Back to work

I'm officially going back to work today. I'm not sure i'd be able to define what i mean by "work" given that, as my brother would tell you, my life is "a constant holiday anyway". Well, i do not exactly agree with him and i have until tonight to figure out what to say about the issue as i'm flying back to Berlin to give a talk at 9 to 5, a festival camp for those who feel that working should be more like living – and not the other way around. The day after that i should be taking part to Pecha Kucha Berlin, if only i could remember what i said i would talk about.

On Monday, i will go to Beijing for Get It Louder, an exhibition traveling around China to show and discuss design and art, mostly by "young creators with Chinese background working in different places around the world."

I have to thank the organizers for the invitation but i suspect that it's Aaajiao who has orchestrated it. I got to know Aaajiao over a year ago when he asked me if it was ok to translate the bits he liked on wmmna in chinese. I keep being amazed that he (who's already super busy working on more personal projects such as EventStructure, COrnerSoUnd, dorkbot Beijing) and his team are still translating even the longest posts with regularity while adding more Chinese-focused stories on their blog, which their ironically called we-need-money-not-art.

I will spend one week in Beijing so if you have any tips of place to see art, eat vegetarian and buy funky cosmetics, do let me know.

After that it's back in Berlin for a few days then off to Linz for the Ars Electronica festival and symposium. Looking forward to see everyone.

Then more mad carbon footprinting as i'll go to New York for my favourite event ever: Conflux, a festival for contemporary psychogeography, the investigation of everyday urban life through emerging artistic, technological and social practice.

Image on above on the left is by the collective Alterazioni Video. While in China, Alterazioni Video used an anonymizer (a tool which guarantees anonymity while surfing), which enabled them to draw up a list of words and phrases prohibited on the main search engines and instant messenger programmes in use in China, with the aim of working out the semantic basis behind these filters. The artists then put these terms back "into circulation", by printing the offending phrases on plastic bags, in English and Chinese, and handing them out free of charge on the streets of Shanghai, with the intention of restoring their full communicative potential. Now that's just one little aspect of the project Night Talk of the Forbidden City #2. The Fabio Paris gallery in Brescia (close to Milan) is opening on September 29 a show dedicated to the works the Milan-based collective developed in China.