LOS ANGELES — If some reject the idea that culture can be engaged with through your smartphone, others are finding ways to do exactly that, particularly using Twitter.
Yesterday, Twitter announced that it will start censoring tweets in certain countries as a concession to governments as the service expands globally. Some, including Ai Weiwei, are not happy.
![Post image for Getting Naked for Ai Weiwei [NSFW]](http://hyperallergic.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ainudity8-HOME.jpg)
BEIJING — When Ai Weiwei’s assistant, Beijing artist Zhao Zhao, was brought in for questioning recently, the supposed charges were simple: distribution of pornography. The image in question was “One Tiger, Eight Breasts,” a shot of Ai with four young women, all of them naked. I first saw the photo in August 2010, when he tweeted a link to it and said “Trusting each other fully,” though the link to the image no longer works.
LONDON — We are now six days into the unrest that started in the Greater London neighborhood of Tottenham, spread throughout London and then erupted across England. London has been relatively — but tenuously — calmer than it was on Monday night, when looting, arson and violence escalated and reached new and disparate parts of the city … What’s been more interesting to me, however, has been the ways in which many denizens of England have established identities as non-rioters or anti-rioters and expressed criticism through social media and images circulated through it.
Seems so … just started about 45 minutes ago. First Google Plus and now this … hmmmm
Artist William Powhida has taken to Twitter for his latest project, “Everyone We’ve Never Met (from memory and imagination),” and he explains, “In another effort to broaden the project and to make the ideas of ‘Everyone’ mean more than Sheboygan and vacationers from Chicago in a way that I can still incorporate over the next two weeks, I am going to introduce it to Twitter and use this social media platform to ask people to share their memories through the drawings of others … “
My latest thoughts on the evolving discussion about the use of social media in art and where it should (in my opinion) go.
Critic Paddy Johnson just penned a column for L Magazine about something she terms “Twitter art,” by which she means (I assume) art that uses Twitter. I often enjoy her take on new media but in regards to her treatment of Twitter-related art, I think she misses the mark. Here’s why.
Is it time for the Western art world to join Chinese social media? That depends on your goals. “I don’t see any reason for anyone not directly involved in the Beijing/Shanghai art world to be on Weibo,” argued Robin Peckham. “It’s more about back-and-forth in-scene and doesn’t have much application in terms of PR and such, at least on the small scale of galleries and organizations.” Indeed, Chinese sites like Weibo and Douban, even as they gain more attention from the West, remain predominantly Chinese in both language and user base.
@MuseumNerd, that anonymous art personality on Twitter, has blogged an interesting graphic that lists the attendance to New York museums, their Twitter following, and how they measure up.
