http://fossbox.org.uk/content/sex-and-security
A two-day event by Fossbox in collaboration with Furtherfield and Autonomous Tech Fetish around surveillance, gender and society. The event will consist of a practical privacy workshop followed by a day of discussion, making and performance. Open to everyone, women/LGBTQ especially welcome.
Practical workshop on privacy and security: 7 March, 11am
A focused exploration of the issues around sexuality, gender and surveillance. Visit this Meetup Group to join.
Discussion workshops – sex and surveillance: 22 March, 11am
A workshop using play, performance and discussion to develop a better understanding and a more collectivised civil response around these issues. Visit this Meetup Group to join.
If you’re hazy about how digital mass surveillance works and what you can do, you’ll get most out of it by attending both workshops. If you already know about the tech side, you might want to help out at the practical workshop!
The ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) is heralded as a quantum leap in economy, society, culture and government — yet most people outside of the tech and creative industries struggle to get their heads around what this really means. A number of recent scandals involving ‘smart’ devices as well as Snowden’s revelations have highlighted the huge and slightly scary security and privacy issues at the heart of our brave, new, cyberworld. ICO and Offcom are acutely aware that this pervasive surveillance is making a mockery of current EU/UK privacy legislation which urgently needs an overhaul. Policy, however, prioritises rapid development of IoT over protecting sensitive data calling for ‘transparency’ rather than restriction of how our data can be collected and used. Meanwhile, the corporate and governmental chorus that law-abiding citizens have nothing to worry about from pervasive surveillance is wearing thinner every day.
As the digital domain begins to bleed into our ordinary, physical surroundings, the government is telling us that we don’t need privacy and even wants to outlaw the secure encryption which can protect our private life from being used for invasive profiling, ending up on public websites and social media, or on sale in the data black market. Cameron has stated that there should be absolutely no communication or data which the government can’t read. Is it really OK for corporations to compile and sell personal profiles so intimate that they know more about us than our loved ones do? Does the government really have a right to gather and keep our every private thought to be used in profiling if we ever do fall foul of the state for whatever reason? There is already a discussion of the ‘militarisation’ of social science and ‘predictive policing‘ – we’ve seen in the past which vulnerable groups are most likely to be targeted for profiling. What about the constant monitoring and manipulation of movement around cities. What if our government takes even more steps to the right whilst conditions get harder for most of the population. What if there were mass protests? What if a future right-wing government outside the EU decided to outlaw LGBTQ? What might these ubiquitous personal dossiers and pervasive control of urban space be used for then? Are we sleepwalking into a society where everyone is always-already a criminal and non-conformity or protest is no longer an option?
These developments are going to affect everyone but there are many issues around online security which will have particular resonances for women and queers and may affect us in very specific ways. There has been a lot of discussion and press about gender-trolling, ‘revenge porn‘, ‘gamergate‘ and Wikipedia, the ‘quantified self‘, FB real-names policy and binary sex dropdown lists in databases — to name but a few. However, there is not very much discussion about how these issues all fit together and what the overall impact of this production of digitised social space, hyper-self-awareness, and networked sexuality might be for women, queers, and marginalised groups. How does corporate and government surveillance and profiling affect our sense of self, our personal and public spaces, and our freedom to speak and organise with other women and queers? Where is the line between design which facilitates us and design which manipulates us?
The issues are hard to wrap your head around and keeping your private life private requires the commitment of a little effort — it can interrupt the manicured flow of our digital ‘user experience’. You might not really want to know what happens after you push the little button that says ‘send’ but staying safe online in 2015 and beyond is going to get a little bit more challenging. Not caring is going to be an increasingly risky option.
Technical solutions are needed, and a small army of ‘infosec’ practitioners, strong encryption, and hardened systems. However, this won’t be enough because USA, UK and EU governments are more concerned with corporate profits and the security of their own power than with the safety and wellbeing of civil society. Alongside our own private actions to secure our own data and the efforts of civil-society-hackers, non-profits and NGOs striving to keep us informed, skilled, and safe, we also need an aware and empowered civil society response. But is ‘smart’ economy an all-round bad idea purely to be defended against or is there the possibility of ‘smart’ technology and smart systems co-designed by and for women themselves and a respectful way to manage ‘big data’?
Featured image: Screenshot from an online magazine that advertises sex with others
Ivan Pope’s latest work and project ‘Couples’ crawls into one’s psyche as he manages to unearth a seemingly timeless activity that, in the contemporary world, functions as a networking activity between millions of people worldwide. We are all now probably accustomed to the idea that it occurs on the Internet and that there are swingers regularly contacting each other and arranging liaisons through it. Instead of concentrating on such subterranean mutuality and its pursuits on a digital medium like the Internet, Ivan has collected his information from a magazine such as ‘Matchmaker’.
Yet this is not the only magazine out there being rabidly collected by these flesh swappers (may be you are interested). Many of them possess curious titles such as ‘Women in Jail’, ‘Adult Fun Times’, Liberated Women’, ‘Fads and Fantasies’, ‘Subs and Doms’ and of course ‘Couples’. They are usually bi-monthly issues containing contact catalogues showing explicit photographs of people exhibiting themselves.
The works that you see here are a small selection of a much larger growing collection. In actuality they are presented in the form of larger Inkjet prints, measuring up to two meters high. Thus reflecting upon our selves the viewer when observed (in the flesh) a human scale experience. This consciously aware figurative art declares a social context showing text with the images of people’s measurements, eyes and hair colours, height, false and alias names, desired requirements and contact details.
James Hillman the Archetypal psychologist said that ‘The sexual fascination is the soul trying to get out and get into something other than itself’. Which kind of explains not just the functionally of this habitual occurrence to a small degree but it also casts light upon the emotional side of it and why there are so many people out there in the world trying to meet each other this way, even when it seems that they are content with being with another singular loving entity. A subculture that swaps flesh not only goes through the process of swapping their physical selves, their bodies but also they share consciousnesses. There is a sense that many people feel an intense urgency to fulfill their desires (not need) by immersing their physical frames with others. Exploring their anonymity, letting go of the everyday nonsense that we all have to deal with, such as politics, paying bills, family struggles, wars and even love.
‘I was carried by the conviction that I rejoiced in extraordinary freedom. To fuck above and beyond any sense of disgust was not just a way of lowering oneself, it was to raise your self above all prejudice. There are those who break taboos as powerful as incest. I settled for not having to choose my partners.’ Catherine Millet. The Observer, Sunday May 19, 2002.
As I look at ‘Couples’ I am subjected to the unnerving realization that what I am seeing is also a kind of cattle market, flesh being sold on to those who long to possess them. They are also actually photographic images of real people rather than illustrations, cartoons, paintings; adding weight to the pieces with an undeniable raw intensity. Yes, it is dark. Yet it is also a barometer, a brutal signifier carrying with it an honest realism that we are more complicated, more connected to our visceral and feral identities than supposed civilized society acknowledges and lets on and informs us all to be.
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