[spectre] Global Surveillance in the Data Society - Disruptive Fridays #12, Sept 11 5PM CEST

[Tatiana Bazzichelli]

Dear all,

we are back with our Disruptive Fridays and we are looking forward to
seeing you online at our upcoming event this Friday, September 11:

Disruptive Fridays #12:
Global Surveillance in the Data Society
September 11, 5PM CEST

With Sonia Kennebeck (Film Director, MY/DE/US), Assia Boundaoui
(Journalist, Filmmaker, Artists, DZA/US), Jer Thorp (Artist, Writer and
Teacher, CA/US). Moderated by Tatiana Bazzichelli (Artistic Director,
Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE), Mauro Mondello (Investigative
Journalist, Filmmaker, IT).

On September 11, Disruption Network Lab is organising Disruptive Fridays
12#: Global Surveillance in the Data Society, a preview of the
conference DATA CITIES: Smart Technologies, Tracking & Human Rights -
which Tatiana Bazzichelli is curating together with investigative
journalist Mauro Mondello (September 25-27, Kunstquartier Bethanien,
Berlin).

The conversation will reflect on the discourse of surveillance and human
rights during the coronavirus crisis, and will reconnect it to another
event that reshaped our society: 9/11.
We decided to host it on 9/11 as a symbolic date, which signed
unprecedented measures on the level of security and surveillance,
compromising our privacy and freedom, and changing the way we perceived
our society. To unfold the discussion we invited three speakers that
have been dealing with the issues of data, tracking and human rights
since long time.

Sonia Kennebeck will introduce her last film UNITED STATES VS. REALITY
WINNER, currently in post-production. The film is the story of
25-year-old NSA contractor Reality Winner who disclosed a document about
Russian election interference to the media and became the number one
leak target of the Trump administration. In the framework of the
discussion on post-9/11 surveillance and whistleblowing, she will trace
a line that connects her three films: National Bird (the story of three
whistleblowers who blow the whistle on the US drone war), Enemies of the
State (about the case of hacker Matt DeHart), and United States vs.
Reality Winner.

Assia Boundaoui will present her work combining community storytelling,
visual arts, and artificial intelligence. Her work, The Inverse
Surveillance Project, is an AI program analysing hundreds of thousands
of documents collated by the FBI on people of colour over the past 100
years, revealing historic patterns on tactics it used during operations.
An Algerian-American journalist and filmmaker based in Chicago, she
directed the film The Feeling of Being Watched, a documentary
investigating a decade of FBI surveillance in Boundaoui's
Muslim-American community, which had its world premiere at the 2018
Tribeca Film Festival.

Jer Thorp, a data artist that designed (with Jake Barton) an algorithm
and a software tool to aid in the placement of the names on the 9/11
Memorial in Manhattan, will discuss his data artistic practice. His 9/11
Memorial Project allowed to arrange the names of those killed in the
9/11 attacks, respecting their familial, personal and business
relationships with each other. He also collaborated with Mark Hansen,
Ben Rubin, and Local Projects to create an interactive timeline of the
attacks. Author of many data-inspired artworks, his forthcoming book
Living in Data will be published in 2021.

We will discuss the issue of surveillance and human rights, reflecting
on the transformation of our lives when security measures have been
extensively implemented in the US and worldwide. Tatiana Bazzichelli and
Mauro Mondello will moderate the talk.

--------

SPEAKERS

Sonia Kennebeck, Film Director, MY/DE/US

Sonia Kennebeck is an independent documentary filmmaker and
investigative journalist with more than 15 years of directing and
producing experience. She has directed eight television documentaries
and more than 50 investigative reports. National Bird, her first
feature-length film, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival 2016 and was
also selected for Tribeca, Sheffield, and IDFA. In March 2017, National
Bird received the prestigious Ridenhour Documentary Film Prize that is
awarded to one documentary a year “that defends the public interest,
advances or promotes social justice, or illuminates a more just vision
of society.” Kennebeck received a master’s degree in international
affairs from American University in Washington, D.C. She was born in
Malacca, Malaysia, and lives in New York.
https://www.codebreakerfilms.com/films

Assia Boundaoui, Journalist, Filmmaker, Artists, DZA/US

Assia Boundaoui is an Algerian-American journalist and filmmaker based
in Chicago. She has reported for the BBC, NPR, PRI, Al Jazeera, VICE,
and CNN. Her debut short film about hijabi hair salons for the HBO LENNY
documentary series premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Her
feature length debut THE FEELING OF BEING WATCHED, a documentary
investigating a decade of FBI surveillance in Assia's Muslim-American
community, had its world premiere at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival. She
is currently a fellow with the Co-Creation Studio at the MIT Open
Documentary Lab, where she is iterating her most recent work, the
Inverse Surveillance Project. Assia has a Masters degree in journalism
from New York University and is fluent in Arabic.
http://www.feelingofbeingwatched.com/


Jer Thorp, Artist, Writer and Teacher, CA/US

Jer Thorp is best known for designing the algorithm to place the nearly
3,000 names on the 9/11 Memorial in Manhattan. Jer was the New York
Times' first Data Artist in Residence, is a National Geographic
Explorer, and in 2017 and 2018 served as the Innovator in Residence at
the Library of Congress. Jer is a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow, and an
alumnus of the World Economic Foundation’s Global Agenda Council on
Design and Innovation. He is an adjunct Professor in New York
University’s renowned Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), and
is the Co-Founder of The Office for Creative Research. In 2015, Canadian
Geographic named Jer one of Canada’s Greatest Explorers. Jer’s book
'Living in Data’ will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the
spring of 2021.
https://www.jerthorp.com/

-- 
Tatiana Bazzichelli // Artistic Director
Disruption Network Lab
http://disruptionlab.org
Twitter: @disruptberlin // @t_bazz
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