Foreign Helpers: Domestic Labor and the Spatial Infrastructure of Hong Kong

Summary

This article revisits Foreign Helpers, a 2015 Hong Kong installation about migrant domestic labour and the city’s dependence on it. Four projectors, four audio channels and infrared tracking respond to a handheld screen through which visitors explore city footage and workers’ recorded accounts. The article analyses how bodily effort and audiovisual navigation shape the encounter with representations of this labour, and considers the relation between the installation and the spatial conditions it addresses.