Projektreihe des ITI

Ubiquitous surveillance technology – video surveillance, telephone tapping, transmission of personal information – has lost its scandal. What aroused huge protest from the public five years ago is now merely the subject of the unheeded complaints of a few data protectors.

With respect to this every day use, what has happened to the potential for criticism – particularly artistic discussion on these technologies and their social effects? Or must this reversal be accepted: is the protest perhaps not in the pessimistic, culture-critical but rather the playful, attacking contention with these technologies? If this were the case, in what way can it exist?

»Bewegungsmelder« (»Motion detectors«) is an ITI project series on the issue of surveillance and control, in which a work group of choreographers and specialists of theatre is engaged. At the start of this, experts and artists on the issue will discuss about the topic and be presented with examples of images and sounds of scenic projects. And this will be in Leipzig, where the controversial pilot project for police video surveillance of public highways and squares was started exactly ten years ago and which, in this area, is the model for 26 other German cities.