REVERSED SURVEILLANCE BOOK LAUNCH

Join us for an evening of conversation, performance and sonic explorations centred around the book Reversed Surveillance.

Reversed Surveillance is a visualization of invasive surveillance technologies, challenging the prospect of automating crime detection during protests in France. The project reflects on the development and legislation of mass surveillance by offering a case study on how individuals can protect themselves using the very tools with which they are surveilled.

The project bases on the idea that since it is unlikely to fully revert surveillance and its effects on society, society should explore ways to reverse its impact.

In Reversed Surveillance, Marcel Top demonstrates the potential of reversing surveillance dynamics to protect the right to protest: by gaining knowledge of accessible surveillance tools, it is possible to ensure police accountability.

Featuring Sheung Yiu’s performative desktop lecture delving into the interpretation of real-time facial recognition, juxtaposing Chinese face reading practices with contemporary technology to reveal the unstable and unpredictable nature of these interpretations.

Marcel Top and Amin Yousefi in conversation.

Sonicscapes by Daniel Oduntan.

Marcel Top;

Marcel Top researches the topics of mass surveillance, privacy, data collection.In his practice, he layers a traditional approach to documentary research with a more experimental use of new technologies (such as facial recognition, movement analysis, and deepfakes). The artist uses these technologies to visualise and examine scenarios in which people can protect themselves and their rights by gaining knowledge and reclaiming control of surveillance tools. Top’s projects addressing human rights, police misconduct and facial recognition during protests aim to contrast the abstract nature of the algorithmic mechanisms behind mass surveillance, by providing a concrete visualisation of the phenomenon and confronting the public with the extensive amount of surveillance societies are subjected to and the ethical risks deriving, finally offering theoretical solutions. http://www.marceltop.com/

Sheung Yiu;

Sheung Yiu (born 1991, Hong Kong) is an image-centered artist and researcher, based in Helsinki. In his research-based practice, Yiu collaborates with multi-disciplinary experts to explore imaging practices emerging at the intersection of photography and large-scale computation. Through his dialogue with remote sensing scientists, he learned how to see the Earth from satellites. At the moment, he is looking at the history of face reading and facial recognition to understand how photographs become predictions. His works take the form of photography, video essays, desktop performance, exhibition installations, and artist books. He is a doctoral researcher in photography at Aalto University. He is selected as a FOAM Talent 2024 and a member of FUTURES. His work has been exhibited internationally at the Hasselblad Foundation in Sweden, Taikwun Contemporary in Hong Kong, and the Circulation(s) Festival in France. https://www.sheungyiu.com/

Amin Yousefi;

Amin Yousefi, born in 1996 in Abadan, Iran, is a London-based writer, researcher, and image-based artist. He holds a Master’s degree in Documentary Photography from the University of Westminster. A native of Abadan in Khuzestan—Iran’s oil-rich province and the scene of a bloody war with neighbouring Iraq—Yousefi’s work examines the event of photography through its socio-political aspect of the medium and how to challenge conventional understandings of archives. His practice focuses on the implications of archival processes, methods for reversing imperial violence in the Middle East, and how photography can conceptually mirror complex power structures. https://aminyousefi.com/

Daniel Oduntan;

Daniel Oduntan is an interdisciplinary media artist whose work spans sound, image, and installation — constructing subtle inquiries into how we witness place, time, and the everyday. Informed by media theory, the lived realities of working-class displacement, and the study and myth of spatial forms, he uses storytelling as a method to examine the structures we inhabit — and how we interpret them.