"Hi, how do we visit ‘that bridge?’"
The Taiwan Pavilion of Venice Biennale, "Palazzo delle Prigioni," was adjacent to “Doge's Palace,” which was one of the most popular attractions. The two buildings are linked by “Bridge of Sighs”. Many visitors to the exhibition hall were excited to visit the Bridge of Sighs without noticing the sign on the gate that read, "To visit the Bridge of Sighs, please enter through the Doge's Palace."
Finding one's way to the so-called "that bridge," where desperate prisoners signed in despair and took their last peek of the world, and taking Instagram perfect photos was probably one of the several challenges visitors encountered in Venice. So was the lady at the local snack bar who wore a big smile and tried to rip them off. But as one of my Italian friends said, the Venetians had this "grumpy but sweet" character, and the city was also on the outside mean and sweet on the inside. If one was fully prepared with a rigorous, adventurous yet humorous attitude just as the artist Shu Lea Cheang and the curator Paul B. Preciado were, then the seemingly daunting buildings standing above the waters of Venice would challenge their prejudice and fully enlighten them, and so would the Taiwan Pavilion that was hidden in the hustling and bustling near the Piazza San Marco.
The trans-disciplinary research project "3X3X6," hosted by Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM) to represent Taiwan at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019 provided a perfect chance for those who were willing to experience the stories of "Bridge of Sighs." "3X3X6" refers to the strictest architectural model of industrial prisons developed globally: a 9-square-meter cell constantly monitored by 6 cameras. "Prigioni" actually means prison in Italian. In the building which used to be a Venetian prison and courtroom, Artist Shu Lea Cheang and curator Paul B. Preciado set up a series of installations playing 4K short clips of ten individual cases throughout space and time. Starting with the surveillance system as an entry point, the exhibition led the audience to ponder on technology, images, and power. Unlike typical discussion on queer issues, 3X3X6 explores beyond gender and social movements and delves into queer technology, queer images and other possibilities in queer issues and unconventional fluidity of life.
During my docent job from July to August, I had the chance to welcome many important guests, including the down to earth curators of Taipei Biennial 2020, Bruno Latour and Martin Guinard-Terrin, participating artist Yue-Nu Guo in Keelung Harbor Biennale, members from Curatorial Studies Venice; X-Style, an Italian media coming for their in-depth coverage of the Collateral Exhibitions in Venice Biennale, as well as curators, artists, media, academic personnel and students of art or technology departments and audiences from around the globe. As an intern docent, I also received a variety of ideas and feedback.
Some visited more than one time, and some labeled the work as "very feminist." Some mentioned that the dancing footage displayed at the entrance projection tower looked like skeletons chasing the dancers, and I explained to them that the artist invited visitors to upload their videos to stage a queer revolt against the technology for human movement recognition. A couple from Florida for a yacht trip asked me very seriously about my opinion on social surveillance technology as well as fingerprint recognition technology. They believed that people should not be afraid if there was nothing to hide. In response, I shared one of the works with them, the case of "RX," where a Muslim professor was accused of sexual assault to illustrate that people could be heavily influenced by surveillance technology even without being convicted. The exhibition was not meant to offer a conclusion; rather, it hoped to encourage alternative aspects to technology, society, freedom, and art.
Many tourists rushed into the exhibition hall for shelter whenever there was a storm, which was quite common in Venice. All in all, visitors to the Taiwan Pavilion could be categorized into three general types: passers-by who were looking for air-conditioning, Biennale fans who planned to go through every single pavilion, and art lovers who were determined to watch every video.
Deepest in the exhibition hall were ten television screens. Visitors often stood staring for a while without putting on the headphones. Many of them would stand first and gradually squatted down. However, what truly touched me was when someone put on the headphones and sat on the floor, facing eye to eye with the imprisoned characters in the monitor, because this was the exact moment when people were willing to look at and listen to the characters in prison and tried to relate to them. No matter how long the encounter was, this precious moment seemed to infinitely extend the space of the nearby "Bridge of Sighs" and offer a chance for the imprisoned to speak and enjoy the air of freedom as if they were walking side by side with the visitors who perceived their stories under the tourist gaze. 3X3X6 was such an exhibition that created a venue for people to equally meet each other.
I truly appreciate the efforts of artist Shu Lea Cheang and curator Paul B. Preciado, who gave all of us an exhibition experience that was in great detail, profound and unique. I am also grateful for Teng Wei, Ya Ting, and Yue Ru, my peer docents; Tzu Xiu and Sharleen, Chief of Exhibition Department, TFAM, Yu Mei, our contact at Marketing and Public Relations Department, as well as all the maintenance crew of the Palazzo delle Prigioni, the administrators and staff of the TFAM. Special thanks to CTBC Foundation for Arts and Culture and Museum Friends Association, who help organize and carry out the internship program this time.
Before leaving Venice, I went back to the snack bar next to the exhibition, and the lady who ripped me off last time pointed at my work badge that read “Taiwan in Venice” and said, “I’ll give you a special discount because you are from Taiwan.”
I recalled my dialogue with curator Paul at the end of the workshop. I was asking for his contact, while he replied, "I have deactivated my personal website because there are too many death threats coming every day." How can others relate to his daily obstacles as a transgender male? I sincerely hope that through the trans-disciplinary artistic practices in works like 3X3X6, the society can gradually and steadily embrace true freedom not only of images and technology but also in the infinite possibilities of queer.
Reflecting upon the transformation of surveillance techniques since the panopticon to include contemporary 3-D facial recognition, AI, and the Internet, Shu Lea Cheang’s 3x3x6 restages the rooms of the Palazzo delle Prigioni—a Venetian prison from the sixteenth century in operation until 1922—as a high-tech surveillance space. Taking as its starting point the story of libertine writer Giacomo Casanova, imprisoned in the Prigioni in 1755, Cheang has conducted in-depth studies on ten historical and contemporary cases of subjects incarcerated because of gender or sexual dissent, including Marquis de Sade and Michel Foucault, as well as contemporary cases from Taiwan and South Africa. Their fictionalized portraits become part of the exhibition’s system; the title of which refers to today’s standardized architecture of industrial imprisonment: a 3 x 3 square-meter cell constantly monitored by 6 cameras.
Cheang departs from the architecture of the panopticon to construct the central space of the exhibition in Room A: the surveillance tower has been inverted to project the portraits of the ten prisoners and connected up to a newly developed 3-D camera surveillance system, which installed at the entrance of the exhibition scans the visitors’ faces—by electing to enter the exhibition they are accepting to become part of the system and to having their face modified. Here, gender and racial morphing become queer digital strategies to disrupt the tradition of colonial and anthropometric identification techniques, extending from Alphonse Bertillon’s criminological photography of the nineteenth century to today’s facial recognition technologies. Connected to the Internet 3x3x6 allows visitors (both physical and virtual) to send selfies and images to the exhibition system. The visitors are thus inside the total surveillance apparatus. Moving into Rooms B and C of the updated Prigioni, the physical visitors then wander into a maze of monitors that unfold the stories of the ten prisoners across time and space, histories and cultures. Whereas in the eighteenth century Casanova’s libertinage and Sade’s atheist negation of morality were the object of surveillance and discipline, in contemporary technopatriarchal digital conditions, the black man constructed as “rapist,” the HIV-positive homosexual, the transgender person, as well as women constructed as sexual e-hunters and witches are the new subjects beyond the law. Finally, in Room D, visitors are invited to discover the control room and the very operating system of the surveillance apparatus in function.
Hacking digital surveillance technologies and social media, Cheang uses the site of the prison to create a real-time dissident interface that the visitor is invited to join. Involving legal documents, fake news, historical reports, myths and fantasies, as well as the data retrieved from 3-D surveillance cameras and the images uploaded by visitors, the exhibition constructs a collective counter-history of sexuality—where trans-punk- science fiction, queer, and anti-colonial imaginations provide visual and critical frameworks to think through the histories of subjection and resistance—and activates a critical proliferation of poetic and political actions for digital times. A contribution to the digital avant-garde, Cheang’s 3x3x6 equally challenges the aesthetics of Internet global capitalism and the gender, sexual, and race norms that hold up its hidden infrastructure.
普里奇歐尼宮（Palazzo delle Prigioni）是威尼斯從十六世紀起一直使用到1922年的監獄。
鄭淑麗的作品《3x3x6》將其打造為一個高科技監控空間，反思從全景監獄（panopticon），到當代3-D人臉辨識、人工智慧、網際網路等監控技術的變遷。鄭淑麗以1755年被囚禁於總督府的浪子作家賈科莫．卡薩諾瓦（Giacomo
Casanova）的故事為出發點，深入研究了十位歷史上及當代因在性別及性傾向上持有異議而遭囚禁之人的案例，包括薩德侯爵和傅柯，以及臺灣及南非的當代個案。這些人的虛構肖像成了展覽體系的一部分。而此次展覽的標題《3x3x6》有意突顯當今監獄體系的標準化建築結構：由六個攝影機監控的3x3平方公尺牢房。
鄭淑麗以全景監獄為靈感來打造A展覽室：監控塔被反轉用來投射十位囚徒的肖像；並透過展覽入口處安裝的最新3-D攝影監控系統，掃描參觀者的臉部——只要選擇參觀展覽，觀眾即接受成為展覽體系的一部分，與自己的臉被改造。在這裡，性別與種族的轉化成為酷兒數位策略，藉以對殖民及人體測量識別的傳統提出質疑——這類技法從十九世紀阿方索．貝蒂雍（Alphonse Bertillon）發明的犯罪攝影到今天的人臉辨識技術，不一而足。《3x3x6》透過網路連結，讓觀眾（包括現場觀眾和網路觀眾）可以把自拍及其他圖像傳送給展覽體系。由此，觀眾被納入了整體監控體系的內部。接下來觀眾進入升級後的普宮B展室和C展室，在這個螢幕迷宮內，講述著十位跨越時空、跨越歷史文化的囚徒生平。在十八世紀，卡薩諾瓦的浮浪和薩德對道德無神論式的否定都是監控和戒律的對象；而在當代數位化技術父權下，被認定為「性侵犯」的黑人、患有愛滋病的同性戀者、跨性別人士，以及所謂的E女巫，則成為新的法外之徒。最後，在D展室，觀眾被邀請進入控制室，探索正在運作中的監控系統。
鄭淑麗以駭客方式入侵數位監控技術和社交媒體，利用監獄場域創造了一個即時的異議界面，並邀請觀眾參與。這個作品採用了法庭文件、偽新聞、歷史報導、神話想像，以及從3-D監控錄像採集的數據，與觀眾上傳的影像，由此集體創作性的「反歷史」——在這部歷史中，跨龐克（trans-punk）科幻、酷兒，以及反殖民想像提供了視覺與批判的框架，讓我們思考征服與抵抗的歷史。同時，這個展覽批判地激發了數位時代的詩意行動及政治行動。作為對數位前衛藝術的貢獻，鄭淑麗的《3x3x6》挑戰了網際網路全球資本主義的美學標準、以及隱藏在其結構中的性別、性及種族規範。