Trevor Paglen & Jacob Appelbaum: Autonomy Cube
The Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art presents from October 23 to January 3 the exhibition Autonomy Cube. The Autonomy Cube
is a sculpture designed to be housed in art museums, galleries, and
civic spaces. The sculpture is meant to be both “seen” and “used”. This
happens in different ways. Several Internet-connected computers housed
within the work create an open Wi-Fi hotspot called Autonomy Cube
wherever it is installed. Anyone can join this network and use it to
browse the Internet. But the Cube does not provide a normal Internet
connection. The sculpture routes all of the Wi-Fi traffic over the Tor
network. “Tor” stands for “The Onion Router“, the encryption is like an
onion with many layers. This means that a global network of thousands
of volunteers made available servers, relays and services, enabling the
anonymization of user data.
Free internet access
The sculpture Autonomy Cube
thematisizes the future of the Internet and the complex ways in which
art can join into this discourse. At the exhibition in the
Edith-Russ-Haus the sole artwork on display is the Cube providing free
Internet access as a service, while also creating a truly inviting
public space, an Agora; an open gathering place for anyone to activate
the sculpture by using it. For the duration of the exhibition, entrance
to the Edith-Russ-Haus is free of charge in order to guarantee the
accessibility of the Cube.
Surveillance technology permeates everyday life
In
developing an entire exhibition around a single artwork, the
Edith-Russ-Haus seeks to make a statement on the proliferation of
surveillance technology upon our daily lives, and the disconcerting
obliviousness of public knowledge on this issue. An issue that risks
transforming open societies into control states. In light of the rapidly
expanding techno-sphere and after journalistic revelations exposed
massive surveillance operations by powerful states without civic consent
or democratic procedures, the Autonomy Cube project revives the
utopian ideas from the initial years of the Internet. In so doing, the
project aims to generate necessary public debate concerning the freedom
of communication and individual privacy rights (including our dignity)
in an era in where we increasingly ‘live’ online, under constant threat
of espionage.
In the exhibition halls of the basement, Paglen and
Appelbaum have developed additional presentations in collaboration with
the curators of the Edith-Russ-Haus, addressing questions of the Tor
network, as well as surveillance and privacy so as to create a space
that engages with the social and political contextualization having
influenced the inception of the Cube. Adjacent to a public library and
reading room, video screenings of talks and debates elaborate on the
complex issues involved in techno-surveillance, and a visualization of
the constant data flow to and from the server-sculpture will be on
display to complement the Autonomy Cube as an ongoing systems-analysis.
A
book, entitled “Autonomy Cube” will be published by Revolver Publishing
Berlin, with commissioned essays by the art historian Dr. Luke
Skrebowski and the architect and theoretician Prof. Keller Easterling.
Trevor Paglen’s work deliberately blurs
lines between science, contemporary art, journalism, and other
disciplines to construct unfamiliar, yet meticulously researched ways to
see and interpret the world around us. Paglen’s visual work has been
exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Tate Modern,
London; The Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis; The San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art; the 2008 Taipei Biennial; the 2009 Istanbul Biennial; the
2012 Liverpool Biennial, and numerous other solo and group exhibitions.
He is the author of five books and numerous articles on subjects
including experimental geography, state secrecy, military symbology,
photography, and visuality. Paglen holds a B.A. from U.C. Berkeley, an
MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Geography from
U.C. Berkeley. Trevor Paglen was born in the U.S. in 1974 and lives in
New York.
Jacob Appelbaum is an American artist,
journalist, and independent computer security researcher. He works at
the Tor Project and is a PhD student at Eindhoven University of
Technology. He is also co-founder of the hacker space Noisebridge from
San Francisco and worked as a photographer, and a representative of the
Austrian artist group monochrom. He has been contributing extensively in
the selection for publication of documents revealed by Edward Snowden,
collaborating with Der Spiegel and other publications. He is one of the
main protagonists of the Oscar-winning documentary Citizenfour. Jacob
Appelbaum was born in the U.S. in 1983 and lives in Berlin.
