The symposium Images of Surveillance: The Politics, Economics, and Aesthetics of Surveillance Societies kicks off Sensitive Data, a long-term project that aims to advance international, interdisciplinary, and theoretical discourse and artistic exploration on and around surveillance and data capitalism. The event series will continue through 2017 including a variety of public programs in New York, Munich, and Berlin. The Goethe-Institut’s partners are Germany’s Federal Agency for Civic Education, Münchner Kammerspiele, and Bard College, among others.
In an interview that took place in New York on December 5, 2015, Christoph Bartmann and Wenzel Bilger asked three questions of David Lyons, who opened the Images of Surveillance symposium with his talk on "Surveillance after Snowden", and Diedrich Diederichsen, who closed the symposium with a talk titled "The World a Third Time: Or, how to win the war against positivism".
David Lyon is Director of the Surveillance Studies Centre, Chair in Surveillance Studies, and Professor of Sociology and Law at Queen's University in Canada. His most recent book is Surveillance After Snowden (Polity Press, 2015).
Diedrich Diederichsen is a cultural critic and professor of theory, practice, and communication of contemporary art at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. He writes essays on music, cinema, theater, art, and politics and regularly contributes to periodicals and newspapers.
