2018-11-24 Interview with Paul B. Preciado

Today, the getting together have two purpose. The first purpose actually, the two interpreters are for the Tuesday talk, interpreting simultaneously. They were quite worried about if they can understand all the language that you speak.

We’re going to build a lexicon, a glossary for them. [laughs]

Fine. Hopefully, it will not be as difficult as you imagine, so it will be fine.

The three museums, as the director, Sharleen.

That’s not a physical director. Tzu-Hsiu and Waverly are coordinating the whole production for the Venice Biennale.

Cool.

They want to join a bit to also understand how the talk will be about.

Like, "What’s all this about?"

Exactly.

The second part would be that Paul would like to have more of an interview with you, which will combine with the talk we would have on Tuesday once we have a transcript of that. Maybe she can already also do some more in-depth interview tonight, and that would serve for the catalog publication.

What I’m proposing is that maybe we use one hour to talk about what we don’t talk about on Tuesday. Maybe we talk a bit whatever, and then they can try to see if they can grasp everything. I say, for this first hour, they can interrupt if they don’t understand what we are going to talk about. Maybe, if necessary, we can also do a rehearsal of the simultaneous translation.

That’s right.

Then you will maybe...

This will be simultaneous translation.

Yeah, but maybe we can do a bit of rehearsal just for them so they understand. Me and Audrey, who knows the language, we could say, "Oh, this certain word is totally out of the way."

Yes.

Pretty much, we should do this maybe for an hour. After the first hour, they can all leave, and then you can do the interview in English.

You don’t have to leave. [laughs]

There will be a transcript for everyone...

What I think is if all of us speak for one hour, then this will be already quite a long time. Maybe it’s better to do it for 40 minutes, the first part, and then go into...

That’s fine. That’s what I mean because we have two hours.

Still, we will be recording the whole thing.

We’re putting the whole thing for the...

Exactly.

...for everyone who leaves in middle.

Eventually, it will be editing what we say.

Yeah.

It’s just fine. We’ll all have plenty of time to edit.

As far as Tuesday’s topic’s concerned, I want to be more the moderator.

Of course, I would introduce you and introduce Paul and where you all come from, but then I wouldn’t really totally join the conversation in a certain way. I would probably play the role more like a moderator. Of course, at any point I feel I can contribute, I will come in and all that. OK?

Mm-hmm.

It doesn’t have to really have anything to do with this, only spiritually, right?

Yes.

Exactly. The problem with this project right from the beginning will be because of the prison, because of Casanova. We got into this idea of really study the crimes that related to sex and gender and all that. At one point, we probably would call a sex show deviant, but we prefer not to use this word anymore as applies to deviants. It’s still about more like people are incarcerated because of some sort of sexual crimes.

Sex, gender, and sexuality.

...experiencing the incarceration of deviants?

People that are considered deviants by different political regimes, in different times and cultures.

Because this is the beginning point of this whole project, because of the location or Prigioni being a prison, and because, before we start doing the research, Casanova was incarcerated there. That bring up this whole topic.

The other thing I want to say, because I have done work with panopticon in terms of panopticon as the 17th-century prison structure, and then today’s all-around, all about everywhere in the city, everywhere the facial recognition camera, the whole prison in China hosting 20 million, these kind of situations.

I wanting to bring up the project not to limit it in the panopticon or in the prison of Prigioni, but extend it into the whole society. Also, that was mostly data panopticon. We have come out with terms like data panopticon or sexopticon, [laughs] these kind of words. Sexopticon, we’ll see if they can translate this one.

Maybe we don’t need so much of a translation for that. It’s just the idea of the state surveilling or watching not just traditional data of a citizen, but also sex, sexuality, and gender. When sexuality and gender become the data...

It doesn’t have to be the government or the state. It can also be corporations are abstracting from different technologies. These become a whole amount of data that is being used, able to control all of...just for, they say, marketing purposes. The issue of what is controlled today is also something that will come up in the conversation.

At the end of the two streams of this discussion is "What is freedom today?" and, "Is it possible to act politically in a society that is fully watched by all kinds of technologies?" This is the point when Shu Lea started to talk to me about you. It’s here, as well, that I found your interview on the Internet a long time ago.

Suddenly, we thought that it was quite interesting the way you are using technology precisely as a way of enhancing agency or political action instead of as an instrument of surveillance, for instance. This is one of the questions that I would have for you.

To cut in again, exactly. Yes, this particular talk started out from the work, the exhibition itself. It’s really bring up much more issue, and particularly not to only focus on the sex issue, but more all kind of regime, political, social, agency.

That, I think, had to be made clear right from the beginning. We are not really particularly talking about the artwork. Rather, during the press conference, we would introduce the art, the installation, and the film.

That will be in the morning.

Yeah, but because she...

I will be there.

You will be there translating as well.

Just so you know that this conversation...

That will be great because, in a sense, in the morning, you will have a more in-detail idea of what the point is about. This is not exactly what we are speaking about in the afternoon. What I think is interesting is the way in which Shu Lea, to be able to make this artwork, wants to put different people in dialogue.

For instance, in this case, I guess that is quite unusual and interesting that suddenly, since almost hosting us in dialogue, she becomes the one that is asking questions to us. Instead of us asking questions to her, we are...

Yeah, being lazy.

No, that’s quite interesting that you will be asking questions to us. This is also, I think, quite interesting for people to think, "What is the role of the artist today?" Basically, when people are speaking about political art, how art can be political, maybe social, about bringing different people in conversation that are not in conversation usually because of different reasons.

Audrey, since you are at the government, maybe we can also speak about that. For us, it’s quite difficult to understand how someone like you that is coming from activism or...

Hacktivism.

...hacktivism, techno-anarchism, or something like that can end up being in the government and having a ministry. Maybe this is something that most people in Taiwan already know, but for us, this is quite unusual.

Political intervention from the artist in the capacity of a host to further the conversation about political action in today’s panoptic state and/or corporation-controlled data panopticon.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

That’s the stage you will open with,

Yeah.

Then we’ll just talk?

Exactly.

Exactly.

Maybe then you will start asking questions.

I would probably organize it better, but it’s basically why. Particularly in the course, I would say with you I actually knew you as a hacker, 2011. We also know each other since around 2000...

’2 or something.

Actually, 2001.

2001.

Maybe it’s almost the same time.

It’s almost the same time. From that perspective, it’s very interesting to connect you two.

There is the issue of how we both relate to technology or different technologies, both cybernetic technologies, but also hormones or other kinds of technologies, gender technologies, let’s say.

Gender tech.

Exactly, and gender hacking maybe more. [laughs]

How many concepts do we use?

Exactly. I think during today’s conversation, we should probably narrow down a few topics.

We’ll have to decide.

That’s why today is so relaxing.

Otherwise, they will be translating "hacking" into five different words. That will create a strain.

Hacktivism, you understand.

Is there a translation for that?

Hacktivism, 駭客行動主義.

That’s right. That is one other thing though. In Taiwan, we do distinguish a little bit creative, non-cybersecurity hacking, which we call 黑客 as in 黑客松, and cybersecurity-based hacking, which we call 駭客. Even in tonal pronunciation, choice of words, there already is a old jargon file, like white-hat, black-hat on one hand, and maybe Red Hat on the other. [laughs]

It’s a very different connotation of hacking. Just by deciding to translate it as 駭客, which would actually mean breaking into the political system or 黑客, which would mean bringing creative energy to the political system, that’s already making a choice.

It’s quite interesting. This distinction doesn’t exist English, as such.

Eric Raymond tried to use hacker/cracker distinction...

I think that’s why the hacktivism, more of the word hacker.

Yes, hacktivism, but it’s still...

Right. We’ve been wrestling with these translation issues for decades. I just want to, as a professional translator, [laughter] highlight these distinctions.

This will probably be difficult for me because my computer knowledge, my computer technique and everything, I learn in the West. I actually had no connection with the development here. Until now, I cannot type Chinese on the computer. It probably would take me...

Which is why we will be going to converse in English.

It would probably take me a couple days. This is the thing. A lot of the vocabulary in English I would not know how to translate into Chinese. For example, it took me a while to understand what is data in Chinese.

We have a term for numeric data, which is 數據 and for more textual, all-encompassing data, which is 資料. Looking at these two, one is about numeracy and one is about literacy. You talk about 數據, numeracy, or you talk about 資料, literacy. Again, these two are not mixed.

Wow, interesting. In your case, did you study cyber-technologies in the West or here in China, in Taiwan?

I learned it from the hackers that I meet online.

[laughs]

You did it online?

My education is entirely on the Internet.

Entirely by yourself?

By Internet.

Completely by Internet?

Since I was 12, and then completely when I was 14 when I dropped out of junior high.

It’s a boast that she never studied abroad.

Well, I helped digitizing a lot of books.

You consider the Internet...

...as sovereign.

In which language was that learning being done?

TCP/IP, and...

It’s a different language altogether.

The laws of the Internet, the request for comments, they are, of course, written in English. It’s written in RFC English, which is not exactly English. It has very interesting connotations like SHOULD, MAY, MUST, MOST NOT, that are clearly defined.

Their use of the word "consensus" doesn’t mean what the English users mean by "consensus", and so on. It is a very particular jargon in the Internet community. That’s my native language.

How do you see the relationship between the Internet and, on one side, state policies, but also institutions, for instance, traditional institutions? Basically, that’s why, when we were thinking about the discussion in a few days, I was talking about democracy and transition.

I thought about using gender transitioning as a trope to think what is happening with democracy. It is not just going from point A to B. It’s a full different ground and a full different language that is also opposing traditional institutions, like this school, the university, and the family.

That’s why I’m asking how do you see the Internet relating to all of that. For instance, you refused the university.

No, I didn’t refuse their website. I wrote to the researchers. We did a project together.

[laughs]

I understand, but, for instance, you step out of school and you decided to teach yourself.

I worked with researchers at lots of universities.

Still, let’s say that the platform that you’re creating or that you’re working on doesn’t fully coincide with a traditional university.

You mean with its exclusive membership status?

Exactly. Yes.

[laughs]

I guess. I transitioned from a exclusive model to inclusive model. You can say that, but you can’t say I reject university. I learn most things from universities. Otherwise, it’s from CERN, which is not university, but a research facility. These are state institutions, and I’m not rejecting their existence. I’m just engaging them in a way that is non-exclusive of our relationships.

For instance, you’re not criticizing by itself the knowledge regime of the traditional universities?

I publish, but on open-access journals. I edit, I do conferences, steering committees as well. I participate in the traditional academic activities but always only if it’s a open-access regime, meaning that it doesn’t reject further people from contributing.

My core reading when I was 13 years old was Project Gutenberg, which you may have heard of. It is a bunch of people just typing everything -- because there was no good OCR technology back then -- that’s in the public domain to the public Internet for everybody, including me, to read.

Because the Project Gutenberg has a interesting interaction with the copyright law, which keeps getting extended to protect a certain mouse. What happened was that, when I was around 13, which is 1994, I only get to read everything that’s written before the First World War.

Everything that’s written at or after the First World War was not public domain, so Project Gutenberg cannot operate on that.

So you would only read everything that was written before?

I can only read Marx or Freud, but not their students.

Something that is like... yeah, OK.

I can’t read, for example, The Decline of the West or other despairing works because these are written after the First World War. That brings me unnatural optimism, because the World Wars were not on my the reading list.

What is most radical for you in your way of approaching both the same technologies and society is the Internet as such, or not?

It’s the "inter-" part of the Internet. We had the networking. It’s the "inter-" part that is radical. By radical, I mean at the root.

Sorry, go ahead.

No, go ahead.

I was going to say it’s going very well. Maybe I should revise myself about this first part, second part...

I think it’s going to be like that.

So we continue, "Please, welcome to stay." At the same time, I know it’s very hard. It’s so exciting so it’s very hard to cut you, so I’m just cutting once here, now.

As the host. [laughs]

As the moderator.

On the contrary.

It’s so exciting, but I was wondering how would the interpreter want to do? I know that you’re here for a purpose. I was just wondering if, a certain point, you want us to break. For example, this is one point I want to ask you so far, how we feel about the...

OK by my interpreter. I’ll be highlighting the word "transitioning" and questioning translation for that. The inter- part of the Internet, which is 網際, I guess, but I don’t know how you’re going to tackle...

All that is quite easy to translate, I guess, or it’s quite obvious.

We have Chinese equivalents for these.

"Transitioning" or "transition" is the same word when it’s being used, for instance, for a trans person, that for something else?

How are you going to translate somebody that’s transitioning gender-wise in a democracy?

Gender-wise, basically that...

In democracy, we usually say 轉型.

Gender-wise, it’s going to be different, it’s not 轉型.

In gender, we usually say transgender, 跨性別 or something like that. Of course, you can always translate it as 過渡...

What that one mean?

That rhymes with overabundance (過度), a homonym. I don’t know how you’re going to reconcile the two translation.

What would be the closest word in English for transitioning in relation to gender? It’s changing or something like that?

改變?

No, transgender, trans here is translated as 跨, meaning like a bridge carries over from one side to the other. It’s used to, for example, transdimensional, trans-whatever. When you have trans-whatever, you use 跨. On the other hand, we never say 跨民主. It’s unheard of, actually.

I think, as the moderator, I would like now to sum up the first point. I think it is a very interesting point now. Basically, the title for the talk is called "Democracy in Transition." At the same time, we are quickly getting to gender in transition, including, as you say, technology, the gender hacking, including the drug-using, the hormone.

Paul wrote a book called "Testo Junkie." For us, it’s a very classic, very important book, for example. I feel this is definitely a very interesting topic to start talking about hacktivism in both sense. It’s just a matter of how we can get it to here today, which seems so easy. You just get into, just recognize this would be one of the big topic.

If we do the easy shortcut thing, which is very cliché by now, but in Taiwan, the body politic is translated as 政治體. If we connect that to the body politics, 身體政治, then all the bodyhacking analogies carries over to 政體-hacking analogies.

Meaning like body politics, you say like...

The polity, 政體.

Paul just did this big public program at Documenta last year. It was in Athens and in a castle. It’s called "The Parliament of Bodies," so parliament. When I first read his work, I was like, "Wow, what the..."

Parliament just means to hang out and talk a lot, parler.

In Europe, it has this connotation of being the political structure that is the base for the constitution of a society.

Yeah, but its root is just parley. It’s just to talk.

The root of the word is to talk, but in reality, the idea is that those who are allowed to speak are those that have...

Speakers.

Exactly, that have access to the technologies of power.

So, exclusive right, through speakers.

Yes, but what does it mean to speak? This is exactly what you were talking about before when you were saying programming is another way of speaking. It’s like, "What language are you speaking?" The issue is what is the language of today’s parliament. It might be programming or it might be Internet.

It could be code. It could be data.

Exactly. It can be data, it can be code...

It’s not just text.

...it can be chemical.

Right.

I think just to point out exactly, in your program, when you did the whole public program for how many months?

Two months, 150 programs.

That keep hogging public conversation. I was very happy to see exactly it’s not only limited to gender bodies. It’s actually bring up all the...

It’s more like bringing together support and counter-cultures that are traditionally not represented precisely within the traditional parliament, somehow putting question even what acting politically means.

For instance, how do we represent in a traditional parliament the sick? Let’s take the case of a transsexual. Just to say that if you’re a transsexual, you have to declare yourself mentally ill, from that point on, in a sense, you’re losing your agency. You’re delegating to the state.

As soon as you say, "I’m gender dysphoric, so therefore I’m sick," somehow, in order to be able to have access to the technologies of gender that I need to become who I think that I am, then I have to accept that I do not have full agency of myself and that the state will grant me this agency through a certain therapy.

This, in the case of transgender people, now is getting better, but it can be worse than that. In the case of people in prison, for instance, have no access at all to any technology of power, any technology of subject production, any technology of knowledge, not to speak about the Internet or whatever. This is another big subject. For instance, what happens with the people in jail that have absolutely no access to the Internet? Do they live in the same world that we live? Maybe not.

For me, it’s more about, in this sense, a kind of transversal alliance between different movements that cannot just be reduced to identity politics. This can be a further conversation, Audrey, in the sense of, for instance, if you see yourself as a part of an identity movement or not at all.

How do you see, for instance, the Internet, or the hacktivist movement as a movement that precisely might be one of the first historically political movements that go beyond identity? It’s not about being man or woman. It’s not about being from a nation. It’s not about being from a particular race.

It is not defined by identity but is defined by having access to a particular technology, a particular language, code, data, or something like that. I don’t know. This is more a question that I have. You have to understand, Audrey, that my field of expertise is really gender technologies, much more than...

Yeah, sure, but we can just talk about gender technology.

No, what I mean is that, for me, what is interesting is getting to understand better how you work with the Internet. How do you see the Internet? This is a field that is, for me, is less known than other technologies, even though, of course, I work with it all the time.

I don’t have the same relationship to the Internet that you do. I would be interested to know, why do you think the Internet is so crucial? How do you see it as a political field of action differently than other fields?

So far, so good?

It would be helpful if you guys slowed down a bit, because it’s going to be simultaneous interpretation, and our sentence structures are different.

Yes, I know we’ve been quite...

They’re so excited.

It’s OK. I can very easily adjust my speaking speed.

To get back to your question, I recently had a talk with Jaromil.

[laughs] Yes, I saw that.

You saw our talk? We were super excited.

I know Jeremy also a long time. He was also part of the Kingdom of Piracy.

That’s right, part of the appropriation of technology or appropriate technology.

We just had an interview, which I suggest the interpreter to also consult after this meeting. It outlines most of the core ideas that your question would entail.

I will read out part of it because it’s more precise this way, but that was really spontaneous. Jaromil interviews me and I’ve introduced myself as a poetician who writes poems. That’s my main mode of operation. It’s my main mode of working with the cabinet, but not for the cabinet.

As a poetician?

As a poet.

Really as a poet? That’s the way you see yourself, as a poet?

Yes.

Politician as a poet?

A poetician. It doesn’t work like that so I don’t how you’re going to translate that, 政詩工作者 or something.

政治詩人.

Yeah, 政治詩人, a poetician.

When I joined the cabinet, there were three compact that I agreed with the premier. First is that it’s all voluntary association, meaning I don’t take orders. I don’t give any orders. I write poems. That’s all. That’s the first thing.

The second thing is location independence. I can be here at the Social Innovation Lab. I can be over there at the C-Lab. I can be anywhere in the world and still considered in work, so location independence.

Sorry to ask, but what do you mean by writing poems?

Literally, writing poems. I can read you one of my poem right now, which is my job description. I think it will...

[laughs] OK.

You read it in the street?

Yeah. If I’m going to talk with several ministries, of course, I will say, "Oh, as digital minister, I’m working on the Sustainable Development Goals, which the entire United Nations agreed, by year 2030, we’re going to solve those 17 very important problems of humanity and society and environment together."

My particular area of expertise is, in 17.18, making sure everybody can trust each other. In terms of data, 17.17, making it possible to trust across nations and across sectors, and 17.6, which is to earn this trust through open innovation instead of patents and copyrighting exclusivity of colonizing technology. That will be understood by pretty much any ministry in the world.

Do you see each of these statements, let’s say, as a poem?

No, I wrote a poem to explain those sustainable goal targets... and it goes like this:

When we see the Internet of Things, let’s make it an Internet of Beings.

When we see virtual reality, let’s make it a shared reality.

When we see machine learning, let’s make it collaborative learning.

When we see user experience, let’s make it about human experience.

Whenever we hear that the singularity is near, let us always remember, the Plurality is here.

That’s one of the types of the poem that I write to translate the Sustainable Goals into something that are self-contained, that are memetic, that spreads without my further intervention. That’s the kind of work I do as a poetician.

Of course, it’s not limited to linear poetry. I also, for example, write this kind of spatial poetry, like short snippets of words. In the middle are our core values. On the second, the yellow ones are the projects that people voluntarily do.

Finally, the outside is the artifacts of radical transparency, which is my third working term, meaning that everything I see must be published to the Internet for everyone to see. The green ones are what people actually see in terms of radical transparency process.

That, I also consider poetic because these are self-contained, very small limits of Post-It notes, and you have to fit ideas on it. Although it’s not strictly linear, if you connect a few of those arrows, you get a poem kind of automatically, so I also consider it poetic work.

Back to Jaromil. Jaromil says that I remind him of Birgitta of Icelandic Pirate Party, also a poet, a politician, and also anarchist. Yes, that’s the other poetician anarchist that I’m aware of.

Jaromil runs a observatory, AlgoSov.org, a think tank -- obviously a do tank also -- about how to own the code that runs people’s lives, which is what he means by algorithmic sovereignty. He asked me pretty much the same question you just asked.

I said, "I’m going to say code, but when I say code, please think algorithm." I’m saying, in cyberspace, which is another word for Internet, code determine what can happen, what cannot happen, what is transparent, what is opaque. It is the normativity, but it’s not textual. It’s more like physics because, within the space, you cannot violate the physics law.

It is always possible to violate a textual by interpretation. They are legal by design, and the impact is shifting from a negotiating boundary of textual normativity to a pre-set boundary.

The pre-set boundary, which is the code, can be agreed by social norms of co-creation. Then it has a positive impact because it reinforces what society is saying as important. Or it’s set by the few people, maybe the speakers you just mentioned, which will a negative social impact because it essentially precludes, forecloses possibilities. That is the impact that Internet has.

Jaromil, of course, questions my use of the word "code." He thinks code, like text, is very boilerplate. He thinks algorithm is at the core. Why do I say "code?" I said, "Because code and text are both one syllable. When I say texts, it rhymes with physics very easily, but when I say algorithm, it only rhymes with anarchism."

[laughs] Which is not valid.

As a poetic choice, text and code are both far easier to rhyme than algorithm. When I say code, think algorithm. What affects people is the manifestation of the algorithm, which is the code. They are two. In the spirit it’s algorithm, in flesh it is code.

Jaromil said, "OK, so it’s like law? In the spirit, it’s law. In the flesh, it’s text?" I say, "Yes, like other spiritual beings, like logos." Jaromil says, "Law experts are watching us and they can understand the nuance."

I said, "The legal hermeneutic evolved from the biblical hermeneutics, so they totally understand because it’s the same hermeneutic system." I said, "That’s it." I then emphasized I’m non-partisan and forking the democracy. That’s my core vocabulary I’m talking about that you have on the Internet.

Now, I’m getting to understand that you defined yourself as an artist in reality.

Yes.

OK. Before, I was thinking about you more as a politician, but now I see you more as an artist.

In this space, which we co-create, I would stay it’s speculative design. It’s not quite art. If it’s art, it also has the negative side and shows what’s impossible, what’s impenetrable, what’s suffering, what’s painful. You don’t see those elements in our Social Innovation Lab.

It’s artsy, I guess. I focus on the positive part of art energy, which we call speculative or futuristic design, but I don’t think it’s quite the entirety of art.

I really liked the idea of thinking about poetry, of what you do as poetry. I think it’s great.

And defines...

Totally, but still I don’t really see quite well how this can be part of a government action. This is what, for me, is difficult. Of course, I see you more in a sense, like undoing the code, undoing the law, or rewriting the law somehow.

The government might not be so interested that anyone is precisely doing that so why would be you called as part of the government? I have difficulties, but maybe it’s because I don’t know example.

The parliament didn’t invite us in. We totally invited ourselves in. That was in 2014. That’s what actually happened. The MPs were on strike. They refused to deliberate substantially about the particular agreement, the CSSTA, so people just invited themselves to do the job of the speakers speaking there.

I’m like one petal in the sunflower, help facilitating and capturing, live-streaming, and translating the 20 or so different NGOs, each deliberating one side of CSSTA. It’s a demonstration, but it’s a demo in the software sense.

This was also speculative design. You can also say it’s art if you want, but it’s basically a demonstration that shows it’s possible actually to radically involve half a million people and have a real conversation and have the conversation be binding.

Basically, all the people that you gathered, let’s say, even it was through the Internet...

Yeah, about half a million people on the street and more online. The precise number, we don’t know.

All of them were part of NGOs or not?

No. The topics, the aspects were set by maybe 20 NGOs. One talks about human rights. One talks about labor. One talks about environment, the usual suspects. Then, they each have a booth among the streets that surrounded the parliament because people cross-pollinated between the different coalitions.

There’s also one part, actually Lucifer Hung was there talking about their view of the CSSTA, which is very enlightening.

Each view actually draws its crowd, but crowd are not exclusive to any view. Our way is just to make sure any deliberation that happens offline gets live-streamed online, that there could be no censorship of people’s talk, that people can watch freely.

Also, we watched actually the Occupy Parliament. It is a panopticon that’s watched from every corner. It’s sousveillance, as Steve Mann would say, everybody watch through their phone, and we arrange for people even with hearing difficulties to see a textual transcript, real-time transcript of what’s being talked about in the parliament.

It is a large art installation...

...their rights for 22 days, except it produced five consensus points that are binding to the Parliament.

To answer very quickly, I guess people didn’t invite us. We just went there and installed art.

After this period, now you’ve been working with this government for last three years.

At the end of 2014, all the occupiers, neutral parties...There were three neutral parties in the Occupy. We, the communication people, under the branding of g0v, G-0-V, the pro-bono lawyers, which protected the text-based normativity, and I’m sure also the doctors that are medical that takes care of people’s bodies.

The body part, the text-based normative, the rights part, and the code part are those three neutral parties. We protected anyone, including the White Justice, which is the counter-protest protest, and the other...

Why the medical? I couldn’t understand why.

There was a bunch of pro-bono medical doctors that are just wearing their professional posters and making sure that it’s as non-violent as possible. During those 22 days in the Occupy Parliamentarian site, there’s no one missing, no one dead. Very light injured in parliament side. I’m not talking about accidents. That’s the doctors’ work. We also had physical therapists and psychologists.

You think that after these 22 days of occupation there were changes?

People became aware that, "It’s actually possible. If we just talk through things, it’s possible to reach some kind of agreement." By end of 2014, all the three neutrals were invited by the cabinet as reverse mentors. The idea is every minister would receive a reverse mentor, who would train them in the art of massive listening.

How has been that experience? After these, let’s say, three years and a half of mentoring?

It will be four years actually.

Four years.

The four years has been pretty nice. I worked with the career public service, built workshops and designed co-creation workshops with over 1,000 people before I joined as a minister. As the understudy, I trained maybe 1,000 people. We have code and data. We don’t have to rely on human error.

After I become the digital minister, I talked with 3,000 people in also 159,000 speeches, every single of which radically transparent. People generally are happy with this idea of knowing the why of policymaking, not just the what of policies. Knowing the professionalism that is the public service, not just the political rhetoric of the ministries.

Knowing how they can sign signatures and after 5,000 signatures get the right to start co-creating with a dedicated team of what we call Participation Officers, of which we have the team in every ministry now. Such as that protesting at the tax filing is explosively hostile. I think that’s the right translation.

This particular petitioner, Cho Chih-Yuan, gets to then work with the ministerial stakeholders and do some user journey design and co-create this year’s tax filing system, which I think has 96 percent approval rating and is delivered on a budget of a negative number, save us a lot of cost.

We have maybe 40 or so cases like this, 20 of which really do decisive actions and collective actions like that. The other 20, not always like that. We have 8,000 people petition Taiwan to change its time zone to GMT+9. 8,000 petitioned to have it remained at GMT+8.

We invite those guys together to co-create common values, which is not a compromise, which will be done in half an hour forward that will satisfy nobody. It’s actually to get to the shared value, which was that people want Taiwan to be seen as more unique in the world. That is something that both sides can agree. You can read about it in our blog post, "Do not play the fake ball", meaning that they cite a lot of reasons for time zone change like it would save energy, increase tourism, things like that. Each ministry came up with data that shows it will be a larger one-time cost. It will be a non-trivial recurring cost, and so on. They treated them very, very seriously about this time zone change.

It’s only after we get every fact, you get everybody’s feelings. Everybody, regardless of whether they are pro or con, actually just want Taiwan to be seen as more unique. If we have such recurring cost, maybe we can use our culture, our open government, our Sustainable Goals, things like that, which will get more international coverage than dialing the time zone.

That would just get us one day of international news. There’re many countries with different currencies and different time zones. It doesn’t really change the identity that much. Even the petitioners who are pro the change ended up agreeing with that.

Like the Occupy Parliament people of different ideologies and different insights, eventually, after being exposed into a set space, where they can only add to it without taking away, they see these divisive things, which they define themselves with, are just one fraction. They have far more in common than they originally thought about. That is the kind of space that we’re creating. That’s it.

Yeah. What I see is like a methodology that you made, in a sense proposing a methodology for a cooperation. Are there issues in terms of content that you were fighting for in particular?

No.

No? It’s just you’re bringing forward this methodology?

Just like the Internet protocol. The Internet protocol is not fighting against AT&T, Telex, or any other existing protocols. It just shows them how to connect together and have basically the end-to-end people determining the methodology of communication, rather than have the middle person or midpoints, gateways determining the routing.

That’s really the only thing that defines that unit, which is what we call the end-to-end principle, or innovation without permission. That is the thing that I’m bringing to governance. I don’t really care about the particular content the people care about, which is why the e-petition or referendum, we should care about how referendum plays out later tonight.

Yes, people care, which is why they bring out their political...

In a sense, you don’t mind who’s winning tonight? You don’t care?

Well, I mind if it’s tampered. I mind if it’s not a fair election. I mind if it’s a cybersecurity incident, but if everything is safe, free, and democratic, I’m fine with any result.

Interesting. [laughs] I have to think about it. In a sense, in the West, when we are within that radical left tradition, we’re more used to work in a kind of antagonistic politics. We’re always fighting for something.

I support you in that -- whatever you’re fighting for.

You’ve got my support.

I know, but you cannot support two people that are fighting for opposite...

We can. We can.

You can?

Yeah, of course. That’s our core mechanism, actually. That’s the picture you’re painting, which is the porn picture of trade-offs. Basically, the one side with the better organizers, which is the most, with the raise, which is the midpoint, the line which is the career public service, voting, or whatever other institution you have there.

Better organizer with a better agenda that elicits a bigger dog. "More people wins" is the traditional Taiwanese stakeholder view of trade-offs. I would argue that it is a broken model because people don’t need organizers anymore. They just need hashtags. With the right hashtag, you organize tens of thousands of people.

At the end, what you’re promoting is the end of the Parliament as we know it and the end of parties as well.

I’m just proposing a collaborative space where people can maybe take some trade-offs there, enjoy the geometry here, and maybe come up with some synergies. If they don’t, oh well, nothing lost. If they do, then the synergies replace the trade-off space.

What would you do then with the actual political system in terms of parties and the whole thing? What would you do with it?

The Taiwanese cabinet system is very peculiar because we are all political appointees. We don’t have constituents. We have 34 vertical ministers in their ministries and 8 horizontal ministers, me being one of them, that are purely coordinators.

In the cabinet, there’s more people who are non-partisan, people who are independents, than people of any particular party, so it’s more balanced, and it’s been true for a while. People generally see the administration, the Executive Yuan, which proposed the draft version of the bills, as more neutral to party politics than the Parliament.

Once you reach the Parliament, of course, the parties start their conversation there but based on a draft bill proposed by the administration. That is totally different from the French, UK, or the US system.

Then what do you do with very controversial issues? I’m thinking more about the Western politics that I know better than Taiwan.

Of course.

Issues that are now splitting not just countries and polities, but everyone, including within the feminist movement, queer movement, or whatever, like issues that had to do with migration, how could you deal with that?

Be really precise, like what does migration...

Let’s say that in Europe now you have a very strong policy in most parties claiming for closing the border fully to migrants. What would you do in relation? This is a question for me to get to understand the methodology, how you’re working, as opposed to traditional antagonistic politics that I’m used to do myself.

How could you react to that? What are the policies in Taiwan in relation to migration?

We just passed the Foreign Talent Act, and the new immigration act is in the works. We’re considering to open up more, [laughs] so it’s the other way around now. The rhetoric is not...I think that’s because Taiwan really is an island. There’s no natural way for people to become refugees. People have to be really intentional to be refugees like hijacking planes. We all remember that.

The political definition, that means the border of the polity is more geographic in nature. When I say Taiwan, I always mean the geographic feature. I would say Taiwan started forming four million years ago. Taiwan’s culture starts spreading for thousands of years ago of the Austronesian tradition.

I would also say that back in the ice age, Taiwan was part with Mainland. It’s a archipelago shape now for hundreds of thousands of years. When I say Taiwan, I always mean the geographic feature. That includes the inhabitants, of course, of biosphere. I happen to think that we’re just stewards here, "we" meaning the human species.

Taiwan has other species before, and we’ll have other species in the future. We’re just safeguarding it. That’s my ecopolitics.

The immigration policy in Taiwan would be dealt with in a much more instrumentalist version of a debate rather than a ethnic or a nationalistic version of the debate, simply because the natural border requires so much intention to travel.

Now the topic that we’re handing in terms of immigration, it used to be our immigrants, before they’re fully naturalized, they’re maybe permanent residents, but they’re a numbering system, which we can talk about, which is part of institution. It’s still not the same as the Taiwan citizen’s right.

As Taiwanese citizens, we may have ID numbers...

...something like that, just making it up. As a foreign person, even permanent residents, your ARC number is going to look something like that. It is very different. People can see the difference.

Because one is the number and one is the letter on the second ledger, it’s very hard for people with permanent resident or temporary residence certificates to get maybe movie tickets, railway tickets, or things like that just because when they ask, they’re asked for a national ID number.

Their ID won’t fit the system. It’s a code-based normativity that excludes people psychologically, even if they are permanent residents already. Their nationality, their passport is still not issued by the effective jurisdiction in Taiwan -- which, of course, is the "Republic of China". [laughs]

If you don’t have the right passport, you get this second-class citizen numbering. We just announced that we’re fixing that. Starting next year or so, you’re going to have a new number if you’re a permanent resident or something like this. There will be a one-to-one mapping on this. It would be the numbers seven, eight, and nine.

It can be visually distinguished that your gender is still encoded in the second number. The seven, eight, and nine are for nonbinary male and female, respectively. It will look just like, on the shape of it, the form of the national ID number. You’d be able to get tickets and so on.

It shows a more inclusive approach, and it’s not controversial at all. There’s no controversy about it.

If I understand well, what you’re doing is translating discussions about nationality, gender, sexuality, whatever, identity into code.

Yes, code based on the code.

I understand.

We can talk about it in our talk. In this speed, the interpreters are of course not having sufficient time. We’re essentially rehearsing here.

As a moderator...

Exactly. Maybe you have questions for us.

You are speaking too fast.

I’m still speaking too fast. We should still slow down.

For me, no break for the last 15 minutes almost. It was a very continuous talk. I can see that the thoughts are varied. Particularly for me just now, it was really amazing to understand the political situation and your position in it. For us now, it’s great for Paul and I to really understand the situation in Taiwan.

For the purpose of the talk on Tuesday, how could we sort out what would be the key point for the last 15, 20 minutes of introduction to Taiwan and Paul’s try to break in, making a parallel analysis from the Western point of view? I think that would be the key point.

Just to sum up, I think the first part of conversation is clear for me, like democracy in transition, gender in transition. We talk about body politic, the body including political body and all that. That’s clear.

The second part I think actually start with, what can I moderate? The second part is really started out with Paul asking the question of access to technology, then for Audrey to say Internet is really the tools and the goal where we all innovate.

I was also thinking about the conclusion of Jaromil’s interview with you, to use the word "fork," "forking a democracy." Of course, "forking" is a very key word in programmer’s terms, in terms of how do we fork. It’s almost like everybody can take apart and fork it, like branches, and you kind of take apart.

This is exactly the way Audrey is talking about the government management. It’s almost like...

Fork and merge, and fork, and merge.

Exactly. As to another key part for me when almost insisting on using the word algorithm and code. I do feel that algorithm itself imply certain calculations.

That’s right.

"Code," for me, it’s almost like a written code. You cannot change it unless you want...

The Code of Hammurabi. [laughs]

Exactly. "Code" is like...

It’s already beyond your access.

It’s a structured language. However, algorithm imply that you are constantly modifying. It’s not even modifying, you are constantly calculating, even automatically, because the whole world runs itself with the various algorithms.

Algorithms, for me, also imply the randomness in some degree. By randomness, I also mean there could be some accident or chances happen that’s unexpected. Rather than code, which is actually more like a role-binding, rules-binding kind of thing.

For me, it’s important that we take these two words as a way to talk about, in a bigger sense, what’s that mean. I think maybe during the 20-second talk, we would not get into the whole introduction of running the government per se.

No.

This is totally for understanding, exactly.

For me, it was important to get to understand.

That’s why I want to rely on your help now. From what I can gather just the last 20 minutes of conversation, I would say we do have the key word here. How do we make it another big topic to get into?

How do we segue?

How do we segue from the transition into the concept of forking. It’s exactly...

When you’re transitioning, you’re not really going back. When you’re forking, it’s always with the intention of merging back. That is core difference between those two words.

If you would speak more about forking democracy, about that part.

No, we can start saying "transition into democracy," because that is a fact. Taiwan was under military rule. We’re no longer under military rule. We’re not going back. That is transition by any definition. On that, we are similar.

When I was saying "transition" in myself, I was thinking both about a change of paradigm, which is not just like moving from point 1 to point B, but something is shifting.

Like phase change, water into air.

Exactly. I think that this relates to the question of the code and the algorithm. I somehow like the way you spoke about the code. You were saying that you are like writing poems. I think this interesting because placing yourself in the position of "the artist in relation to the algorithm" is quite interesting.

What I find interesting is that, for instance, Audrey’s not saying, "I’m a scientist."

No, not at all. I’m at most a designer. [laughs]

Exactly. This is something that is common with me. For instance, I opposed science as precisely that...

Unless you’re Paul Feyerabend, which I’m fine with. [laughs]

Exactly. If I understand you well, and to answer Shu Lea with the question of the code, the idea here is that the code can always be rewritten. It has to be constantly and collectively rewritten.

Therefore, opposing the idea that the code is the law, that you can only do it when you say that you’re an artist, if you say that you’re a full politician or you’re a full scientist, then you put yourself on the side of the law, on the side of the already written finalized code, and then nothing can be done.

I think that what Audrey’s trying to say is, "No, the code has to be constantly rewritten." For me, this has also to do with both forking and transitioning. For instance, in the case of gender transitioning, it’s not just like going from female into male, or male into female, but putting into question the gender binary, for instance, or the sexual regime.

Something similar is happening when you are saying it’s not just about like these two people, "Who is right and who is wrong?" but something else. Out of these cooperations, something...

Maybe a new digit for non-binary.

Exactly.

That is both by law, because we really are changing the law to allow that, but it is also by code, because the code also has to recognize that. It is also by spirit, because then it frees people from binary thinking. This is why we have four restrooms in the social innovation lab.

For me, that’s quite interesting, the position of the artist in relation to that, as opposed to the scientist, the physician, or whatever.

I would want to bring up another two keywords, would be the cryptology an encryption in the sense of when speaking of codes and in the sense of cryptology. I think it somehow should be brought in. I am hoping from this -- if we start talking about cryptology and encryption -- from this, then we can talk about a kind of resistance of surveillance system, if it’s possible.

Yes.

Yeah?

Mm-hmm.

What would be the certain kind of...from a very passive being observed, to taking action? Just now, even listening to you saying you invite yourself in, you’re doing the Occupy Parliament by the way you invite yourself in, in a way it become, "How do you become that active agent?"

The thought, the title of the piece is called "3x3x6." It referred to the nine-meter^2, six-surveillance-camera prison cell, which is quite common. Yesterday, we were actually in Chiayi visiting the prison. It’s even smaller than nine-meter^2, while it’s housing for the night, that’s probably what?

Eight people or something like that.

Six-meter.

Six-meter, the one that we saw yesterday. Yeah, six-meter for eight people.

It’s probably more like a six-meter space, and it’s housing eight people. We went to visit the Chiayi Museum of the prison. This is totally pre-digital surveillance camera, but then they have the thing called catwalk on top of the ceiling that actually can have the cattle, the guardian. You can look down on the prisoners.

I was just saying I think we need cryptology, encryption, particularly with a lot of cypher...

Cypherpunks?

Yeah, cypherpunk, rather than cyberpunk, for example.

Wow, that brings me back.

[laughs].

People are just saying crypto now. They say, "Oh, we’re in the crypto scene."

Exactly.

That’s after Satoshi, but it used to be called cypherpunks.

Exactly. I call my film, the last film I did in 2007, I call it a cypherpunk film.

Now people just say "blockchain". [laughs]

Exactly. We’re now getting there. I thought it was funny that you are talking to Jaromil without mention this particular area that he is a very specialist in. How could we go from this the few things I mention to get into the...the third part would be...

Salvation.

...the kind of all-in-presence surveillance. Even for the Venice Biennale work, when Paul and I first talk about this project, we talk about, "If we are creating the same surveillance system in the installation, are we then just kind of remodel the government apparatus?" or, "What are we doing that would kind of show a certain kind of revolt or the resistance?"

That would be maybe the final part we want to come to in this conversation, which would help me sort a lot of issues that, as an artist, I really want to work out.

You don’t have an idea who will get to the control room and reprogram everything?

For the artist, it’s more like, "How do we make it so that there is no touchpad?" [laughs]

There is a point that we were speaking about today with your designers, which was revealing how...

The processing.

Yes, revealing how the surveillance system works and giving access to those technologies. This is something that you were doing in your work, which is basically about transparency, what Audrey is always talking about.

Is it the process?

Which is the opposite that both the market and sometimes art are really concealing these surveillance technologies. You don’t have to see them. What you’re doing is really unpacking them and revealing them, exposing them.

For me, this is already a way of giving access to those technologies, just show how they work. You’re not asking, "What is freedom?" but, "How can you use it?" right?

Mm-hmm.

Instead of saying, like the big question in philosophy, "What is freedom? Am I free?" what you’re saying is, "Forget about this question. The question is how can I access certain technologies that would allow for me to re-appropriate this for that and become active within that context?" This is how I see both works quite related to each other.

When we started working, one of the issues that we had in mind that has been present in my work before, is how, because of this change of paradigm that has to do with the Internet, in order for a body to become the subject of control in politics, the body had to be located within a particular architecture, architecture of the school, architecture of the domestic space, the factory, or the prison.

You had to be physically surveilled in a certain architecture. What is happening through the invention of the Internet is precisely that this architecture is dematerialize. The technology of surveillance is installed within you.

What do you mean, dematerialize? Like people implanting chips in Sweden?

For instance, I haven’t studied that, in relation to hormones and how basically the invention of the pill in the 1950s changed completely the relationship between sexuality and reproduction.

Of course.

In a sense, basically to break this relationship. Let’s say the traditional idea heterosexuality, this connection between sexuality and reproduction, is broken, but not through a physical way of controlling someone, but just with a chemical pill.

One of the things that I’m doing in my work is relating these miniaturization of technologies with...

But it’s miniature. It’s not dematerialized. These are its materials.

In this case, yes. It’s not dematerialized in the sense of...

Invisible.

Gone into the ether.

No, when I say dematerialize, it’s like saying that it takes a different form. It goes from architecture into chemical technology or that you go from architecture into electronics.

There is a form change.

Exactly. This change is not just accidental. It’s a change in quality. Basically, this is quite clear in with the prisons that we see today. The prisoner is constructed through the physical constraint of his body within a particular building.

Today maybe, or even in the future, we might be thinking about a prison that has to do with just like having a chip underneath your skin or even like you like a pill forever, and that’s it. [laughs] You take a pill that will go into your system and will modify you genetically.

I would say it’s manifest in different materials. The genetic change is harder to defend now because it’s very hard to imagine, like you said, that that will...

I’ve seen that the coding that you were speaking about, for instance, when you were speaking about entering within the code and transforming the legislation or the administration codes so you can change the A for the B.

That’s right.

I think that the risky point of that is that, eventually, this recoding will happen within the body as well.

What’s wrong with that?

I’m not saying that it’s wrong or right yet. We don’t know.

You said dangerous.

Danger in the sense that...You have to understand, Audrey, you have a very Utopian...

[laughs]

Because of Project Gutenberg, I don’t know about world wars. [laughs]

Gutenberg being quite important here. Of course, we’re in the, let’s say, Republic of China, So access to coding is not equal for everyone.

Not at all.

The same access to technologies of knowledge is not equal to everyone.

I understand that.