Joyce Yu-Jean Lee's Firewall Internet Café Compares Google and Baidu Search Results

From February 9 to March 6, 2016, the Firewall Internet Café pop-up exhibition was held at 16B Orchard Street, New York City. The installation was crafted by Chinese-American artist Joyce Yu-Jean Lee in collaboration with technologist Dan Phiffer, recognized for his involvement with the "dark net" during the Occupy Wall Street movement. Attendees could conduct simultaneous searches on Google and Baidu, the Chinese search engine, yielding surprising results: "Mao" led to adult content, "firewall" revealed mythological visuals, and "Ai Weiwei" resulted in images of Exercycles and romantic partners. The project underscored the complexities of language and translation in censorship, highlighting Google's exit from China while Bing continues to operate. Baidu, with its state-sanctioned filtering, was also expanding into countries like Brazil, Indonesia, Egypt, and India. The exhibition had tangible consequences when a Chinese student in the U.S. was barred from joining a related panel. Positioned between Hester and Canal streets, the café provided Lower East Side visitors with insights into future cultural, economic, and political trends, transcending mere interactions with Chinatown. Global proxy hosts played a role in facilitating this thought-provoking initiative.