Intervention by Johannesburg Artist Jose Ferreira

As covered by Carine Zaayman on Artthrob, the Very Real Time project launched its second phase at the Drill Hall (Point Blank Gallery, downtown Jozi) this past weekend, hosting, “Two panels of selected speakers… chaired by Gregg Smith and …an intervention by Johannesburg based artist, Jose Ferreira.”

This work consists of a series of journeys and a garment. Appearing to be an ordinary overall, it unfolds and translates into various forms, provoking unusual relationships. It is at once a vessel for shelter, a protective unit, and gatherer of ephemera. Â…The focal point of the work is to extricate new readings of social interactions in this urban context that may have become accepted, habitual and even suspicious. The work is an exploration of urban survival, self-preservation, and a dreaming of possibilities. …My intention is to make a work that embraces the multiplicity of an urban Johannesburg experience. [blogged by nathaniel on nathanielstern.com] Continue reading

Secretly Reshelving 1,984 Copies of 1984

Last week, Danah Boyd blogged about the Reshelving Project. In today’s Boston Globe, the project was reviewed in The Ministry of Reshelving by Joshua Glenn.

“EARLIER THIS SUMMER, Jane McGonigal and three dinner companions were chatting about doublespeak, censorship, and surveillance when someone idly commented that George Orwell’s dystopian novel ”1984″ should be reclassified as Non-Fiction, or even filed under Current Events. ”Five seconds later, I said, ‘Wait–we could actually do that,”‘ recounts McGonigal. So last Monday she took the lead in launching the Ministry of Reshelving project, an ambitious, opt-in performance piece whose goal it is to secretly reshelve 1,984 copies of Orwell’s book in bookstores in all 50 states. Continue reading

Cooperation, Politics and Activism

This idea is so brilliant it gives me chills.

Blogging is popular in China, enough so that the government is paying more attention now to what people say on them. Numerous blogs have been shut down, either from government pressure or just by Chinese host providers fearful of its users possibly breaking the law. In addition, an April 2005 law mandates that all non-profit website owners must register their sites with their real personal information. The recent revelation that Microsoft was censoring various terms in the blogging service they offer in China only added to the fear that free speech on the Chinese web would be harder and harder to find. Some Chinese bloggers managed to put their websites on offshore servers, but the language and cost issues are prohibitive for many.

Adopt A Chinese Blog is an end-run around official censorship. How? By making the hosting of Chinese blogs a distributed, collaborative process:
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Filling in the Blanks

“Performance artist Daniela Sneppova’s text trans-mute has been published in the online journal ephemera as an interactive reading/translating experience. The following introduces the essay of her process oriented experiment - showing an understanding of the performative in general as an active communicative process…

“This textual representation moves between the inspiration - the triggers that led to the creation of the performance - and a description of what the audience participated in. The blacked out, missing text performs a number of functions. It refers to the acts of censorship by many Eastern European countries before the fall of Communism: Censors frequently obscured words or phrases in personal correspondence sent between nations, families and friends.
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