<nettime> loophole for all show and more stuff

[Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>]

from:  Paolo Cirio <info@paolocirio.net>

Dear all,

I?d like to direct you to my solo show Loophole for All at Aksioma | Project Space in Ljubljana: 
http://www.aksioma.org/loophole.for.all

The exhibition opened on January 15th. Here the first pictures of the installation:
http://paolocirio.net/work/loophole-for-all/loophole-for-all-aksioma.php

Others pictures of the concurrent exhibition at CCC Strozzina in Florence are here:
http://paolocirio.net/work/loophole-for-all/loophole-for-all-strozzina.php

The installation is also currently displayed at ZKM, Center for Art and Media, in Karlsruhe, as well as at MAK, Museum for Applied Arts, in Vienna, some pictures: 
http://paolocirio.net/work/loophole-for-all/loophole-for-all-others.php

A new interview about the project has recently been published in The Wild Magazine, in which I recap my impulse to work in this field, as well as other issues related to offshore finance:
http://thewildmagazine.com/blog/paolo-cirio-loophole-for-all

And the project will be featured in the up-coming #87 issue of ArtAsiaPacific magazine.

You can learn more about the project, its others exhibitions and publications here: 
http://paolocirio.net/work/loophole-for-all/loophole-for-all.php

Shortly: I exposed 215000 Cayman Islands companies and attempted to sell their identities in order to democratize tax shields.

Loophole4All.com was published a year ago and although the media performance lasted for only a few weeks, the project has been continuing to serve its audiences without interruptions.

The website received significant amounts of traffic and in particular from India, Hong Kong, Singapore and China. Not coincidentally, these countries are frequently involved in offshore centers like the Cayman Islands. Such offshore centers facilitate political corruption, misreport manufacturing costs and retail prices, and obfuscate foreign investments as tricks to maximize profit from the development of these new economic powers.

I'm particularly enjoying a participatory investigation of the database, with included over 20000 queries. By looking at the keywords searched, I suppose that many of these were made by the owners of companies, journalists, activists and just curious people.

I received a number of legal threats over the last few weeks, mainly from owners of Cayman companies that requested to be removed from the website. As usual, the conversations ended on a friendly note. Some even expressed sympathy for the social issues that I raised through the project. Nonetheless, they still gave me the ?fatherly? advice to stay away from that world. 
Many didn't write, instead, they just subscribed to the newsletter of the project with anonymous email addresses or from domains like: ey.com, hsbc.com, citi.com, kcs.com, etc.

Unfortunately, I lost all the money that I earned from selling limited edition of the identities of Cayman Island firms. PayPal didn't concede and I was unable to find another plausible payment system. In the meantime, my mailbox on the Cayman Islands appear to be shut down and I haven?t received mail there in a few months. By the way, I am not making up a single detail of the project.

The next presentation of Loophole for All will be at Transmediale, in Berlin on Jan. 31st.
http://www.transmediale.de/content/uses-and-abuses-of-big-data

2013 hasn't been a bad year, with 24 exhibitions world wide, 13 lectures and several workshops. 
2014 looks like it will be a busy year as well. A few new projects are coming up, just to mention a few I'm working on:

* (W)orld Currency Equation
http://paolocirio.net/work/currency-equation/world-currency-equation.php
It started through a commission at the MuseumsQuartier in Vienna and it will be finalized and shown in Borroworrob, an exhibition organized by Peter Macapia about currency and space at HDLU in Zagreb that opens the first week of March. I'll also have keynote at the related conference Space as Asset, which will feature my project Street Ghosts on the walls of HDLU and a keynote by Vito Acconci.

* Direct Global Governance
http://paolocirio.net/work/participatory-governance/direct-global-governance.php
It's an ambitious project, which will be ongoing for a few months, if not years. It is a 2014 commission by New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., for Turbulence through the Jerome Foundation.

* Tabloid Graffiti - HD Stencils
http://paolocirio.net/work/hd-stencils/tabloid-graffiti.php
It is an experiment with laser cutters and coding. This new technique for High Resolution stencils will be used with spray paint, combined with the concept of pirating and subverting celebrity gossip magazines.

* Commission Data as Culture
http://theodi.org/blog/announcing-the-new-curator-for-data-as-culture-2014
This project is commissioned by Open Data Institute art programme in UK and will be published at the end of this month.

* Teen Learning @ Creative Activism Climate Change
http://www.queenszoo.com/teens/creative-activism-in-climate-change.aspx
It's a workshop at the Queens Zoo in NYC where I'll teach Tactical Transmedia Fiction to under-served teens for a few months. 

* TOP SECRET new project
I'm breaking the law again and I can't say anything about it for a few months.

* Performing Change panels series
http://paolocirio.net/press/text_perfoming-change.php
Don't forget to check out the video recordings of the panels series with 14 awesome speakers that I organized and curated at Eyebeam in NYC the last october.

* Street Ghosts 
The project has been installed worldwide over the course of 2013. I'll publish new pictures of the recent interventions next month. Meanwhile, you can find the project featured in the current issue of Frieze Magazine:
http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/look-inside


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