Panel Statement
Panel: @China, Virtually Speaking: A Virtual Roundtable Discussion on Emergent Practices in China
The 2008 Beijing Olympics was the chance for China to open its information highway to the West. Yet three years later media censorship prevails with an even tighter stronghold than before due to the recent uprisings in the Middle East. As China continues to play host to international cultural events, what are the asymmetries in the application of censorship? What is accepted? What is rejected? Based on her experiences as a curator for both the 2009 Shanghai eArts Festival, an electronic arts festival featuring performance, workshops and exhibitions and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, Ayas will discuss the current state of control in China’s creative industries and art centers. Excerpts from a documentary created by her students at New York University Shanghai campus will be screened.
- Defne Ayas is a curator and producer. Based mostly in Shanghai and sometimes in New York and Istanbul, Ayas works as a director of programs to Arthub Asia, a multi-disciplinary organization devoted to contemporary art creation in China and rest of Asia, and as an art history instructor at New York University in Shanghai. Ayas has also been a curator of PERFORMA since 2004, the biennial of visual art performance of New York City, where she has presented more than fifty live performances and performance-related programs with an international roster of artists, curators, and critical thinkers. Prior to joining PERFORMA, Ayas coordinated New Museum of Contemporary Art’s public- and new media-programming.