Trevor Paglen, Denisa Kera, Václav Janoščík, Ondřej Vlček
Panel Discussion III
Along with the everyday network connection, despite the best Internet security, private becomes public. What is a bigger threat, the hackers or user indiscretion?
Is the collection of personal data an invasion of the privacy of an individual, or a process necessary to protect his or her privacy and safety? What are the pitfalls of constant network connection of portable devices? Do companies increase precaution along with the growth of the data captured in the virtual network? Who is a “hacker”, and how does his / her role differ in corporations, election or advertising campaigns, or in anti-virus companies? Is the hacker a villain or an artist of the digital world?
Discussion on these topics will be held by Trevor Paglen, an American artist and photographer, Ondřej Vlček, Avast CTO; Denisa Kera, a philosopher and designer; and Václav Jánoščík, a philosopher and theorist of art and society in the age of the Internet.
Discussion is organized by Fotograf Festival in cooperation with Avast.
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Václav Janoščík
adresses to contemporary theory and philosophy of art which he lectures at leading Czech academies.
The central theme that Jánoščík has long been exploring is the transformation of the role of the subject and the return to the object as something that permeates our everyday relationships with the outside world. In 2015 he prepared an exhibition in the Kvalitář gallery entitled The Disorder of Things and Return of the Object and published an anthology called Object that brought current theoretical texts devoted to acceleration, speculative realism and object-oriented ontology to the Czech environment. The exhibition was followed by a conference – Reinventing Horizons (2016) – that aimed at reevaluating the contemporary approach to subjectivity in the context of changing socioeconomic conditions.
Denisa Kera
is a philosopher and designer recognized for her ethnographic work on the hackerspaces, makerspaces and the DIY bio. She explores prototypes as tools for public participation in science and supports open and citizen science projects. In 2004 she co-founded ScArt society and in 2006, C2C. She later worked as an Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS). She curated a number of exhibitions and projects related to art, technology and science, including ENTER3, Artists in Labs and TransGenesis: festival of biotechnology and art.
Trevor Paglen
is a photographer, author and activist interested in all things that are cloaked in secrecy and whose very existence is meant to be kept hidden from the general public: CIA and NSA outposts, spy satellites, secret military bases. With the help of precision telescopes and astronomical instruments, Paglen locates that which is meant to remain invisible. His photographs and videos are the result of extensive research: Paglen’s meticulous forensic quest for access to the “black world”, that enormous and yet largely unknown segment of the US military and intelligence apparatus.Recently exhibited at Whitechapel Gallery – EXPO CHICAGO (2016, 2017) or at New York’s Metro Pictures (2013).
