communism

Cenzobot is a simple Twitter bot that tweets fragments from real historical censorship reviews of publications from the communist era, written by Polish censors between the 1940s and 1990s. Some of the censors were very skilled critics, often well educated, but other were people completely devoid of talent, especially the ones delegated to review books for children and young adults. Twitter, which today is one of the platforms most associated with digital censorship, was chosen as an appropriate tool to tweet censors’ voices. I came up with the idea to tweet fragments of censors’ reviews after the Twitter Bot Purge in February 2018. I expect that my cenzobot will also be purged by Twitter at some point. It is actually the goal of my work.

These “12 meditations on propaganda art and Russian communism” make amazingly compressed commentaries on the works it has chosen, particularly in the context of its production constraint of 17 minutes per piece. As an impromptu response from an artist and poet using Flash as a tool, this piece highlights the temporality and visual agility of the dancing signifier. The letters, words, and symbols superposed on the propaganda art feel spontaneous and full of life, questioning, mocking, obscuring, admiring, and engaging the material it dances before. These traces are lenses through which we experience Communist propaganda art, gesturing towards Thuan’s own ideology. At the same time, the contrast between the artistic media and expressive strategies enhances the experience of both, resulting in a work that is more than the sum of its parts. (Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)