Can they still be called keywords?
Censorship determines which words may circulate publicly and which must remain unspoken. Shaped by legal systems, moral norms, media infrastructures, and technological capital, it excludes certain forms of language from systems of knowledge while simultaneously generating new modes of expression. To evade censorship, prohibited words are often replaced with homophones, emojis, memes, or coded language, allowing ideas to continue circulating while enabling communities to recognize one another through shared forms of resistance.
Today, however, censorship no longer operates solely through prohibition. With the rise of social media platforms, algorithmic recommendation systems, and technological capitalism, censorship has increasingly become an invisible mechanism of selection. It determines what can be searched, recommended, and amplified, while quietly rendering other subjects absent from public discourse. More profoundly, prolonged exposure to fear and silence transforms external censorship into self-censorship, leading individuals to abandon certain conversations before they even begin. As the coded languages once used to resist censorship gradually disappear, so too does the ability of communities to identify one another and organize collectively. In their place emerges an increasingly opaque system through which states and capital consolidate control while public knowledge becomes progressively flatter, narrower, and more uniform.
It is within this context that censorship becomes the theme of phase II of the
Keyword Dictionary of Contemporary Art.
Since its inception in 2021, the project has invited art professionals from diverse backgrounds to collectively construct the keywords of the present through research, practice, and experimentation. Over time, we found that many participants were already working across national, linguistic, and cultural borders. Their practices continually challenged fixed notions of territory, identity, and belonging, prompting us to reconsider whether "Asia" could continue to function as the project's primary framework. In response, and with the project's long-term development in mind, we renamed the platform from the Asian Keyword Dictionary of Contemporary Art to the Keyword Dictionary of Contemporary Art. The new title reflects an expanded commitment to engaging with realities that increasingly exceed regional boundaries.
This phase also introduces a revised methodology. Previous iterations alternated between artistic research and keywords. Rather than beginning from predetermined definitions, phase II invites each participant to determine their own methods, keywords, and presentation in response to censorship. Finished artworks are no longer the project's primary objective; instead, artistic processes themselves become the work. Contributions may take the form of writing, videos, workshops and so on. They may also choose not to appear on the platform at all, treating absence itself as a critical gesture against censorship.
What remains unchanged is the project's conviction that artists are not only the producers of artworks, but also producers of culture and knowledge. Through artistic research, the project seeks to collectively write a living dictionary of the present. As a low-cost and continuously evolving platform, the website also provides a flexible infrastructure through which temporary communities of artists can emerge across geographic distances, challenging the structural inequalities between centers and peripheries that persist under globalization.
Phase II brings together 3 artists and 1 artist group whose projects approach censorship from distinct political and cultural contexts. German artist Anna Ehrenstein examines forms of cultural censorship and prejudice directed toward Muslim communities in contemporary Germany. Taiwanese artist Juan Po-Yuan Ruan responds to the image-censoring mechanisms developed within World of Warcraft to accommodate the Chinese market, using them as the basis for a series of fictional narratives. Taiwanese artist Lee Tzu Tung, working in collaboration with a psychotherapist through workshops and participatory research, explores how unequal power relations gradually transform traumatic experiences into self-censorship while seeking new possibilities for reclaiming the body's capacity to speak. Indonesian art professional Lisistrata Lusandiana, together with Irfanuddien Ghozali, Dwi Rahmanto, Krisnawan Wisnu Adi, and Febrian Adinata Hasibuan, formed a temporary collaborative collective to investigate Yogyakarta's pervasive urban surveillance infrastructure, incorporating footage captured by public CCTV systems into the project itself.
Ultimately, this exhibition returns to its opening question:
What are the keywords that have never been censored?
To remain unprohibited does not necessarily mean to remain free from censorship. Some words survive precisely because they have already passed through layers of selection and continue to serve particular ideological, political, or economic interests. Such words may find their place in an ordinary dictionary, yet they can no longer be understood as genuine keywords. A true keyword does more than describe the world; it unsettles established orders, reopens collective imagination, and creates new possibilities for public discourse.
- Director｜TSAI Ping-Ju, LI Kuei-Pi
- Contributor｜
Anna Ehrenstein
Dwi Rahmanto
Febrian Adinata Hasibuan
Irfanuddien Ghozali
JUAN Po-Yuan
Krisnawan Wisnu Adi
LEE Tzu-Tong
Lisistrata Lusandiana
(In alphabetical order)
- Web Design｜Shihan Pan
- Web Development｜Sunny Kuo
- Translation｜HUANG Liang-Jung
