"Revealing Blind Spots and Circumventing Censorship: Internet Community Projects": A presentation with Christoph Wachter & Mathias Jud November 12, 2009

Swiss-born Internet artists Christoph Wächter & Mathias Jud have developed the "pici-server," a tool, which breaks not only China's and Iran's censorship of certain web pages but also indicates the increasing control over the internet within Europe. In their project Zone*Interdite, they virtually re-construct the restricted military zone in Guantanamo Bay from information collected on the internet. The media art project questions ones own concepts between power and powerlessness. Zone*Interdite takes a sounding of the restricted terrain through virtual reconstructions. Behind a reflex of right and wrong (Friend or Foe? Patriot or traitor?) appear ideas of sovereign reflections.

The Ex-Files series includes lectures and visual presentations situated at the intersection of artistic and scholarly approaches to understanding new dimensions of globalization. The globalized exploitation of natural resources, the circulation of goods, people, and information, and various attempts to block or channel these flows are the focal point of this series of events. They will draw our attention to nation states' human rights infringements and the creation of places and passages where national rules are abrogated, as well as to endeavors involving space. These uncanny trespassing and immunization strategies and maneuvers, constituting and depending on trade zones, war zones and, literally, exterritorial space, tend to be kept unremarked and hidden.

Sponsored By: Institute for Advanced Study
Additional Sponsors: Art History, Dept of
Center for German and European Studies
Department of Art
Department of German, Scandinavian, and Dutch
European Studies Consortium
Institute for Global Studies
Weisman Art Museum
Additional sponsorship by the Consulate General of Switzerland in Chicago

Official Website: http://www.zone-interdite.net/