Chinese government blocks youtube

The Tibetan uprising has not been so violent in over a 20 years – the attention to the Tibetan government in exile during the Olympic games 2008 will be followed by protests worldwide and censorship will be undermining freedom in mainland China. Just one day after the protest in Lhasa, the Chinese government has decided to block access to the video sharing platform Youtube after riots in Lhasa have been reported with a dozen of videoclips.

Belarus Free theater

Living in a dictatorship regime, often unable to travel, performing in apartments and in vacant buildings throughout Minsk – using a phone number to communicate with their audience, who ventures to the outskirts of the city to watch the performances of the Belarus Free theater company. This description only scratches the surfaces of daily life of the theater makers. The technological encounter performs with a different form, not as consumer product, but that of activator, tactical spy, the feature of the global flow of information capital, often unrecognized.

This article is describing the state of urgency, the harsh existence and astonishment for such cases where limitations in the freedom of expression are daily routine in one of the most forgotten corners of Europe. Read the full article here

Transmediale cancels Janez Jansa event

In summer 2007, three artists officially changed their name to Janez Jansa. The Signature event context for the Transmediale art event wanted to address the marking of the Holocaust memorials in Berlin in response to this years’ festival theme CONSPIRE, which seeks to, “question, subvert, undermine and bypass the unspoken rules, hidden codes of conduct and assumed truths entrenched within our information driven communication cultures and ideological belief structures.” The act of banning such a performance felt into the ground of what conspiracy really means and has suffered most definitely from an act of censorship.

Transmediale festival director Stephen Kovats has canceled the opening event of the artistic group Janez Jansa, Janez Jansa and Janez Jansa. Such most accurate reason for banning this performance should shed even more light on attaching signatures to public monuments as well as to artistic freedom of expression.

Their performance consisted in walking with a GPS device between the memorial corridor in Berlin, both virtually and physically marking the path of the murdered Jews in Berlin. Anticipating the opening of the Trandmediale and the impossibility to disclose officially their engagement, signature of memory and signature of freedom enter into controversy.

Click here to watch their their signature event context