Reuben Negron, an artist who lives and works in Connecticut and New York, is best known for his realistic watercolor depictions of intimate moments, ranging from the raw to the vulnerable. His scenes often give me the impression of looking in a mirror. Negron’s series This House of Glass, “an intimate exposé on what we keep hidden from others – and in many cases, what we hide from ourselves,” and Dirty Dirty Love, an exploration of “sex, sexuality and identity as concepts … [through] interactions with individuals and couples in domestic and private settings,” were both shown as separate solo exhibitions at Like the Spice Gallery in Brooklyn.
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A Moscow court has ruled that four videos by punk-art-protest band Pussy Riot are “extremist,” and websites hosting the videos must remove them or pay fines.
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It’s a well-known truism that the internet in China is lousy. But business has to be done and file transfers have to be made. New media artists in particular, who can work with large complex files, would be at a loss if they relied on Western sites like YouSendIt (blocked), DropBox (blocked) and even Skype (routed through servers outside China). Any file over 50 MB can literally take hours to download from the web, if not longer. What’s a file-heavy new media artist or denizen to do? Enter Tencent QQ, China’s top instant messaging system.
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Internet users looking for information on Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s arrest will now find another roadblock put in their way, as Ai Weiwei-related hashtags are now being spammed by Chinese-language bots. Hashtags including #aiweiwei and #freeaiweiwei are being bombarded with semi-risque jokes and one-liners.
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