9th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art
DISCREET – An Intelligence Agency for the People
2016
Berlin, DE
Commissioned by Armen Avanessian and Alexander Martos
Project commissioned by DIS ,
Project commissioned and coproduced by Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art
- Spatial Design by Studio Miessen
- Project Leader: Markus Miessen
- Team: Felix Frederick McNamara, Berta Cusó
- Visual material by Studio Miessen and Christopher Roth
- All moving image material by Christopher Roth
- Text by Armen Avanessian and Alexander Martos
- Logo design by Andreas Töpfer
- With the support of Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung/bpb, Bundeskanzleramt der Republik Österreich – Kunstsektion, Rudolf Augstein Stiftung.
- Photography: Maansi Jain
From Westfalia to Westfailure?
Arcane or secret knowledge has been part of the art of governing since the ancient world. Nevertheless since 9/11 and the following hallucinatory “war-on-terror” the growth of secret services, who always serve as artifices of war, is posing huge challenges for politics, law and democracy. The agencies’ turn towards mass surveillance of “their” own people, and along with a blurring of borders between peace and war they endanger the basics of Westfalian nation states. In a race against international corporations they currently fight over the main resource of the 21st century: data. Are we facing a Big DicDataship?
Strategies for a Post-War(on-terror) Era
DISCREET is an Intelligence Agency for the People that is currently in foundation and aims at intervening into the seemingly inexorable development since 2001. 15 renegade experts from art, technology, law, politics, hacktivism, urbanism and philosophy are preparing its kickoff during a 3 weeks strategy workshop from June 22 to July 11.
Will they succeed in speculating on an institution?
Want to wiretap the DISCREET workshop and observe what is being discussed? Log with your smartphone into WIFI iPhone by GCHQ and go to http:///discreet.global.
Participants AGENCY (Stephen Howell Mueller, Ersela Kripa), Webb Allen, Gertjan Boulet, Kathleen Elizabeth Li-Ying Ditzig, Lilas Guevara, Stefan Heidenreich, Amanda Kim, Judith Meyer, Peng! (Paul von Ribbeck, Gloria Spindle, Justus Klaus), Pietro Pezzani, Daniel Schwarz, TVGOV (Sofia Bastidas, Nicole Doran, Guillermo Leon Gomez, Peter Fend and Agustina Woodgate), Tea Tupajic.