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FIREWALL Internet Café is an art project founded in 2016 by visual artist Joyce Yu-Jean Lee as a socially engaged research and interactive art project about Internet censorship. The not-for-profit goal of FIREWALL is to investigate online censorship and foster public dialogue about Internet freedom.

Design
FIREWALL Internet Café is a social software designed to pop-up as a portable digital art exhibition. The pop-up experience comprises of one or multiple custom coded computer station(s) called “Search Stations” with a dual-search engine that simultaneously shows image results of any queried term in both Google and Baidu, the primary search engine in China. The FIREWALL name can be attributed to the “Great Firewall of China,” which is the layered system of network-security and regulations enforced by the Chinese government as part of the “Golden Shield Project.”

Participants can search terms online in one country and compare it with results found in China, and vote on whether their search results are affected by censorship, be it imposed by nation-state or corporations. All results are saved in a web “Search Archive” that netizens can interact with outside of the pop-up exhibitions by voting on the influence of censorship on saved images. The pop-ups are often accompanied by with public programming, including Internet censorship expert panel discussions, group “Search Sessions” and other types of art or educational events.

Features
The FIREWALL software is a geo-specific internet archive which consists of a Chrome browser extension, a back-end server component written in node.js, and an OpenVPN client/server. The browser plug-in suggests sensitive terms as an auto-complete search bar. Sensitive terms are sourced from research databases aggregated by China Digital Times and University of Toronto Citizen Lab. Participants can select one of these sensitive terms, or type in any terms they want to search. Searches are automatically translated by the software from English in Google to Chinese in Baidu, and vice-versa. All of the search terms are saved and archived into the project website, Firewallcafe.com in a “Search Archive.” Netizens can go to the website to filter results in the Search Archive and vote on whether they believe these results are affected by censorship.

Controversy
FIREWALL received backlash from the Chinese Government during one of the public roundtables on February 19th, 2016, “Networked Feminism in China,” about how feminists in China use the internet to build online networks and movements. On the eve prior to the event, one of the speakers, a visiting Chinese scholar and law fellow researching female reproductive rights, received threats from Chinese authorities overseas about their scheduled presentation. Ultimately, they did not participate, and an empty chair was left in their place, a nod to the empty chair of Liu Xiaobo during his Nobel Peace Prize ceremony on December 10, 2010.

Reception
The Washington Post covered how FIREWALL Internet Café, a project about Internet censorship, was itself censored by Chinese authorities. Additionally, FIREWALL has been covered in news articles by Hyperallergic , ArtFCity, the China Digital Times , and the Hong Kong Free Press.

Additionally, FIREWALL has been featured in International language press, The Initium and Apple Daily Taiwan, editorial commentary with the BBC and Daily Voice , as well as in Index on Censorship, an academic journal.

Partners
FIREWALL Internet Café has received support from the following organizations: Franklin Furnace Fund, Asian Women Giving Circle , Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Human Rights Foundation, Oslo Freedom Forum, Jigsaw LLC and the Marist College Strategic Plan Projects Advisory Committee.

Exhibitions
FIREWALL Internet Café has exhibited at the following locations: Center for Community Cultural Development in Hong Kong (2019), University of Michigan Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design in Ann Arbor, MI (2019), Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City, NY (2017), The Oslo Freedom Forum in Oslo, Norway (2017 - 2018), REDpoint in St. Pölten, Austria (2016), and Chinatown Soup in New York City, NY (2016).