Intimate Strangers, 2016

The multimedia installation Intimate Strangers is the result of two years of field research at the head office of the online dating-app Grindr in West Hollywood.

Grindr was the first social media app which, using live GPS-data tracking, put homosexual men in touch. More than one million users are active at any one time. The app is seen as a safe space for LGBT emancipation, where users gain access to homosexual encounters. Also in countries where homosexuality is illegal.

As such, Grindr has helped to normalise homosexuality and has created an online community. Here, you can be an online character that does or doesn’t match who you really are.

As in all communities there are complex dynamics of inclusion and exclusion here too. Most profiles are carefully constructed and match a stereotype of a virile muscly cisgender homosexual man. Yet the app is not without risk: intolerant governments can also use the app to track down and arrest homosexual men.
 

Number 21 on the map.