‘The Hornsleth Homeless Tracker’ (HHT), is the new major conceptual artwork, two years in the making, by Danish provocateur Kristian von Hornsleth. The HHT is an ethical boundary smashing work, which fuses homelessness, privacy invasion, inequality and reality TV, with present day cultural decadence and interactive conceptual art. The HHT follows Hornsleth as he buys homeless people from the streets of London and sells them as art works to private collectors. Each homeless, has been fitted with a tracking device allowing their owner to follow them 24-7 via a private app, effectively converting the homeless into a real-life Pokémon Go or human Tamagotchi. The public will also be able follow the struggles of their favorite homeless characters through YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Tinder. HHT is the long-awaited follow-up to Hornsleth’s 2006 controversial conceptual art piece, ‘The Hornsleth Village Project’, in which Hornsleth made a hundred impoverished Ugandan villagers legally change their names to ‘Hornsleth’ in exchange for livestock animals.
‘The Hornsleth Village Project’ manically celebrated the evils of marketing, advertising, branding and western aid policy, while cementing Hornsleth as an ethical boundary burner. HHT treads familiar ground by cynically celebrating the absurdity, inequality, superficiality and decadence of contemporary culture. HHT is a manic celebration of the absurdity of our culture, drawing inspiration from diverse subjects such as The Kardashians, Pokémon Go, branding, and the NSA, creating an interactive cultural melting pot, in which all areas of society can pour in to and interact with. As Hornsleth puts it: “The art reveals the society; the public may show great compassion, or merely prove, we only want to watch not interact. Or maybe, it shows that some people just need a Tramp-agotchi.”
