From January 17 to March 31, 2018, the art center of the Maison Populaire of Montreuil presents “While fleeing, they look for a weapon“. Curated by Stéphanie Vidal, the exhibition puts in tension malicious devices, fragile and powerful at the same time, sophisticated or modest, in the image of cheeky web cultures.
The consistency of the world has changed; now everything has become surface and everything is printed on it. We leave fingerprints on our phones so they can be switched on, we grow search engine histories and our interactions are stored in the profiles we maintain on the social networks. Also, we offer, without necessarily thinking about it, data that informs about our movements and our personalities. What defines us as acting human being – which is transcribed among other characteristics by our voices, our movements and the resulting data – is continually analyzed.
The permanent traceability of all things and of all people endows every gesture, word, presence, and even absence, with a political significance. How to counter when the trajectories are determined in advance? By bringing together mostly ubiquitous artworks – both online and in situ – this exhibition aims to make mass surveillance tangible in the age of conversational technologies while raising a paradox: while bodies are continually tracked, the facts seem to lose in contextuality.
More information here
