[-empyre-] New Media and the Cat and Mouse Game

[lab]

nice you have mentioned FATlab, they were in China in 2008 playing the political correct: http://fffff.at/powderly-detained-in-china/

they were suppose to be in the media art china 2008 show...
http://www.mediartchina.org/


Li zhenhua | 李振华
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http://www.bjartlab.com 
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bjartlab at gmail.com
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+86 13321191731
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中国北京市朝阳区王四营乡白鹿司农机仓库3号库 100121
No.3 Warehouse, Nong Ji Cang Ku, Bai Lu Si, Wang Si Ying Xiang, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China 100121
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Marianne Burki Li / Li Zhenhua
Lindenbachstrasse 21, CH-8006 Zürich
Switzerland 瑞士

0041 7862 00996 M
0041 4334 31348 H

在 2010-11-15，下午1:44， Melinda Rackham 写道：

> Hi Rebecca
> thank you both for your thoughtful post, and your bold curatorial direction!
> 
> As many subscribers may notice we have relaxed the formatting and attachment guidelines  just for this month to accommodate images and chinese characters which would otherwise get stripped from the email by our software filters. Surveillance and censorship are built into most daily and every computer interaction, but they remain  invisible and we forget about them until we run up against these restrictions or they change.
> 
> Rebecca touched upon several of the issues I was hoping would arise in this discussion - circumventing, or as Rebecca says playing, the censorship game; portraying gender and sexuality in media arts;  and alternative distribution networks.  I will post separately about censorship issues, and hopefully some of our other guests will chime in on distribution networks. Perhaps Isaac Leung has some impressions on representations of gender and sexuality as he sits on both the Boards of Videotage Media Arts Organization and  the Hong Kong Sex Education Association.
> 
> Im impressed by your use of the hand passed video camera or .pdf as a means of distribution amongst the trusted, and interested in the display of security by the bureau, but without really drastic action such as completely closing OV down as happened during the Expo.  Im seeing technology being creatively utilized in very different cultural contexts - from the OV Gallery in Shanghai to loose associations like the Free Art and Technology Lab,  http://fffff.at -  to route around roadblocks of censorship, patent law and copyright and support open values and information distribution.
> 
> One project that really resonated with your distribution method is that of FATLabs Aram Bartholl's 'Dead Drops’ -  http://deaddrops.com/ -  an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space. USB flash drives are embedded into walls, buildings and curbs accessable to anybody in public space. Everyone is invited to drop or find files on a dead drop. By plugging your laptop to a wall, house or pole you could anonymously share images and data and maybe viruses.
> 
> Serendipitously Videotage + MIACA are presenting Bartholls' SPEED SHOW concept ( http://fffff.at/speed-show ) in Hong Kong titled "Peep Show" on 18 November 2010 (Thur) form  7pm-10pm at the  Fresh Cyber Café.  http://videotage.org.hk/projects/20101118_PEEP.htm Titled  "Peep Show"  they are taking over a cybercafe for a few hours and installing net art on every computer, in what used to be called a "quick and dirty'' event. There is a certain thrill about the speed show manifest - like an underground rave, a flash mob, all the hipper for its ephemerality, and more desirable for its scarcity and exclusivity - but then how does one reach beyond the trusted or the knowing?
> or does the momentum build to a point where the formerly exclusive knowledge or perspective becomes mainstream?
> 
> best wishes
> 
> Melinda
> 
> Melinda Rackham
> melinda at subtle.net
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 15/11/2010, at 6:24 PM, rebecca catching wrote:
> 
>> Hi All! Very sorry for my tardiness in joining this thread. I have been dealing with something of a mini-crisis at our gallery due to a recent show which deals with gender issues called Shifting Definitions.
>> 
>> Basically we’ve been under intense surveillance from the cultural bureau because one of our artists was blacklisted by the national security bureau. On Wednesday, I had 10 different officials from various bureaus milling around the gallery and asking to see my passport. They made us take down the artworks of Shanghai based performance artist Wu Meng, whose “Gravity” 2010 photographic series addressed such issues as the Deng Yujiao case (a masseuse who stabbed an official who tried to rape her), child trafficking in Hebei and the issue of the “hei hukou” or undocumented people – who cannot obtain residence permits because they are considered illegal “second children.”
>> 
>> There was also the video work “Lady’s” 2000 by Beijing-based artist Cui Xiuwen. I am sure that some of you are familiar with her work which showed at the 2002 Guangzhou Triennale. In this piece, she takes a hidden camera into a seedy Beijing night club and videotapes the women primping and preening, counting their money and adjusting their clothes (and breasts) in front of the mirror. These “san-pei xiaojie,” are basically hostesses which accompany clients, to sing, dance and drink (sexual services are often but not always offered).
>> 
>> This issue of censorship made me think about the possibilities for new media art to transcend state surveillance networks. The cultural bureau took away a copy of Cui’s video, but of course I still have a copy in my computer which I can show to trusted individuals.
>> 
>> Wu Meng also came up with a clever solution to this issue. Wu Meng’s “Gravity” series was based on two earlier performances. The first one happened in a lane off of Weihai Lu in Shanghai as part of the Kiosk/Xiaomaibu project. Wu Meng wrote poems pertaining to the above mentioned social issues and others (including the recent problems at Foxconn and illegal land seizures) and printed them on clothes.
>> 
>> (Note: these are sensitive issues, but issues that have all been covered in the Chinese media and Wu Meng dealt with them in a very oblique way.)
>> 
>> She hung the clothes on a bamboo pole as part of site-specific physical theater performance in the lane. While lane residents will quite happily gossip about their neighbors, they are less keen to talk about thorny issues of social justice, but Wu Meng attempted to engage them in her light-hearted performance. After this show, she was scheduled to perform again at the German Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo. Despite demands from the national security bureau to cancel the performance, she performed anyway in a cloud of security guards and plainclothes police.
>> 
>> Even though this performance is intrinsically linked to “Gravity” (she used the same set of clothes for the photographs), we decided not to show the video of her lane performance for fear of having the whole show closed. But on the opening night, Wu Meng showed up with three small 15 X10cm video players which she passed around to friends. In this way we could share the video to those we trusted.
>> 
>> Ever since we were shut down for a month in May for showing Zhang Dali’s Second History series, we’ve become very good at playing “hide and seek”. During our last show, “Learning from the Literati,” we were told we couldn’t show foreign artists (the cultural bureau is surprisingly xenophobic!) and thus we compromised by showing the works of two artists Sayaka Abe and Girolamo Mari in the “non-public” space of the gallery. We built a three-channel video installation for Mari in our kitchen cupboard which turned out surprisingly well as his voice beckoned viewers to pop their heads around the corner and see what was in the kitchen. (Note: the cultural bureau had no knowledge of the content of the foreign artist’s works. They banned them based on the fact that they were foreign.)
>> 
>> Obviously anything that is an installation becomes harder to do when censorship is involved, but with the use of vpns (+youtube) and various file transfer software (such as yousendit), such “sensitive works” can be easily shared. If a painting is seized, then it is sometimes a number of weeks before it is returned to the gallery, but with digital media we have many more options.
>> 
>> PDF catalogues are also a good solution. Often we don’t want the catalogues floating around where they could get into the hands of the plainclothes art spies, but PDF versions help circumvent that problem.
>> 
>> Sadly, while digital technology makes censorship and seizures of work less painful (no physical or monetary loss  due to the confiscation of the actual object), it means that the art institution needs to make a decision as to who to trust – a somewhat stressful and paranoia inducing position.
>> 
>> If anyone has any similar experiences or useful strategies, I'd love to hear them and I hope to have the chance to meet you all when you're in Shanghai.
>> 
>> Best
>> Rebecca
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Rebecca Catching
>> Director OV Gallery
>> Shaoxing Lu 19C, by Shanxi Nan Lu
>> Shanghai, China, 200020
>> +86 (21) 5465-7768
>> Shanghai Mobile: +86 139 1637 3474
>> Skype: RebeccaCatching
>> rebeccacatching at gmail.com
>> rebeccacatching at ovgallery.com
>> 
>> 
>> 林白丽
>> 总监OV画廊
>> 中国上海
>> 绍兴路19丙，邮编200020
>> 办公室：021 5465 7769
>> 上海手机:13916373474
>> rebeccacatching at gmail.com
>> rebeccacatching at ovgallery.com
>> www.ovgallery.com
> <Wu Meng, Gravity, 2010, No 1.jpg><Wu Meng, Gravity, 2010, No 3.jpg><Wu Meng, Gravity, 2010, No 2.jpg><LADY'S, 2000, CUI XIU WEN 3.jpeg><LADY'S, 2000, CUI XIU WEN 2.jpeg><LADY'S, 2000, CUI XIU WEN  1.jpeg>
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
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>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> 
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