Caochangdi 404 was a commissioned artistic performance held simultaneously in Caochangdi, a migrant and artist community
in Beijing, and the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in Sydney. Using a Skype video link between the two communities,
the performance looked at Internet censorship in China and the difficulty of crossing the Great Firewall into other countries. It
simultaneously addressed a more basic problem: we don't speak each other's languages.

Drawing from the conceptual art tradition of Lawrence Weiner, Yoko Ono, Zhang Peili and Fluxus, I provided a set of simple
instructions in both Mandarin and English for a conversational exchange between participants in both locations, utilizing
Skype, Twitter and Sina Weibo. In Beijing, I used the same computer setup available to lower middle class Chinese, with a
small netbook and a USB modem.

As expected, the connection was fuzzy--we could rarely see each other's faces clearly--, and we often had to shout at the
screen to be heard. Many of the Chinese attendees, for whom English was a rarely-used second language, were shy to
participate. The Australian side spoke little to no Mandarin. At one point, we lost the connection entirely. It was a Dadaist
exercise in futility.

The conversational exchange was as difficult and awkward as I'd anticipated, having attempted and failed to use Skype so
many times before in my daily work routine in China. Indeed, while the 404 in Caochangdi 404 references the address
conventions in this village without street names (FAKE Design, for instance, is located at Caochangdi 258), it also points to the
ubiquitous 404 lost connection error frequently encountered in China when accessing foreign web sites.

Image copyright Phu Tang.

Caochangdi 404 was a performative experiment that used linguistic, cultural and technological barriers as a medium to
question the role of technology in connecting a world where only one third of the population has Internet access and over a
billion have access under highly restricted conditions. With a budget of around 100 USD, I created a bridge between two
vastly different worlds--a migrant, not-legal community on the fringe of Beijing and an established, prestigious art center in the
heart of Sydney--, and I invited people to cross.

As I wrote in my concluding essay for Hyperallergic, "The bridge was not so difficult to build. But it turns out crossing may be
the hardest part."

My essay in Hyperallergic: The INTERNETworked Bridge: Connected But Unequal
Original show web site: Portal
Zak, Lena. "Social media art brings virtual audiences into cyber galleries Social media art brings virtual audiences into cyber galleries." CNNGo.com. Aug 29, 2011.