Many years after the rise of a digital humanities, most institutions in North America have attracted various forms of related talent to their libraries, departments and centers to help build capacity for broader computational approaches to the humanities at the institutional level. What happens when that talent begins to collaborate across institutions at massive, unfunded scales? Or intra-institutionally guided by their own collaborative light outside established and unflinching reward mechanisms? In this talk, Dr. Alex Gil will answer these questions through a close-reading of the Torn Apart/Separados collaborative mobilization. In particular, Gil will examine some of the most salient elements of the project: the balance between empiricism and story-telling, the re-ontologizing of data, the rapid research and development, the generic considerations, the scholarly commentary, and the fugitive labor needed to do the whole thing.