MAC Terror Contagion Exposure Maps Human Cost of Surveillance

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Laura Poitras is proud to say that she is “in the category of persons designated as terrorists” by the United States government.

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The American filmmaker and journalist won an Oscar for her 2014 documentary Citizenfour, a profile of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, and her reporting on the NSA contributed to the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for public service jointly awarded to the Guardian and the Washington Post.

Poitras was at the new temporary premises of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal in the basement of Place Ville Marie on Tuesday to discuss her collaboration with the London-based research collective Forensic Architecture on the exhibition Terror Contagion, which runs until April 18th.

“I always put in my biography that the US government considers me a terrorist, because I know against how many people in the world that label is used and armed, often journalists and people whom the state wants to attack because of their job. “

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Poitras and Forensic Architecture spent the past two years analyzing the human cost of Pegasus cell phone malware, created by the Israeli company NSO Group and sold to countries around the world. At the latest count, Pegasus has hacked the phones of 50,000 people, including many journalists, activists and politicians.

“A phone is infected, but the phone belongs to someone,” said Forensic Architecture founder Eyal Weizman. “What happens to the person the moment they are hacked? What happens in your private life? What kind of violence are they exposed to? And what happens in the country where they live? We are talking about relationships between events, and that relationship has to be spatialized to be understood. We need to understand data as something that is immersive and has an architecture. “

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Forensic Architecture research reveals that what begins with a targeted phone hack can lead to an insidious series of real-life consequences.

“Digital violence means physical violence,” Weizman said. “It is not simply a question of privacy. It is violence. “

“Surveillance is a form of violence,” Poitras agreed. “It is linked to physical violence, but surveillance itself is violence.”

While noting that “it is an extremely visual experience,” John Zeppetelli, executive director and chief curator of the Musée d’art contemporain, is the first to admit that the exhibition “is not very common in a museum.”

“It just shows the wide spectrum of possibilities in the art world right now,” he said. “It’s an incredibly timely display, to consider the kind of surveillance state we live in and the invasion of privacy.”

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In recent years, NSO Group has been sued by WhatsApp, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and most recently Apple for the way their malware has been used to extract information from iPhone and Android users accessing text messages. , photos and passwords. , cameras and call recording. In November, US officials placed the company on a commercial blacklist.

“Forensic Architecture began its journey in the context of the anti-colonial struggle in Palestine,” said Weizman, who was born in Israel but works in London as an architect and professor at Goldsmiths, University of London.

With Terror Contagion, the group maps the physical and psychological toll of Pegasus by speaking to journalists, activists, and others who have been targeted by malware.

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Interviews and “contagion” maps are included in the exhibit, where visitors can wander from one screen to the next, guided by Snowden’s voice-over narration, set to an ominous Brian Eno soundtrack. It feels disorienting, alienating, and chillingly futuristic.

“Forensic Architecture, by trying to correlate these hacks and this targeting, built this platform to correlate the information,” said Poitras, whose 18-minute documentary Terror Contagion is included in the exhibition, and who collaborated with Forensic Architecture throughout the draft. .

“You are on the platform with this piece, which triggers the feeling of being a target yourself, that you are entering a dangerous zone.”

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TAKE A LOOK

Forensic Architecture and Laura Poitras present Terror Contagion from Wednesday December 1 to April 18 at the temporary location of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal in Place Ville Marie. For tickets and more information, visit macm.org.

Terror Contagion, a conversation with Eyal Weizman and Laura Poitras, moderated by John Zeppetelli, takes place Wednesday, December 1 at 6 p.m. at the Gesù, 1200 Bleury St. Tickets are $ 13 via legesu.tuxedobillet.com.

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