Blind Spot

The Great Firewall of China is known around the world for the extreme limitations that it places on the internet capabilities of its citizens. Thousands upon thousands of singular words, terms and phrases appear on the GFW. Everything from political terminology to human anatomy (such as penis and vagina) is censored to varying degrees. In 2007 net-artist Miao Ying set out to draw attention to the absurd level of censorship happening on the inside of the Chinese Firewall, as well as the ludacris amount of manpower that goes into keeping these things censored. Firstly, Ying acquired a copy of a 1869 paged Mandarin dictionary. Secondly she got to looking up every single word with google.cn. Any time a word that she came across was censored, she placed a piece of white tape across the word and continued on. The arduous process lasted about three months and some of these terms came as little surprise. Knowing that the Tiananmen Square Protests are blocked from the public eye is unsurprising. What IS surprising are the lengths the Chinese Government will go to to keep such things hidden. For example, 1989, the year the protests took place is also blocked. 64 is also blocked on account of it being one of the units of the Chinese Army that was stationed at the protests. Many of the terms are in relation to information surrounding major political events in the last half-century. Be it people, events, places, dates or in some cases even vague statements, little to none of it gets through the firewall. Miao Ying first shared this piece with the world following her graduation, and, despite the restrictions of google.cn and the fact that blogger.com was blocked, many bloggers, artists and intellectuals on the same side of the firewall took notice. Blind Spot is interesting for a great many reasons, one of which is the relatively low-tech manner in which this net.art piece was created, it couldn't have been done any other way. Any effort to complete the same project with more intervention from technology would detract from the original purpose of the piece, to outline the ridiculous amount of work that goes into keeping words out of peoples mouths. It is artistic in its process, it is artistic in its simplicity, it is artistic because Miao Ying felt as though she were personally at war withcensorship.

There are some terms that are blocked directly, and others that seem to be blocked as a means to prevent further dissent. Terms such as: Forcing the king to abdicate, Candlelight Vigil, Corruption, Insurrection, Sell out the country, Riot, Public Opinion (Reverse Public Opinion, too), Tyranny and Fall into enemy hands. Taiwan Independence, Tibet Independence, Mongolian Independence and even Fact Independence are all blocked as well. If you thought you might be able to look up the Democratic movement beating down the Communist army, you would be wrong. Terms surrounding militarization like police, military police, transport police, CCTV and operative are all blocked as well.

And some of the terms make no sense whatsoever. Some examples: If you wanted to sing the praises of someone, you would have to look somewhere that was not the GFW. On it's own this example seems like it doesn't matter but one one starts looking further and further into the blocked terminology, it becomes increasingly apparent how much censorship of daily life is happening. Terms like Night Club, Secretary, Politics, Disciple, Truthful, Kind and Tolerant,Toad and even Open Magazine. An argument could be made for a handful of these terms without a doubt, but there is little room for excuse when it comes to the censorship of the word truth.

A quote from Miao Ying
The first internet piece I made was trying to address censorship with an end goal of bringing change to it. Over the years, I feel like censorship has changed me instead. I was sad, angry, and finally accepted it, like a phase of a breakup. Censorship is like a nasty boyfriend/girlfriend you cannot tame. It's even worse than that; it's actually more like developing Stockholm syndrome—a traumatic bonding. This kind of love takes place in an isolated environment where the hostage-taker—who makes the rules—becomes so powerful that you gradually fall in love with them.