Grace
Wong
Ghost Lovers
What compels people to reveal their most vulnerable selves in the most public of spaces? Why do people – through poetic outpourings – continue to search for others or hope to be found? Why on the web and specifically, on an anonymous forum, do people create pockets of spaces to share deeply personal experiences?
Ghost Lovers, using found texts from Craigslist's Missed Connections section and both found and personal images, crafts a collage of how humans search for connection within the ever expanding digital social landscape. A "missed connection" could mean anything for anybody: an undeveloped romance, lamentations of home, thoughts of childhood, and even for some, what freedom means to them. Some of these texts are addressed to someone. Other texts are addressed to no one.
All of these posts eventually reach an expiration date, disappearing permanently from the site after some time. Ghost Lovers, then, acts as both a visual collage and an archival space, providing a sense of permanence to these posts.