While we cannot imagine our lives without the internet, it is hard to think of it with the same optimism with which it was perceived in the late 1990s. Over the past 30 years we have witnessed the internet’s coming of age from a platform used for connectivity, instant communication, and unrestricted access to information to a space of false information, data miners, targeted advertising, and open surveillance. In Mechanisms of a Surveillance State, a group of artists and thinkers whose work investigates the mechanisms of surveillance and technology discuss the current state of the internet and its future.

With:
Benjamin H. Bratton, professor of visual arts and director, Center for Design and Geopolitics, University of California, San Diego

Carmen Weisskopf, artist, !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Berlin/Zurich

Trevor Paglen, artist, Berlin

Moderated by Doreen Mende, curator and theorist, associate professor and head of CCC Research-Based Master Program, HEAD Geneva, and co-director, Harun Farocki Institut, Berlin