Privacy Techtonics Exhibition opens

07 Nov Privacy Techtonics Exhibition opens

Posted at 22:28h in Uncategorized by

Forensic Architecture  / James Bridle / Ben Grosser / Libby Heaney / Joey Holder / Tara Kelton / Yuri Pattison

Privacy Techtonics is the first in a series of episodes broadcast by OTOKA, and directed by Candice Jacobs. We have collaborated with Candice on this first episode for OTOKA which is provoked by our research focus on how ‘privacy’ is designed, talked about, regulated and experienced by WhatsApp/Meta, governments and ordinary people. This is the subject of our next book ‘Privacy Techtonics: Digital geopolitics, WhatsApp and India’.

The exhibition showcases artists & multi-media artworks, film screenings, podcasts and an exhibition PDF with artist interviews & commissioned texts. Together these explore the intrinsic & unequal relations between data, technology & people to provoke questions about our digital lives and futures, how sustainable or desirable they are & what alternative worlds we might want or need to create.

Over four weeks, four different artworks & artists or “scenes” will take over the Broadway Gallery with solo presentations where each work will be exhibited on different iterations of a scaffold system designed by Framework for Practice, a scaffolding system which we have imagined as a fluid and dynamic fragment of Benjamin Bratton’s conceptual ‘Stack’ – the ‘computational & accidental megastructure of our times that captures a multiplicity of things, layers and actors which it assembles and are assembled through, the four scenes that form the first episode of OTOKAs programme.

A further four artists’ works will be presented on www.otoka.org – LIVE FROM 10th November 2022

“Privacy Techtonics” is funded by the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Collaboration and Strategic Impact Fund, Queen Mary University of London 2021/2. It is showing at Broadway Gallery Nottingham and supported by Near Now.

Scene 1: Tara Kelton, Black Box (2018)

 

Scene 2: Ben Grosser, Platform Sweet Talk (2021)

 

Scene 3: Forensic Architecture, Digital Violence (2021)

 

Scene 4: Yuri Pattison, 1014 (2015)

 

ONLINE WORKS

11 – 13 November: Libby Heaney ‘Classes’ (2021)
18 – 20 November: Ben Grosser ‘ORDER OF MAGNITUDE’ (2019)
25 – 27 November: James Bridle ‘Under the cloud’ (2020)
2 – 4 December: Joey Holder ‘Adcredo – The Deep Belief Network’ (2018)

 

PDF READER

The Privacy Techtonics exhibition catalogue weaves together artist interviews, artworks, and research articles to animate and reflect on this Episode of OTOKA including storylines on Design cultures, Silicon Lives, Digital-state infrastructures and Post-truth, post trust. This will be available for download on the OTOKA website here.

The PDF reader will be released during the exhibition.

 

FURTHER DETAILS

Privacy Techtonics is an exhibition taking place within OTOKA during its gallery takeover of Broadway Gallery with support from Near Now.

Click here to download our Press Release and further info about the artists & curators.

An Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation, Near Now is Broadways studio for arts, design and innovation, working nationally with pioneering artists to create bold new work and drive innovation through use of emerging technologies, helping develop and showcase the skills of Nottingham’s growing arts and tech community.

Broadway is based in the heart of Nottingham and is nationally recognised as a cultural lead organisation for independent cinema, arts and technology in the Midlands, offering creative learning, talent pathways and excellent customer experience to inspire creativity and future generations to have a lifelong love of film.

 

BOOK

Digital privacy is the subject of our next book called ‘Privacy Techtonics: Digital geopolitics, WhatsApp and India’. In this forthcoming work, we argue that the global dominance of the Meta owned messaging app WhatsApp, and the recent ideological and policy shift by Big Tech towards digital private spaces raises important questions about the balance between public and private interests in a digital age. We examine how as an idea and a practice, digital privacy is infused with power relations, from intimate spaces of everyday life to the board rooms of Big Tech and the policies of state governments; to conclude that whilst WhatsApp is intended to enhance democratic life, in its largest global market, it is also implicated in undermining everyday democracy.