Current Events

Today Is a Good Day to Discuss Digital Rights

20. November 2025 – 3. May 2026
Group Show, Fundacion Telefonica, Madrid

A look at how our online practices leave a trace and shape our rights. Drawing on the Charter of Digital Rights (2021), the exhibition explores seven key areas with humour and everyday examples. Framed within the Observatory of Digital Rights and curated by Fundación Telefónica and Domestic Data Streamers, the show encourages reflection and debate around the safe, responsible, critical, and creative use of technology.

We accept cookies as if they were freshly baked biscuits, without having the slightest idea of what ingredients they contain. We share photos of our children’s birthdays or family trips as if they were WhatsApp stickers, without knowing where they might end up. We use the same password for our bank account and our grocery app (spoiler: not a good idea). We check a website to see if it’s going to rain, only to give away our data like candy on Halloween.

The exhibition Today Is a Good Day to Discuss Digital Rights seeks to raise awareness about the rights and duties that citizens exercise and develop in the digital sphere. Moreover, the show invites us to keep debating and building a system of guarantees around the digital ecosystem — a kind of ethical guide that helps us understand what digital rights and duties are, what they imply, and the opportunities the technological environment offers citizens.

Framed within the initiative of the Observatory of Digital Rights and curated by Fundación Telefónicatogether with the artistic collective Domestic Data Streamers — which presents six installations —, the exhibition features works by contemporary artists such as United Visual Artists, Eva & Franco Mattes, Paolo Cirio, Noemí Iglesias Barrios, Theresa Reiwer, Hasan Elahi, and Aram Bartholl, among others. Their works challenge visitors, help them understand, and encourage reflection on our actions as digital beings. A much-needed exhibition, it fuels the debate around digital rights and duties, and calls for a safe, responsible, critical, and creative use of technology. Because today is a good day to discuss Digital Rights.

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Upcoming Events

Me and the Others

12. March – 13. September 2026
Group Show, Fondation EDF, Paris

By occupying nearly a third of our waking hours, screens are profoundly reshaping the contours of our relationships with others. In response, numerous journalistic and academic discourses echo concerns about the digital migration of our social lives: the idea frequently arises that the socio-technical systems at work in this migration are making us more resistant to diversity.

Our intention is to nuance this concern by acknowledging a foundational aspect of the internet—its original design to facilitate the virtuous and unprecedented emergence of communities of specific interests, often far more specialized than what our traditional offline social circles can accommodate. This utopia inevitably carries a tension between, on the one hand, the benefits of more efficient and far-reaching sociability, and on the other, the widely discussed risks of a social life limited to alters who are most similar to ourselves.

Curated by Aurélie Clémente-Ruiz, director of the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, and Camille Roth, a researcher at CNRS in social sciences.

With: Nicolas Bailleul, Aram Bartholl, Léa Belloousovitch, Neïl Beloufa, Sophie Calle, Paola Ciarska, Laurent Grasso, Juliette Green, Ben Grosser, Özgür Kar, Béatrice Lartigue, Lauren Lee MacCarthy, Katherine Longly, Randa Maroufi, Magalie Mobetie, Martine Neddam, Philippe Parreno, Françoise Pétrovitch, Valentina Peri, Marilou Poncin, Jeanne Suspuglas

Spazi di Transizione

9. – 11. December 2025
Talk, Spazio Murat, Bari

Recent Events

Scroll Panic Repeat

18. – 20. September 2025
Group Show, GOGBOT festival, Enschede

GOGBOT 2025
SCROLL PANIC REPEAT
18-21 september @ ENSCHEDE
festival for art music technology

Fundraiser: Gaza Biennale Berlin

13. September 2025
Group Show, Engeldamm 64, 10179 Berlin, Berlin

Fundraiser event I participated in:

“Join us on Saturday, September 13, 2025, 13–20h at Engeldamm 64, 10179 Berlin (Kreuzberg).

Solidarity Fundraiser for the
Gaza Biennale –- Berlin Pavilion
Works by 100+ Berlin artists
Each work €50

Over 120 Berlin-based artists have already donated works on paper in solidarity with colleagues in Palestine. The fundraiser will make the Berlin Pavilion possible: It will support the participating artists in Gaza by paying them artist fees, reproducing works that cannot leave Gaza under the siege, and expanding the ecosystem of the Biennale that allows the public to engage with their work.

If you are a Berlin-based artist and would like to contribute works on paper to the fundraiser, please email fundraising@gazabiennaleberlin.com for more information.”

Radio Spaetkauf panel

13. September 2025
Talk, Europäische Akademie Berlin, Berlin

Join us live-in-studio with season two of the Radio Spaetkauf x Europäische Akademie Berlin podcast collaboration. This year we focus on CULTURE. Each episode features fresh voices and perspectives representing a wide array of backgrounds, expertise and disciplines. Host Daniel Stern is joined by researchers, academics, independent artists, journalists and community leaders with unique insights into our evolving cultural interactions.

September 13th: Museums are more than just buildings that house objects. They are sites of memory, meaning, and power – spaces where stories are told, preserved, and sometimes contested. But who decides what’s worth keeping? And how do museums evolve in response to the cultures and technologies of their time?

As boundaries blur between archive and activism, exhibition and experience, we ask: What is a museum today? And what should it be? Together we explore the shifting roles of museums in shaping public understanding, identity, and imagination.

Guests include:

Michael Soltau – Synthesizer Museum Berlin
Aram Bartholl – Media and concept artist
Lilja-Ruben Vowe – PhD in cultural history, curator and inclusive mediator
Dr. Wenke Wegner – Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation

Host: Dan Stern

MINIMALE REVOLTE Festival

23. July 2025
Group Show, Public space, Charlottenburg, Berlin

The festival brings artistic short films into public space – presented in a mobile, seemingly improvised exhibition object: a transport cart with pneumatic tires, stacked with various boxes, crates and bags, all secured with colorful tension straps. Through peepholes in these containers, passersby can watch the films on hidden tablets or smartphones. The route leads through five locations in the district (Goslaer Platz, Mierendorffplatz, Österreichpark, Schustehruspark, Lietzenseepark). At each stop, the “mini-museum” stays for about one hour. The project is accompanied throughout the day by the two artists and curators Marian Luft and Moritz Frei, who will be present to assist and engage with the audience.

Curated by Marian Luft & Moritz Frei

With:
Iván Argote, Sophia Süßmilch, Björn Melhus, Hansol Kim, Barış Çavuşoğlu, Lorna Mills, Andrew Birk, Peng Li

pictures

Blog Archive for Tag: deaddrops

#BrechtDrop

February 16, 2020

As part of a discussion panel at the Brecht Haus Berlin last thursday I made a Dead Drop in the entrance hallway. Come by visit the house and drop some files!

Die kleine Intervention: Weniger Spektakel, mehr Wirkung?

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Installation und Gespräch
Brecht-Tage 2020, Literaturforum im Brecht-Haus

Mit Aram Bartholl und Helgard Haug (Rimini Protokoll)
Moderation Cornelius Puschke

Anhand von Aram Bartholls „Dead Drops“ (mit Live-Installation) und Projekten von Rimini Protokoll geht es um die Frage, ob die kleine, unauffällige oder parasitäre Aktionsform wirksamer ist als die skandalösen Groß-Interventionen, die ebenso schnell wieder verschwinden wie sie erschienen sind.

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Dead Drops appear on Elementary

November 3, 2016

@arambartholl dead drop on Elementary 🙂 pic.twitter.com/BslUrpBKrv

— Theodore Watson (@theowatson) https://twitter.com/theowatson/status/793612879928885248 November 2, 2016

Thanks to Jonah Brucker-Cohen & Theo Watson for pointing out the appearance of a Dead Drop in the TV show ‘Elementary‘. Cool! 🙂

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Interview – Dead Drops on Huffpo

September 1, 2016


The internet revolutionized information sharing, allowing people all over the world to post content and distribute it among networks. But as the internet has grown, surveillance on the web has exploded as well. So one artist is encouraging people to forget the cloud and share information in a totally anonymous way.
In 2010, Berlin-based media artist Aram Bartholl started “Dead Drops,” his participatory file-sharing art project, by cementing a USB drive into a brick wall in New York City.

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Save The Data

September 24, 2015

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Save the data!
27.09. –  22.11.15
Von Kunst und datenträgern
Kunstpalais Erlangen · www.kunstpalais.de
In Erlangen, der Stadt, in der mit Entwicklung des mp3-Formats die Digitalisierung einen ganz bedeutenden Entwicklungsschritt getan hat, fokussiert mit der Gruppenschau „Save the Data!“ erstmals eine Ausstellung das Zusammenspiel von bildender Kunst und verschiedenen Speichermedien.
Auf welche Weise werden die technischen Speichermedien – aktuelle und überholte – für den künstlerischen Ausdruck genutzt, und wie werden deren unterschiedliche Bedeutungsebenen miteinander verwoben? Welchen Einfluss hat die Digitalisierung auf die Bildgenerierung in den Medien Fotografie, Film und Skulptur? Inwieweit wird der Bedeutungswandel, den die Speichermedien von analog bis digital in den letzten Jahren und Jahrzehnten erfahren haben, durch den künstlerischen Umgang mit ihnen hinterfragt?
Schallplatten, Compact Discs und CD-ROMs, vor allem aber Musikkassetten, Disketten und VHS-Tapes verschwinden einerseits zunehmend aus dem täglichen Gebrauch –andererseits taucht solcherlei Hardware in den letzten Jahren vermehrt in Museen und Galerien auf. Als künstlerischer Werkstoff sind sie für viele Künstler zunehmend von Interesse, und auch der Betrachter freut sich über die Wiederbegegnung mit solchem zum Teil allzu vertrauten Material. Der einst gefürchtete Bandsalat, das Rattern des Filmprojektors, die Mixkassette für die Liebste oder das Bild von Regalen voller Videokassetten gehören im täglichen Leben zwar meist der Vergangenheit an, doch die damit verbundenen Gefühle zwischen Nostalgie und Zukunftseuphorie kommen umso stärker zum Tragen und werden von den Künstlern ganz gezielt eingesetzt. Der Aspekt des verborgenen Gehalts, den die gespeicherten, aber dennoch unsichtbaren Daten den Werken hinzufügen, spielt hierbei für viele eine weitere große Rolle.
Zum anderen entstehen mit Elementen des ganz zeitgenössischen Umgangs mit Dateien und Speicherstrukturen auch neue ästhetische Prototypen: so beispielsweise das Fenster im Internetbrowser oder das Raster des Bildbearbeitungsprogramms. Auch diese haben seit einiger Zeit in der künstlerischen Produktion ihren festen Platz. Vergangenheit und Zukunft werden auf diese Weise in der Schau „Save the Data!“ dicht verwoben – spannend, sinnlich wie intellektuell ansprechend und nicht zuletzt durchaus humorvoll.
with: Timo Arnall (GB), Aram Bartholl (DE), Viktoria Binschtok (RU), Gregor Hildebrandt (DE), Ronnie Yarisal und Katja Kublitz (CH und DK), Via Lewandowsky (DE), Joep van Liefland (NL), Florian Meisenberg (DE), Yuri Pattison (IE), Gebhard Sengmüller (AT)

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Dead Drops at Palais de Tokyo

June 30, 2015

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Born in Germany in 1972, Bartholl focuses on interrelations between the digital world and our physical surroundings. He obtained his degree in architecture from the University of arts in Berlin, where he lives and works. His artistic work has been shown in numerous festivals and exhibitions in museums and galleries. In 2011, five Dead Drops were part of the “Talk to me” exhibition at the MoMA in New York and a new facet of the project saw the day in 2013 with the installation of a DVD Dead Drop at Museum of the Moving Image in New York as well. Palais de Tokyo is the first French institution to welcome Dead Drops.
Cited from “Somewhere between Cyber and Real: An interview with Aram Bartholl”, by Jillian Steinhauer, 2012, http://hyperallergic.com

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more pictures on flickr
Links for all four Dead Drops:

 

Comment exposer au Palais de Tokyo ?

June 18, 2015

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Dead Drops au Palais de Tokyo, à Paris

Vernissage public le lundi 22 juin à 21h

Comment exposer au Palais de Tokyo ?

  1. Apporter vos oeuvres sur votre ordinateur portable lors du vernissage
  2. Téléchargez-les sur l’une des 5 dead drops placées au Palais de Tokyo
  3. Dites à tout le monde que vous exposez au Palais de Tokyo

 
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HOW TO GET YOUR ART IN THE PALAIS DE TOKYO

June 18, 2015

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DEAD DROPS at Palais de Tokyo, Paris

Public OPENING, Monday  9:00pm 2015 June 22nd

How to get your art in the Palais de Tokyo

  1. BRING YOUR ART ON A LAPTOP TO THE GRAND OPENING.
  2. UPLOAD IT TO ONE OF THE 5 DEAD DROPS IN PALAIS DE TOKYO.
  3. TELL EVERYONE YOU HAVE ART IN THE PALAIS DE TOKYO.

 
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Dead Drops on Heute news

June 3, 2015

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Dead Drops revistited!

March 19, 2015

In the past two months there has been again a lot of international press about DeadDrops. The DeadDrops project is running since November 2010, for four and a half years now. After the initial press buzz in 2010/11 the project kept spreading online with occasional press like after the Snowden releases etc. But just since the beginning of 2015 there was a lot of press all over again. It is really hard to tell how such a press wave is starting on a project which is already running for such a while but I assume after almost 5 years there is a new generation of Internet users and press people who haven’t heard about DeadDrops yet. Through some big blogs in the US it reached the south american news, spreaded there and also made it back to Europe.  I ve listed a selection of press links at the end of this post. Please also see the nice DeadDrops youtube playlist somebody made.
In Germany the recent reports about DeadDrops had a special twist. End of February the yellow press style news paper Kölner Express had a piece about a bomb making plan PDF which was supposedly found on a DeadDrop in Cologne. The local and national press picked up quickly the story and my phone kept ringing for two weeks. It is astonishing how in 2015 you still have to explain to people that it is of course not a problem to find such a PDF with illegal tutorials on the Internet. Or yes! there could be a virus on the USB drive, like there could be a virus in this blog post. But in an era of constant fear about terror the suspicious USB drive in wall was a perfect story for them. I was only waiting for the ISIS connection. But again this was a good opportunity to explain that there is no use in censoring or prohibiting encryption or anonymous communication technologies because there is illegal activities. Like back in the days the ruling class tried to banish the brand new dangerous technology ‘book printing’ which radicalized all the young people. Especially journalists should be aware how important independent, encrypted, private communication is. In fact DeadDrops is not a very efficient communication technology but a good symbol on independent, open digital communication. So while the NSA has trojans installed on all our hard drives or access to millions of sim card keys we worry about a 20 year old anarchist cook book PDF on a flash drive in a wall in cologne.  What a crazy world! :))
The actual great story about the Cologne DeadDrop is that this specific DeadDrop, which I made myself as part of a duo show with JODI at DAM Cologne in 2011, was still existing and working in 2015!! Until the police ripped it out and broke it to then hand it in at the at the LKA cyber security department to get it fixed. Of course the highlight is how the two police men are kneeling in front of the yellow banana (the gallery “certificate”) trying to understand what’s going on. In fact later the Kriminalpolizei called DAM gallery to have them explain what exactly this USB stick is about and what the DeadDrops project is etc. On the same day I made this popular tweet about the whole story.
Of course I am very happy about all the attention for DeadDrops. It is very interesting to witness how the perspective on such a project has changed over the past five years, especially since 2013. I am glad to see how this project is still going on and how it has inspired so many people over the years. Thanks to all the deaddroppers out there!! You are awesome!!
Aram Bartholl, March 2015
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LINKS:

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Full Interview at Sueddeutsche.de:

 
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Guardian:

 

More press links:

German:

 
POPULAR TWEET


https://twitter.com/arambartholl/status/570195342253277185

 

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Dead Drops YouTube playlist

March 13, 2015


The Youtube user #USBdeaddrop made an effort to collect all videos dealing with DeadDrops in one or the other way. The result is this beautiful playlist of news reports, tutorials, documentations and more. There are whole lot of clips I haven t even seen before. So cool!! Thx!!

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