By the end of 2010, Google’s operations in China (www.google.cn) may be over and done. A presence in China’s carefully state controlled fiefdom in cyberspace since 2006, Google has reacted to a mid-December breach of its security, which, according to Google,  the Chinese government orchestrated.  Google and 20 other companies (including Yahoo) suffered the indignation of similar hacking incursions.

The attack targeted the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, though Google assures the hacking attempt was unsuccessful. As a result of this ungracious behavior on the part of their host, Google will stop its self-imposed policy of censoring searches as per Chinese law. In a letter from Google’s legal office, the internet firm stated that it is “no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.” As of press time, Google has granted its employees in China an extended holiday furlough.

The internet has always been cumbersome set of golden chains for China, essential for its economic expansion but also a powerful forum for political dissent and expression. While has been disappointing to see Google entertain Beijing’s requirements for censorship since 2006, it will be pleasing to see Google follow through on its indignant exit. By demonstrating that China can’t bully forms of foreign direct investment that require a degree of privacy and intellectual freedom to operate, Google’s departure from Chinese cyberspace may make other American and European firms less reluctant to show the same boldness in negotiations with the government. Unfortunately, China will probably respond by creating its own tamed search engines like www.baidu.com, which beats Google’s share of the Chinese market by a wide margin. So there’s a long road ahead for any truly unrestricted internet in China, and the cat and mouse game between government and dissident will continue. To distort Deng Xiaoping’s quote concerning free market reforms and economic development (”it doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice”), no matter how determined the cat, it can’t catch all the world’s mice.

Post Secret is an audience-driven interactive art project founded in 2003 by Washington, DC resident Frank Warren. The initial idea was simply to have strangers he approached around the city mail him postcards baring a secret. Since then, his simple request has generated four books (the fifth will be released this October), a blog and a touring exhibition that visits colleges and other major community centers around the country.

Last weekend, I was able to attend one of these events – which are typically a mixture of funny, touching, heart-wrenching and inspiring. What I found most interesting about the lecture Warren gave was not necessarily the types of secrets he has received over the years or even how unthinkably large the project has become – but rather how much it has meant to those who have sent in their secrets.

Warren, who has been called “the most trusted stranger in the world,”  recounts how his project has actually helped people who feel profoundly alone in the universe to feel a part of something. Post Secret, it seems, has likely saved the lives of many people who felt they had nowhere to turn. Evidence of this arrives in many different shapes – from an envelope containing a ripped up suicide note to cards that bear secrets about sexual abuse never confided in anyone, it is undoubtable that the project has made a difference in countless lives – not only of the senders, but of those people reading secrets on the blog or in one of the books and finding that, amazingly, someone else out there understands them.

Post Secret is, to me, a classic example of how one person’s idea can grow much larger than himself. Warren tapped into something necessary to many people. To desire to feel heard and understood, even if by a complete stranger, is apparently huge for all people, from here to Afghanistan (where Warren has actually received postcards from).  It is also an example of how art can touch people’s lives in inexplicable ways. In addition to Post Secret events, Warren has  organized Post Secret art shows over the years, which focus more on the visual aspect of the project. For these exhibits, the post cards are suspended between sheets of plexiglas so that viewers not only see the both sides of the cards, but the faces of viewers on the other side.

To search for a Post Secret event near you, visit the Facebook page, and be sure to check the blog weekly, as a new thematic postcard essay is posted every Sunday.

Signal Fire is worried that New York is SCREWED!
http://nypost-se.com

The Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG), in Los Angeles is a group devoted to preserving, collecting and exhibiting posters and other artworks relating to social change. Their mission is simple – to “reclaim the power of art to educate and inspire people to action”. Their focus is on poster art, of which they  have an extensive collection of over 70,000, but they do traveling and virtual exhibitions as well. 

Their website has an extensive collection of art and information. One of their current exhibits, entitled Subvertisements, focuses on the juxtaposition of “branding” and social causes. Most of the images in the exhibit are parodies of popular advertisements or well-known logos redone to present a political message. 

Their website is worth exploring because not only do they have a large collection and a unique and relevant message, they also seem interesting in reaching as many people as possible by having extensive online content. To support CSPG or donate posters, click here.

The DOTCOM project seeks to bring together teenagers from Armenia, Azerbaijan and America through online media. The ninety participants “will explore youth issues through the lens of media, ultimately creating their own documentaries, digital stories, short films, public service announcements and other media for distribution internationally”.

This is a very special project, especially for students from Armenia and Azerbaijan who, even 15 years after the ceasefire agreement, have little way of interacting or communicating with one another. But, it’s also important for the rest of us – young people tend to have a lot less baggage about global issues and see things in a different, often more progressive, light than adults. The blogs, videos and other types of media these students are creating will hopefully serve as resources to provoke thought and debate among adults as well as fellow students.

More information about DOTCOM is available on Global Voices, which has recently run several articles about the program, as well as on the Facebook page. To see updates about what the students are doing, visit the blogs.

Niels Van Tomme writes:

Investigating concepts such as national identity, gender, and class, German-born artist Andrea Geyer uses both fiction and documentary elements in her image and text-based works. Her multifaceted projects include Queen of the Artists’ Studios, The Story of Audrey Munson, an exploration of the continuous struggle of women through the life of one of New York’s most famous artist’s models. 9 Scripts From A Nation at War, her much-discussed collaboration with Sharon Hayes, Ashley Hunt, Katya Sander, and David Throne, is a room-sized, 10-channel video installation. Through this complex presentation, the artists reflect on the war in Iraq and how it constructs specific positions for individuals to fill, enact, speak from, or resist.

Focusing on the ongoing readjustment of cultural meanings and social memories in current politics, Geyer has constituted a revolutionary as well as poetic body of work. Living and working in New York, she has exhibited at numerous prestigious institutions worldwide, including the Secession in Vienna, the Whitney Museum in New York, TATE Modern In London, and Documenta 12 in Kassel.

Niels Van Tomme: Your latest project, Solemnly Proclaimed, is a collaboration with a group of 10 Canadian Inuit activists around the UN Declaration for the Rights for Indigenous Peoples. What was the starting point for this project?

Andrea Geyer: I must say as a disclaimer to start off with thtat Solemnly Proclaimed is on hold right now, because there is absolutely no funding for it. The idea came out of two projects I’ve worked on since about 2003. 9 Scripts From A Nation at War deals with the situation of individuals in relation to the war that is happening in Iraq. The other project is Spiral Lands, a sequence of works that address land rights and questions of identity and identity claims in North America, taking the Southwest as an example.

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