with Tomas van Houtryve
November 4, 2014
7:30 PM – 9:00 PM
New York, NY
As a part of the Penumbra Lecture Series, Stacey D. Clarkson, Art Director of Harper’s Magazine, will moderate the conversation about surveillance and photography, “Who’s Public?” with Tomas van Houtryve and Paolo Cirio.
“In late 2013, Tomas van Houtryve responded to the lack of a visual narrative about domestic and foreign drone policy by buying a drone of his own, attaching his camera to it, and photographing iconic scenes across the United States. He made a list of “targets” that represent “the very sorts of gatherings mentioned in strike reports from Pakistan and Yemen—weddings, funerals, groups of people praying or exercising,” as well as places the FAA has authorized drone flights over the United States, such as prisons, oil-fields, and the U.S.-Mexico border.
‘In 2012, Paolo Cirio began printing and wheatpasting life-sized images of people found on Google’s Street View at the precise spots where the images were orignially made. His art intervention, called Street Ghosts, became an international sensation, as he pasted images from Brooklyn to Montreal, Buffalo to Sydney, and points in between.
‘Both groundbreaking projects are part of the Open Society Foundations Documentary Photography Project exhibition Moving Walls 22/Watching You, Watching Me, which explores how photography has been used both as an instrument of surveillance and as a tool to document, expose, and challenge the impact of surveillance on civil liberties, human rights, and basic freedoms. Please join these visionary artists and Harper’s Magazine Art Director Stacey D. Clarkson for a conversation about privacy, conflict, and the eyes of machines.”
Email [email protected] to reserve your seat!