I am reading "Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon" in the bathtub. In my 1999 master thesis "Network Movement with the Multitude" (「民眾參與的網路運動」, title translated), I chose the same icon to start my story. The difference between Gijs van Hensbergen, the author of the book, and mine is the entry point. He picked a historical moment of Kofi Annan addressing the New York MoMA International Council, I picked another one: Derrida commenting 1986 Artist Against Apartheid exhibition open in Paris.
There are a lot of similarities in the first introduction in telling stories about Guernica. I think we both witnessed the important sacred object in twentieth century. In my theory for exposing such object-history, I think virtual object could be a powerful component for globalized information society to utilize. Assembled with culture and meaning, they are exerting their significance in the era of information.
