Showing posts with label censorship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label censorship. Show all posts

Sunday, November 11, 2007

The power of K


The "14K" T-shirt of G.O.D. got trouble with the police concerning the infamous triad society bearing the same name. It's time to re-consider how much freedom of speech we have and the law we have to comply. Suddenly it's become an obsession of a number with which we all have lived for long time. People might argue "14K" could mean so many different things and all depend on the context. In spite of the restrction of the Societies Ordinance, how wrong/bad is such an idea to bear the name of a frequently media-featured triad society on the T-shirt before the police argued against its unlawful status. It's the law which is supposed to protect us from the crime of the triad. I suppose someone(police?) felt offended by the T-shirt. Then we always remember someone here can be offended by art too. It's just scary that a T-shirt design could put you in jail. It's hard to understand: for the same meaning, "14" is ok but "14K" isn't.

I think there are many other things to put on T-shirt which is lawful but offensive! The drawing above was made after the G.O.D. design, replacing the Chinese characters 拾肆K(14K) with 廿參條(Article 23 which was about the national security and its drafting caused half a million people to demonstrate against the government in 2003).

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Fage

Just completed a new work as a donation to Para/Site. It's acrylic colour on canvas, an image of sky made by writing for thousands times the simplified Chinese characters 发格 (fage) that I found in Wikipedia as "fuck in Shanghainese". There will be a preview in Pacific Place III from today to Oct 29 but the venue management found the title too offensive and censored it. So, you will only see the painting with the clean title "Fage" there.
It's the first piece of a brand new series and has never been exhibited. Also not sure it will be exhibited again if it's sold!