Adam Harvey: Privacy Gift Shop

Exhibition opening: Wednesday, 21 June 2017 at 7 pm

The use of new technologies raises a question about privacy and surveillance. Creative resistance to surveillance has been a topic in Adam Harvey’s research long before Snowden revelations and Privacy Gift Shop introduces a step forward; he wants to bring privacy and counter-surveillance ideas to a wider audience and engage them in the discussion about protecting privacy. The project wants to normalize these controversial ideas through the products, which include phone case that blocks wireless signals, a redesign of a T-shirt featuring an OCR-resistant font and a wallet insert that shields credit cards from identity thieves.

A day before exhibition opening, on 20 June 2017 at 7 pm, Adam Harvey will give a public talk »Computer Vision, Surveillance, and Camouflage« at The City Art Gallery in Ljubljana during which Harvey will provide an overview of how we are seen by computer vision and what it means to be analysed, and explore creative countermeasures for modulating visibility in a machine readable world.

Various popup shops will be open during the time of the exhibition (The MSUM and MGML’s Museums Shops), where it will be possible to buy various “souvenirs” specially produced by Aksioma for the launch of the Privacy Gift Shop in Slovenia.

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Production: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2017

Artistic Director: Janez Janša
Producer: Marcela Okretič
Executive Producer: Sonja Grdina
Public Relations: Alja Žorž
Technician: Valter Udovičić
Documentation: Jure Goršič

Partners: Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana, Moderna galerija
Media sponsor: Europlakat

The solo exhibition Privacy Gift Shop is realised in the framework of the project State Machines, a joint project by Aksioma (SI), Drugo more (HR), Furtherfield (UK), the Institute of Network Cultures (NL) and NeMe (CY).

Supported by: the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.