- Venue
- Constance Howard Research Centre, Goldsmiths College
- Starts
- Tuesday, September 6, 2011
- Ends
- Thursday, October 6, 2011
- Address
- Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles Goldsmiths, University of London Deptford Town Hall Building (Basement) New Cross Road, London SE14 6AF Telephone: +44(0)20 7717 2210
- Location
- London
‘REDIRECTION and NETWORK TIMEOUT’ is a solo exhibition by Jenny Steele showcasing works from her residency at the 501 Artspace, Chongqing. Steele’s project researched into how locals navigate physical and digital space, particularly exploring issues of governmental censorship and control. She also investigated how ancient Ming Dynasty city layouts reflected the current hierarchical control imposed online by the government of the PRC, continuing to control inhabitant’s movements in both digital and physical space.Within the PRC, Western social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, YouTube and Posterous are banned, as well as numerous sites that are deemed with content that is sexual, provocative or challenging the PRC government. When a user tries to access these sites, they are redirected to a previous page, or a screen flashes up that tells the ‘netizen’ that the network has ‘timed out’. Subsequently, Chinese users are kept separate from a large majority of the supposedly libertarian internet, and they have set up their own versions of social networking sites for Fanfou (Twitter), Renren (Facebook) and QQ (Twitter, Facebook and MSN hybrid). The aforementioned networks are also governed by PRC officials, removing posts and users that are inappropriate. This process of ‘redirection and network timeout’ divides PRC online users, from all other international users, reflecting the countries historical approach to town planning that controls movement.