A discussion and production seminar, geared to critically engage contemporary surveillance and control measures in artistic practice.
The seminar deals with how public and private space is created, used and controlled through surveillance and security measures, and how room for play and action is being established. We negotiate issues of visibility and invisibility, hiding and reconnaissance.
The focus is on the development of new methodologies, identities, and narratives, especially those that cross diverse media in a performative way.
The seminar takes place on Wednesdays from 10-13h in room2, opposite the Mensa. Check the online calendar to see the schedule. See the Surveillant Architectures Blog for news.
The sky’s an unusual colour
The weather is doing unusual things
And our leaders aren’t even pretending not to be demons
So where is the good heart to go but inwards?
Why not lock all the doors and bolt all the windows?
All I am are my doubts and suspicions
I against you against we against them
(Kate Tempest, 2019)
Continuing from last semester's live situative set-ups, we'll look at space and its potentials for
> adventure, risk, unpredictability, proximity, intimacy and presence.
Taking into account the various understandings of the concept of distance that were brought about by worldwide realtime communication over the last 160 years, we'll foreground central issues like accessibility, safety and security, and how to (re-)establish room for trust, play and maneuver.
What are the possible ways to query space, taking the role of the observer or the associate, the insider?
The seminar will explore the unique potential of live situative set ups. We will open a way into the creation of real-time art work like live performance, intervention, installation and other real time experiences. Topics covered include adventure, risk, unpredictability, proximity, intimacy and presence.
Cryptoparty @ Glasmoog: 26 November 2019
Mid Term Review: 3/4 December 2019
Workshop: archival strategies
Guests:
Dominique Gonzales-Foerster
Building on the subject matter covered in Surveillance 101, we take Gilles Deleuze’s “Postscript on the Societies of Control” as a starting point to address contemporary modes of surveillance: algorithmic, fluid, social, multifocal, networked. We’ll look at the different forms that systematic observation takes today and how it can be used towards artistic ends.
Hands-on Surveillance & Counter-Surveillance techniques
Archival practices
Prison field trip (TBC - seems hard to get in)
Mid Term Review: 4. June 2019
More info and readings see our blog
This semester will begin with a historical survey of the field of surveillance studies, including its beginnings, art, engineering and theory. Selections of key historical and theoretical texts, samples of empirical research and an introduction to the debates about privacy, networks and power will be explored. Readings in philosophical positions include Foucault, David Lyon, Steve Mann, Ken Goldberg and David Murakami Wood. A study of film, art, and scientific treatments of the theme help map the differences and tensions in urban space today.
Surveillance 101 will be followed by Surveillance 102 in cooperation with Department of Sound in summer 2019.
The seminar will consider voice and sound and its techno-political implications in the context of social control today. Speculation is considered a raw material.
Artists covered this semester use voice to connect separate objects and spaces, to disorient and create doubt.
Artists covered include: Ale Bachlechner, Judith Barry, Francis Ford Coppola, Jill Magid, Kerstin Ergenzinger, Stephanie Glauber, Vito Acconci.
Voice can be an object of study or a mode of inquiry inside or outside “other” forms and media. The interwoven worlds of computational, social, architectural, aural and observational surveillance may be used as a base.
Projects can include those developing a single voice, reclaiming a found voice, or a new exchanging of different voices.
It’s possible to be heard without vocalizing. Further elements toward production of projects can include: Installation, scenography, writing, walking in the city, film, television, mobile devices, musical instruments, telepresence, remote sensing data collection, 3D modeling etc.
Guests:
Ale Bechlecher
Kerstin Ergenzinger
John Miller and Aura Rosenberg
Field trips:
German Courtroom
Individual Artificial Intelligence audio museum tour
Corporate towers
Local Prison
Following on from "the Body and the Network", we explore historical and contemporary discourses and productions of "real" and "fake", as well as and their development into various cultural movements and commodities. Starting from personal observation, we focus on the slide from real to fake, and back. What new relationships are there to be had with the fake?
Wednesdays 10-13h @ room2
First day of seminar: 18 October 2017 (see the calendar here)
Mid Term Review: 5/6 December 2017
Gäste / invited speakers:
Artist Kerstin Ergenzinger
Journalist Petra Tabeling
Sociologist Dirk Baecker
Artist Tetjus Blendermann
Building on the winter term's „Systematic Observation and Recall“ the seminar will look at body extensions in societies of control and how they manifest in networked media. This includes art works, network activity, performances or videos that reconfigure, refocuse and recontextualize current technologies of connection and display.
We will investigate new transient cultures of extending and marking the body for security, surveillance, pleasure and storytelling, and contemporary platforms for live display including the theatre, the databank and the MAX Patch.
Workshops:
Raspberry Pi Basics
A practical workshop with help from Martin Nawrath to configure and install network devices with the Raspberry Pi as a basis. Aimed at all experience levels, the workshop will introduce the basics of networking technology, the command line, scripting and automation, as well as working with external sensors.
Media for Live Events
Building on this, there will later on in the term be the opportunity to work with Prof. Larry Shea, from School of Drama, Carnegie Mellon University. In this several-weeks long workshop we‘ll use the new skills to imagine and build new networked and sensor-based set-ups for installations, performances and open scenarios, working towards Rundgang.
Mid Term Review: 9 &10 May 2017
Excursion to opening days of documenta 14
Required reading:
- Flesh and Stone, The Body and the City in Western Civilization, Richard Sennett, New York, 1994
- Nervous Systems, HKW Berlin, 2016, introduction by Anselm Franke, Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski (online)
- Out of Body, Skulptur Projekte Münster, 2016: The Body of the Web (online)
- Surveillance, Performance, Self-Surveillance. Interview with Jill Magid by Geert Lovink (online)
Gäste / invited speakers
Geert Lovink: Medienkatastrophe, 20.4., 19 h, Aula || video
Simon Denny: Medienkatastrophe, 26.4., 19 h, Aula
Mark Bain
Prof. Larry Shea (June-July)
A discussion and production seminar, geared to critically engage contemporary surveillance and control measures in artistic practice.
The seminar deals with how room for play, action and critique is being established by artists and filmmakers today. Using public and private space as examples, issues of “controlled states” under surveillance and security will be examined.
The focus is on the development of new methodologies, identities, and narratives, especially those that cross diverse media in a performative way.
Required reading includes Foucault‘s ‚Discipline and Punish‘, Deleuze‘s ‚Postscript on the Societies of Control‘ and the introductory essay to HKW's "Nervous Systems" catalogue.
Drone workshop
Mid Term Review: 6. & 7. December 2016
Continuing the previous seminar, we will look at the role of women in the development of techno culture, leading up to the current state of ubiquitous surveillance.
Ada Lovelace
Cornelia Sollfrank
Hito Steyerl
Joan Jonas
Kristin Lucas
Laura Poitras
Martha Rosler
Sophie Calle
Suzanne Treister
Event:
15. to 17. May 2015, Chaos Cologne: „Edge of Control“
The first Chaos Cologne conference, a cooperation of KHM and Chaos Computer Club Köln:
Workshops and talks, exchange and networking,
keynotes by the artist Cornelia Sollfrank
Reading:
Zielinski, Siegfried, Deep Time of the Media. Towards an Archeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technica Means. / Archäologie der Medien: zur Tiefenzeit des technischen Hörens und Sehens
Signatur MED B.1 - 18