3X3X6: Shu Lea Cheang (2019) [English/Chinese]

“3x3x6 is the title of Shu Lea Cheang’s project representing Taiwan at the 58th Venice Biennale and hosted at the Palazzo delle Prigioni–a Venetian prison from the sixteenth century in operation until 1922. 3x3x6 is also the standardised architecture of industrial imprisonment for ‘sexual criminals’ and ‘terrorists’ in the West: 3×3 meters, monitored by 6 cameras 24 hours a day. Shu Lea Cheang investigates historical reports based on ten cases of subjects incarcerated because of gender or sexual dissent and uses trans-punk fiction, queer, and anti-colonial imaginations to hack the history of sexuality as well as contemporary technologies of surveillance.” (from back cover)

With contributions by Matthew Fuller, Paul B. Preciado, Dean Spade, and Jackie Wang.

Curated and edited by Paul B. Preciado
Publisher Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, 2019
Open access
ISBN 9789860588798, 9860588791
211 pages

Exhibition
WorldCat

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Ruha Benjamin: Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (2019)

“From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity.

Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to the racism of a previous era. Presenting the concept of the “New Jim Code,” she shows how a range of discriminatory designs encode inequity by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies; by ignoring but thereby replicating social divisions; or by aiming to fix racial bias but ultimately doing quite the opposite. Moreover, she makes a compelling case for race itself as a kind of technology, designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice in the architecture of everyday life.

This illuminating guide provides conceptual tools for decoding tech promises with sociologically informed skepticism. In doing so, it challenges us to question not only the technologies we are sold but also the ones we ourselves manufacture.”

Publisher Polity Press, Cambridge, 2019
ISBN 9781509526406, 1509526404
x+285 pages

Interview with author (Sanjana Varghese, Guardian, 2019)

Author
Publisher
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The Handbook of Courage: Cultural Opposition and its Heritage in Eastern Europe (2018)

“The Courage Handbook ushers its reader into the world of the compellingly rich heritage of cultural opposition in Eastern Europe. It is intended primarily to further a subtle understanding of the complex and multifaceted nature of cultural opposition and its legacy from the perspective of the various collections held in public institutions or by private individuals across the region.

Through its focus on material heritage, the handbook provides new perspectives on the history of dissent and cultural non-conformism in the former socialist countries of Central, Eastern, and South-eastern Europe.

The volume is comprised of contributions by over 60 authors from a range of different academic and national backgrounds who share their insights into the topic. It offers focused discussions from comparative and transnational perspectives of the key themes and prevailing forms of opposition in the region, including non-conformist art, youth sub-cultures, intellectual dissent, religious groups, underground rock, avantgarde theater, exile, traditionalism, ethnic revivalism, censorship, and surveillance.”

Edited by Balázs Apor, Péter Apor and Sándor Horváth
Publisher Institute of History, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, 2018
ISBN 9789634161424, 9634161421
634 pages

Project website
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF, PDF (10 MB)
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