The Glass Room MOD
The Glass Room is a public intervention that aims to educate about technology. With a sleek tech shop vibe, visitors can freely and critically discuss their relationships with data privacy.
Having toured Europe and the US, it will be visiting Australia for the first time in 2022.
From the tech boom to tech backlash, our understanding of the digital has become both deeply personal and deeply political. Our desire for convenience has given way to questions about the trade-offs for how much we can control our data and our understanding about how it is used.
The Glass Room is a place to explore these ideas. The objects here bring to life the hidden aspects of everyday technologies and examine how they are changing the way we live. The objects in The Glass Room provide unconventional and unexpected ways of seeing your relationship with your data.
As technology becomes embedded in every part of our lives, The Glass Room helps you look deeper into the digital: Does your personal data say everything about you, or is it an imperfect portrait? Do more tools, apps, and information make us better and more efficient, or are we giving away more than we want in return? What goes on behind the screens and inside the black boxes of the devices we interact with everyday? If we knew, would we still sign in or click ‘I agree’? How much trust do users invest in big tech companies, and what can be done if that trust is broken? If you want to learn more, you can visit our Data Detox Bar to pick up our Data Detox Kit, which offers you simple tips to enhance your digital privacy, security, and wellbeing.
Featured Artists:
Dries Depoorter, Aram Bartholl, Kiki Mager, Bengt Sjölén, Danja Vasiliev, Sebastian Schmieg, !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Tega Brain / Sam Lavigne, Kyriaki Goni, La Loma, and Tactical Tech
From September 15 to 25, the Uferhallen will present the group exhibition On Equal Terms.
A large majority of Berlin-based artists are trying to resist the eco‐ nomic displacement of spaces for artistic experimentation. However, their language is sometimes forced to conform to a similar logic, as workplaces and artistic networks are labelled as “creative hubs” and “cultural capital.” In the struggle against the gentrification of spaces for living and working, these same spaces necessarily become subject to the cultural economy’s valorization process. What is the price to pay for entering the political bidding war for space? What is the relationship between cultural and monetary capital? Are both sides of the conversation on equal terms?
The group show examines, among other things, how art deals with mechanisms of the partly voluntary, partly forced commodification of cultural and artistic values. The exhibition will showcase works by approximately 25 artists from Uferhallen
Symposium und antifaschistische Hüpfburg
Große Bergstraße/ Goetheplatz, Hamburg
13:00-19:00 Uhr
Mohamed Amjahid (Vortrag & Diskussion)
Wie aus der Parallelgesellschaft herausspringen?
Über homogen weisse Räume in der Stadt
Aram Bartholl (Performance & Gespräch)
Greetings from Hamburg!
Wie umgehen mit geschichtsrevisionistischer Architektur?
Eduard Freudmann (Vortrag)
Kontextualisierung, Umgestaltung, Weggestaltung
Künstlerische und aktivistische Auseinandersetzungen mit geschichtspolitischen Manifestationen im öffentlichen Raum
Cornelia Siebeck (Thesen & gemeinsames Nachdenken)
Was wir „vergessen“ haben, oder:
Für eine Erinnerungsarbeit ohne Selbstvergewisserung
Nora Sternfeld (Vortrag)
Errungene Erinnerungen
Kontaktzonen umkämpfter und geteilter Geschichte
Gegenwärtig sind wir mit einer rechten Metapolitik konfrontiert, die mit kulturellen Setzungen versucht zivilgesellschaftliche Überzeugungen und kulturelle Diskurse jenseits von Parlamenten nach eigenen Vorstellungen zu verändern. Während das Konzept der Metapolitik eigentlich für den Aufbau einer demokratischen Zivilgesellschaft gedacht war, zielt die Neue Rechte darauf ab, gesellschaftliche Komplexität auf essentialistische Vorstellungen von Kultur, Nation und Volk zu reduzieren. Mit Rekonstruktionen historischer Architektur, ideologischer Inanspruchnahme von Orten, aber auch Angriffen auf Parlamente versucht sie abgeschlossene Identitäten zu konstruieren. Im Ringen um die kulturelle Hegemonie entwendet die Neue Rechte auch den Künsten ihre Strategien, mit denen zuvor noch für eine offene und vielfältige Gesellschaft eingetreten wurde. Sie richtet die performativen Methoden nun gegen die vielfältige Kultur selbst. Dafür dreht sie das kritische Potential der Künste in eine affirmative Symbolhaftigkeit um und verwendet das progressive Moment der Künste für ihre regressiven Ideen.
Obwohl die permanente Gefahr besteht, die entwickelten künstlerischen Praxen in den Händen von Personen mit autoritären und völkischen Vorstellungen wiederzufinden, besteht nach wie vor die Notwendigkeit mit Kunst Ideen davon zu entwickeln, wie wir als Gesellschaft gerne zusammenleben wollen. Metapolitisches Hüpfen bietet den Anlass, rechte Metapolitik zu diskutieren und schafft zugleich den Raum, um Gegenstrategien zu entwickeln. Um die Frage nach dem Umgang mit symbolischen Räumen so zuzuspitzen, dass sie sichtbar und diskutierbar wird, wird das Hambacher Schloss als Symbol für Demokratie aber auch nationalistische Vereinnahmung in eine antifaschistische Hüpfburg transformiert. Die Architektur wird zur Infrastruktur für ein eintägiges Symposium im öffentlichen Raum, das Widersprüchlichkeit zulässt und auf dem nicht nur theoretisch, sondern auch praktisch und performativ Strategien gegen rechte Metapolitik entwickelt, erprobt und debattiert werden.
Mit: Mohamed Amjahid, Aram Bartholl, Eduard Freudmann, Cornelia Siebeck und Nora Sternfeld
Konzeption: Frieder Bohaumilitzky
Grafikdesign Flyer & Plakat: Torben Körschkes
DeadDrops in H4v4n4 and !!!Sección ARTE [No. 37], Paquete Semanal, collaboration with Nestor Siré [May, 2022] Cuba.
In the series HMKV Video of the Month, HMKV presents in monthly rotation current video works by international artists – selected by Inke Arns”
“TOP25”, 2018, video, 5:44 min
TOP25 is a series of short 3D animation sequences featuring the 25 most used passwords in the world. Standard, easy-to-guess passwords like ‘123456’ or ‘admin’—frequently the default preset passwords for routers and other devices in the past—still pose a significant security threat to computer systems in general. This collection of well-known passwords is presented in a style of 3D animation often used for YouTube intros. It is very common practice among YouTubers to use short and very to-the-point 3D animations of their logo and name to introduce their channels, and a whole scene of young YouTubers exchange and share the 3D source files (Blender 3D) online to help new channel producers generate their own intros. Though the animations are remixed and altered, the general aesthetics follow a very clear visual concept. All sequences in this video are original designs and arrangements by different creators; the text has been altered to match the top 25 passwords.
Picture of the day at Monopol Magazin: Der große Bruder des “Cybertrucks”
“Die Zukunft ist eckig: Der “Cybertruck” von Tesla (oben) und Aram Bartholls Installation/Performance “WannaCry (Weeping Angels)” 2017 im Hyperpavilion in den Arsenale der Venedig-Biennale.” 24.11.2019
More info at the project page: “WannaCry (Weeping Angels)” 2017
Hyperpavilion 2017, Venice Biennale
(Official Extended Program)
Installation/Performance
Medium: printed carpet, tires, steel, wood, mirror glass, phone charger, four special forces performers,
Size: 14 x 8 x 2 m
Aram Bartholl
2017
http://hyperpavilion2017.com/
Curated by Philippe Riss
Produced by Fabulous Pictures
Opening: May 11, 2017, 12:00-3:00 pm
Exhitbtion dates: May 12 – Ocotber 30, 2017
Credits:
Torsten Oetken & Christian Buchmayr
Statement:
The German government is working on a new law to empower immigration offices in extraordinary ways. Asylum seekers without a passport who make their applications in Germany will be required to hand over all of their data. Immigration centers are being equipped with new forensic hardware and software to make complete copies of smart phones and other devices. Forcing immigrants to show their social media profiles is a strikingly efficient way to obtain proof of identity. A Facebook profile is seen as much harder to fake or lose than a passport. When the meta data on your Instagram pictures shows you’ve spent years in Libya, it may be hard to argue that you are actually a citizen of Syria. The difference is that asylum applications from Libya are not accepted. It is supposed to be a “safe country.”
The very basics of human rights and privacy rights don’t apply here any more. We now live in a world in which your social media profile is becoming more important than a passport. What will happen if you don’t have a Facebook account at all, or not even a smart phone?
What asylum seekers will soon have to endure in Germany is already, in a softer form, being implemented for everyone traveling to the Unites States and other countries. The border search exception empowers customs and border protection agents to search any electronic device. Increasingly, customs officers are asking travelers to show their social media profiles, passwords and to unlock their phones. In the future this process could be, very plausibly, automated at the entry-points and borders of many countries.
Social media is the perfect tool for commercial data mining and user tracking for marketing companies. And it also perfectly serves a governmental total control scenario, which is not some far-off, futuristic idea but a reality that is unfolding right now.
WannaCry (Weeping Angels) at Hyperpavilion, Venice
The installation/performance WannaCry (Weeping Angels) plays out on an 8×14 meter carpet printed with logos of more than 3000 internet marketing and user tracking companies. On the carpet, a mirror-covered, disguised, anti-riot police tank is parked. Specially-equipped security guards holding mirrored shields patrol the exhibition space and ask the visitors for their smart phone and social media profile.
“Is your phone ok? Does you Facebook still work? This is just a security measure for your safety. We had some attacks around here and just want to make sure your device is ok. … All good, thank you. Please don’t turn it off! This will help us to track any suspicious activities.”
With conversations like this, the guards cover up the fact that they are actually checking visitors’ phones (in the sense of the performance only; no data is collected). Barcodes are stuck on visitors’ phones, which are then scanned by the special unit officer. Visitors are left unsettled and wondering whether the encounter was real or part of the installation. In the context of the heavily patrolled Venice Biennale and the presence of actual armed soldiers in the Giardini, this performance works very well. The guards are present every weekend for the whole show until the end of October, 2017.
This new installation/performance produced for the Hyperpavilion Venice was inaugurated on May 11th 2017 just one day before the break out of the ransomeware virus WannaCry which led to widespread computer failures across the world. Such an uncanny correlation left me little choice but to rename the piece (formerly: Weeping Angels) with the name of the virus.
WannaCry (Weeping Angels) evokes a dark age that we are on the cusp of entering: ever-increasing surveillance, terror attack fear and cyber-war panic on a daily basis. While we chill on our fluffy carpet at home thousands of companies retrieve and process our personal data. Increasingly military-like police control the cities while government intelligence collects massive amounts of data unnoticed every day. Is it 1984 yet?
Aram Bartholl 2017
All pictures at flickr.com/photos/bartholl/albums/72157683886912096