fromCONCENTRATE

In November 2009, television news reports from the day of the fall of the Berlin Wall returned to our screens, 20 years on, like retinal after images. The Berlin Wall had not been a mere boundary marker but a globally visible, physical, manifestation of a global scale political impasse. The transgression and fall of the wall are now seen as emblematic of the groundswell political changes sweeping Eastern Bloc countries at that time.

In advance of our trip to Berlin for Transmediale, I want to consider some contemporary boundaries and how they manifest.

What (if anything) might contemporary boundaries be symbolic manifestations of?

A couple of months ago I saved a link to a ‘Virtual Berlin Wall’ project but now that I return to the link it directs me to the ‘Google’ web search home page – this anomaly takes this blog post off at a tangent…

Virtual Berlin wall launched to commemorate walls http://tinyurl.com/ydl2oqp 3:47 AM Nov 9th from web

There are three possible reasons for this unexpected outcome:

1. – it is simply a dead link and ‘Google’ is the ‘in browser’ default
2. – this is a smartass conceptual art joke
3. – the ‘error’ is some kind of freudigital slip

I choose to believe all three of the above reasons to be correct.

Google is a kind of global digital interfacing membrane, which applies top secret filtration algorithms in order to control, administer and record the exchange of information on the internet.

Today’s withdrawal of Google from the Chinese ‘market’ on grounds of ongoing state censorship is seen by political commentators as a gesture towards a western democratic moral and political highground.

Despite Google’s seeming omnipotence, the vast majority of internet users seem to perceive Google, less as an oppressive ‘wall’ rather, as a benevolent ‘gateway’. For many, Google is a symbol of free, easy access to information and, as such, Google is more analogous in popular consciousness to the Brandenburg Gate than the Berlin Wall.

Brandenburg Gate image used under licence from Wikimedia Commons.

Links:

Google and China: a cynical ploy or a principled stand? – Charlie Beckett, Director POLIS

Google and China: What’s the real story, and where does it go from here? – Mac Slocum. O’Reilly Radar