Florian Freier participates in No secrets!.Images of surveillance

Florian Freier participates in No secrets! – Images of surveillance organized by the Photographic department, Munich Stadtmuseum with Trevor Paglen, Susan Morris, Florian Freier, Mario Santamaria, Ed Fornieles, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.

Since Edward Snowden’s disclosures no-one has been in any doubt about the existence of widespread digital surveillance and monitoring. It is not just the intelligence agencies that collect data from our use of media technologies. Automated analyses of electronic processes, events and communications are also employed to monitor people’s behavior through the “Internet of Things” and the mind-blowing world of “Big Data”. This highly emotive and controversial topic is the subject of the exhibition. A brief historical overview looks at early examples of government surveillance of both people and places such as the introduction of public street lighting and the use of police photographs as a precursor to modern biometric identification methods. The main body of the exhibition features contemporary works including photographs, videos, paintings, posters and installations that employ a wide range of tactics to attack, reflect upon or at any rate expose modern-day surveillance practices. In addition to the exhibition at the Münchner Stadtmuseum, the ERES Foundation’s “No secrets! – The allure and dangers of digital self-surveillance” exhibition investigates the now widespread phenomenon whereby most people today effectively consent to their own surveillance in their use of the Internet, smartphones and social media.

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