The utopian idea of the Internet was that of a universal space for all, unbound by borders. In reality, networks are intertwined with real-world territoriality, as Guo Cheng shows by taking on the role of a tourist visiting the elusive sites hosting the network infrastructures of the Great Firewall of China (GFW). The installation lets users become virtual firewall tourists, entering websites of choice that if blocked by the GFW, take them to a game that allows them to submit their usernames. A custom-made wall-mounted machine then engraves the names and scores along with the IP address of a GFW node, while footage shows Guo Cheng using geolocation data to track the physical location of the firewall’s network gateway.

The work was originally commissioned within the Digital Earth fellowship program.