis hit Europe, “I suddenly thought more about the fact my father had been one too.”
A migrant from Egypt, Djehan’s real life father was adopted by a French resistance fighter -- and you will see signs of this history in her city as well, beginning with the La Croix de Lorraine, the cross that emblazoned the flag of free France during World War II. It still looms over her migrant camp.
“Hangars Liquides is very [imbued] by antifascism,” Djehan Kidd explains. “There are memorials around the city, for Anne Frank, also for my grandfather." (Who joined the French Resistance as well, after the fall of France and upon hearing de Gaulle's famous call to arms.)
“All in all I will continue to place symbolism [in this city], for oppressed people. Maybe this should really be one of the most important messages of dystopian art.”
All images courtesy Ms. Kidd.
Update, 11:00PM PT: For those wondering, here is Hangar Liquides' long history as a Second Life project, sponsored by a non-profit media organization founded by a French electronica label of the same name.
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