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Tuesday, January 24, 2017 at 12:45 p.m.

Details from Mythological Time by Sun Xun (2016)

Courtesy Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Censorship can look at lot different depending on your vantage point. To observers in the West, the policies of the Chinese government the routine harassment of journalists and activists, the suppression of internet access, the wholesale erasure of certain words and events from the nation's history are abhorrent. The fact that the country's most internationally celebrated contemporary artist is Ai Weiwei, whose years-long house arrest galvanized the art world, is a case in point. But within China's borders, life continues, if not flourishes: Facebook can be accessed with simple VPN software, and political discourse carries on, with prohibited words replaced by puns to circumvent the restrictive firewall.

The nine newly commissioned works featured in "Tales of Our Time" at the Guggenheim highlight this contradiction of context. The Chinese, Hong Kong, and Taiwanese artists in the show all set out to redraw and complicate the narrative of China, which, in the case of Guggenheim's audience, is one that has been perceived from the West. The title of the show comes from a book by Lu Xun, a renowned Chinese writer whose work can be read as a symbol for China's fast-changing political landscape at the turn of the twentieth century: ancient myths and fables recast for a modern audience. Perhaps inspired by Lu, the China on display in the Guggenheim is one that emerges through history, however revisionist, and what we make of it.

Taxi, by Taiwanese artist Chia-En Jao, illustrates this strategy. The video installation follows Jao's conversations with Taipei cabbies as they drive him to historically fraught sites in the city: the Presidential Office; the Grand Hotel; the former home of Lin Yi-hsiung, a leader of the democratization movement whose mother and daughters were murdered while under 24-hour police surveillance. As one driver regales his passenger with details from the incident, his conversation drifts to his own loose recollections from 1980. None of the segments show the destination or much else of the route, and conversations are interrupted by a phone call from a mistress or chatter about weekend hobbies. What's important is not the real historical site, but the personal narratives it has spawned and intersected.

Kan Xuan, a Chinese artist who has studied in the Netherlands, also uses the personal to frame the historical. For Ku? L Er, which means "to circle the land" in Northern Chinese colloquial speech, Kan documented sites of 1,010 ancient cities. Many settlements have been eroded beyond recognition, with the frame of Kan's camera being the only visible border left. Kan's hand-drawn maps of the sites are projected nearby, blurring the lines between the real and remembered and highlighting the disorienting quality one's personal narratives bring to experience.

Not all works in the show are as nuanced. At the time of my visit, packs of visitors were swarming around Sun Yuan and Peng Yu's installation, trying to take photos of an industrial machine engaged in the Sisyphean task of squeegeeing up a blood-like substance that is constantly seeping back to its original place. Sun and Peng's beautiful, dancing machine and its senseless task is thought-provoking, though the "blood" can't help but remind of the painful yet familiar tale of the Chinese lives that have been sacrificed for the country's breakneck pace of progress.

Zhou Taos Land of the Throat (2016)

Courtesy the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Collection

In recent years, the Guggenheim has been expanding and diversifying its offerings of Chinese art. Its 2014 exhibition "Wang Jianwei: Time Temple," for example, was the Beijing-based artist's first solo show in America. Though Wang's work has been part of the Chinese avant-garde since the 1980s, his performances, installations, and new-media pieces have never chimed with the commercialism that lifted much Chinese art to fame on the international circuit. The driving force behind this effort is the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation, whose $10 million donation sponsored a series of shows including "Tales of Our Time" and a forthcoming exhibition in 2017 titled "Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World." One can't help but wonder how a Hong Kong foundation understands the notion of Chinese territory, or whether this reimagining of Chinese history is more readily staged in an American museum than a Chinese one.

Xiaoyu Weng, the Robert H.N. Ho associate curator who organized the show, tells me that Chinese censorship of artists is an "urban myth": "It's a very voyeuristic perception from the West, that artists in China would not have freedom to say what they want to say." For Weng, the exact aim of this exhibition is to challenge these established perceptions of Chinese art. In putting the show together, she looked for artists who are not simply market-driven, nor producing work that is only dominated by politics, despite their addressing of sociopolitical issues. The fact that many of them have spent time abroad helps to unmask a myth of another kind: that Chinese art develops in isolation from international discourses.

According to Weng, "Tales" offers only a glimpse at the deeper debates taking place in China. "There's actually a constant discussion ongoing among Chinese intellectuals about what defines modern China," she explains. "If you really go into China, you can go much deeper into the topics brought up in this exhibition." In its best moments, the show presents voices from the inside without resorting to over-translation. The joy, and challenge, of this exhibition seems to lie precisely in the tension between what is experienced inside China and what is seen from the West. In that respect, the show's success is twofold: how its international stage can shape the artists' place in Chinese discourse, and how its stories can challenge what the American audience thinks it has seen.

Tales of Our Time Through March 10 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum 1071 Fifth Avenue guggenheim.org

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Chinese Artists Confront Censorship, Memory, and History at the Guggenheim - Village Voice

Mashable

Trump nominee pledges to shield NOAA climate scientists from intimidation, censorship Mashable SEATTLE Climate scientists throughout the federal government are fearing an onslaught of budget cuts and censorship policies from the President Donald Trump administration, with sweeping changes expected governing how climate science is funded ... and more »

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Trump nominee pledges to shield NOAA climate scientists from intimidation, censorship - Mashable

This spring, Cherry Hill High School will perform a different kind of Ragtime- without any racist or offensive language included. The school explains in an official statement:

The Cherry Hill High School East community is approaching the production of this show from a learning disposition. Within our educational community we have been engaging in a dialogue regarding the offensive language in the show. We are indebted to the Cherry Hill African American Civic Association as well as individuals in our community for joining us in this discussion regarding the use of bigoted language in the script. After a very open and productive meeting between representatives from the East Staff and the Cherry Hill African American Civic Association, we confirmed the decision to remove offensive language from the enacted script. In addition, all students at Cherry Hill High School East will participate in learning activities stemming from Ragtime in an effort to use our history to further expose the ugliness of racism. We apologize for any negative impact that the potential inclusion of the racist language had on members of our community and we are thankful that we have educational leaders, student leaders, and community leaders with whom we can partner when concerns arise.

Now original star of Ragtime Brian Stokes Mitchell has weighed in on the matter. He tells Howard Sherman of the Arts Integrity Initiative: "To take the ugly language out of Ragtime is to sanitize it and that does it a great disservice. People should be offended by those words. But it's not done in a way that glorifies the people saying it. Rather, it allows the show to take people on a journey. It's Coalhouse's journey, it's Sarah's journey, it's the journey of the 20th century and it's still our journey today. The n-word is still thrown around without empathy."

"Ragtime is about how we get through ugliness, how we talk together, work together, get through it together," he continues. "The show takes us to the next steps. That's what our country needs to do. See this show, acknowledge the language, but don't censor it. This show results in catharsis because of what it says, and what the audience of all kinds of people experience together."

Click here to read the full article.

The rest is here:
Brian Stokes Mitchell Weighs In on RAGTIME Censorship: 'It's a Great Disservice' - Broadway World

Like many great writer-directors, Asghar Farhadi has spent most of his career ringing variations on a theme: In a classic Farhadi setup, fissures within a family or other intimate group are thrown into relief when a trauma or a primal conflict brings out previously hidden aspects of the main characters. Thanks to their fine-grained realism and the intimacy of their settings, his films convey a great deal of information about life in contemporary Iran, particularly among Tehran's educated and artistic elite.

The filmmaker also has a good ear for the way men and women communicate, and a sharp eye for the politics of gender. His latest, The Salesman, is set in the world of theater in which Farhadi started out. Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) and Emad (Shahab Hosseini), a youngish married couple, are starring in their theater group's production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman when a violent sexual attack shakes Rana's world, propelling the normally sensitive and supportive Emad into a state of macho rigidity.

Farhadi met with me in the Manhattan office of The Salesman's U.S. distributor, Cohen Media Group, to talk about his latest work, how the ambiguity of his films is both an advantage and a disadvantage when dealing with Iran's infamous censors, and why he would rather make films in Iran than anywhere else in the world, despite the difficulties.

Your films provide a humanistic window into life in Iran, partly because the characters are so easy to relate to and partly because of their sheer artfulness and moral complexity. Do you think they help counteract the dominant narrative in countries like ours, that tend to portray Iran as a scary, dangerous place full of religious and political extremists?

When I make my films, I'm not consciously thinking that I want to show a correct image of my people to the world, but automatically this happens, and this satisfies me. The situations that characters are put into in these films are situations that could happen anywhere in the world. The look that I have onto the characters is a look of empathyeven the characters who are at fault. Perhaps this is something that people around the world like, when you can put yourself into the shoes of others. This is the most important thing to me. When I was working in theater as well, when I was writing plays, I was also seeking ways that the audience could empathize with the characters.

Censorship has been famously difficult for some Iranian directors, most notably Jafar Panahi. In your Q&A after the New York Film Festival press screening for A Separation, you talked about how you ensure that your films can be seen in Iran spite of the censors. You said: One way is, I dont speak loudly in my films. Another way is that I don't force my judgments on the audience. The way you make the audience think for themselves about what is happening is one of the signature features of all of your films, and I've always assumed it was an artistic choice. But are you saying you developed that way of making films in part to avoid being censored?

I believe art in the face of censorship is like water in the face of stone. When you place an obstacle like a stone in the way of water, the water finds its way around it. This doesn't mean agreeing with censorship, of course. But one of the things that censorship does, without wanting to do itone of the unintended consequencesis that it makes you creative. Censorship in the long run has very bad consequences, and it can kill creativity, but in the short run it could make people creative.

And is one of the ways it has made you creative by inspiring you to make your points more indirectly?

It makes you speak vicariously and indirectly. I don't like to speak directly in cinema anyway. When you speak directly, you're forcing something on the audience. You don't let the audience discover and reach [its own] conclusion.

How does censorship work in Iran, exactly? I understand it's not like there are clear rules you have to follow, but more of a shifting landscape, depending on who you're dealing with?

Censorship has different shapes. There's an official censorship: There's a committee that reads your script and gives you comments. Those people, throughout the years, because they have become familiar with cinema through watching films, they have become more lenient. But there's also an unofficial censorship. When the film is finished and screened, then people who look at everything with a political eye take their magnifying glass and look into the details. They look for the things that might be against them, and they start to make some interpretations of the film that have nothing to do with the film. And this damages the relationship that the ordinary audience has with the film and it manipulates their minds.

Do you have to change your film in response to what they say?

No. I don't change the film.

So how does what they say damage the film's relationship with the audience?

For instance, they make it about a specific subject matter when it's actually not about that subject matter. They divert the minds of the audience. When the film A Separation was screened, those people who always see things from a political angle started saying that this film is encouraging emigrationleaving Iran. This is very strange to me, because I had a character of a woman who wanted to leave and a character of a man who insisted on staying, and the film was a challenge between the two. I don't think that anyone, by seeing A Separation, would be encouraged to leave the country. In fact, the opposite has happened: Many people returned to their parents [in Iran] after seeing the film. But this wrong discussion resulted in very wrong discussions afterward, with people talking about emigration. They don't make me change the film, but they change my audience's relationship to the film.

Link:
Asghar Farhadi on The Salesman, Censorship, & More - slantmagazine

January 23, 2017 China's Communist party oversees a vast apparatus designed to censor online content deemed politically sensitive

China has announced a 14-month campaign to "clean up" internet service providers and crack down on devices such as virtual private networks (VPNs) used to evade strict censorship.

The ruling Communist party oversees a vast apparatus designed to censor online content deemed politically sensitive, while blocking some Western websites and the services of internet giants including Facebook, Twitter and Google.

It passed a controversial cybersecurity bill last November, tightening restrictions on online freedom of speech and imposing new rules on service providers.

But companies and individuals often use VPNs to access the unfettered internet beyond China's "Great Firewall".

Telecom and internet service providers will no longer be allowed to set up or rent special lines such as VPNs without official approval, the ministry of industry and information technology said Sunday.

Its "clean up" campaign would last through March 2018, it said in a statement on its website.

The announcement comes days after President Xi Jinping extolled globalisation and denounced protectionism in a keynote speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he insisted that China was committed to "opening up".

China's internet access services market has grown rapidly, and the "first signs of disorderly development are also appearing, creating an urgent need for regulation", the statement said.

The new rules were needed to "strengthen internet information security management", it added.

IT expert Li Yi told the Global Times newspaper, which often takes a nationalistic tone, the new regulations were "extremely important".

While some multinationals such as Microsoft needed VPNs to communicate with overseas headquarters, other companies and individuals "browse overseas internet pages out of illegal motivations", Li said.

A 2015 report by US think tank Freedom House found that China had the most restrictive Internet policies of 65 countries it studied, ranking below Iran and Syria.

China is home to the world's largest number of internet users, which totalled 731 million as of December, the government-linked China Internet Network Information Center said Sunday.

Explore further: China blocks VPN services that skirt online censorship

2017 AFP

China is blocking VPN services that let users skirt online censorship of popular websites such as Google and Facebook amid a wider crackdown on online information, tech companies and specialists said Friday.

A Chinese official says that "harmful information" must be managed following reports that China is blocking VPN services that let users access censored online content.

(AP)Iranian authorities have blocked many foreign-based virtual private networks, or VPNs, severely restricting access to many websites.

Chinese authorities who have long sought to limit access to information have reinforced the so-called Great Firewall of China, Internet firms say, frustrating businesses and raising activist concerns.

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are legal and increasingly popular for individuals wanting to circumvent censorship, avoid mass surveillance or access geographically limited services like Netflix and BBC iPlayer. Used by ...

In recent months there have been many reports of Australians covertly signing up for the US streaming service Netflix, using fake postcodes and software workarounds to fool its geo-blocking system.

Skirted on all sides by snow-clad pine forests, Latvia's remote Lake Ninieris would be the perfect picture of winter tranquilitywere it not for the huge drone buzzing like a swarm of angry bees as it zooms above the solid ...

When Singapore pulls the plug on its 2G mobile phone network this year, thousands of people could be stuck without a signaldigital have-nots left behind by the relentless march of technology.

Evangelists for driverless cars see a bright future coming down the road: thousands of lives saved, countless driving hours freed up, cityscapes transformed with traffic jams vanquished.

A Northwestern University team developed a new computational model that performs at human levels on a standard intelligence test. This work is an important step toward making artificial intelligence systems that see and understand ...

The age of big data has seen a host of new techniques for analyzing large data sets. But before any of those techniques can be applied, the target data has to be aggregated, organized, and cleaned up.

Faster recharging lithium batteries could be developed after scientists figured out why adding charged metal atoms to tunnel structures within batteries improves their performance.

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China cracks down on bids to bypass online censorship - Phys.Org