by Michael Anthony Farley on February 26, 2016
This story has all the elements of a 1990s cyberpunk thriller: hackers, foreign government agents, and multinational corporations. But this is terrifying reality in 2016. A collaboration between American and Chinese activists, artists, and programmers has resulted in FIREWALL, a pop-up internet cafe/art installation that lays bare the censored version of the internet mainland Chinese citizens have access to. When visitors search a term at one of the consoles, they see the results in both Google and state-controlled Chinese equivalent Baidu.. That gesture appears innocent enough—after all, FIREWALL merely presents the internet as curated by the Chinese state. Those very censors, however, seem pretty unhappy about it.
Read the full article →
by Michael Anthony Farley on February 22, 2016
This weekend’s must-see events include a lot of AFC’s friends and favs, from Friday’s discussion on hacktivism as part of Joyce Yu-Jean Lee’s project FIREWALL Internet Cafe to fundraiser events featuring the work of AFC’s own Matthew Leifheit and F.A.G. Bar artist Macon Reed on Saturday and Sunday, respectively. But during the week, do check out solo shows from Leanne Shapton (Tuesday) and Sherrie Levine (Wednesday). Thursday’s all about dystopia, with sci-fi cityscapes by Romain Erkiletlian and found hyper-generic product packaging from Maryam Jafri. Hack on, New York.
Read the full article →