The Mac at Place Ville Marie Launches its First Exhibition, Terror Contagion, by Forensic Architecture with Laura Poitras Français
MONTREAL, Nov. 30, 2021 /CNW Telbec/ - Today, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (MAC) launches Terror Contagion, by Forensic Architecture with Laura Poitras, an immersive installation that pulls visitors into a graphic, three-dimensional representation of the sprawling connections, patterns and consequences of acts of digital violence documented through the investigations of the research agency Forensic Architecture (FA). The data matrix is complemented by the personal stories of activists, dissidents and journalists targeted by Pegasus. The exhibition, co-produced by the MAC, is based on a project undertaken with the support of the Toronto-based Citizen Lab and Amnesty international. The exhibition is presented at PVM—the MAC's newly minted, temporary location during the architectural transformation of the institution's headquarters—until April 18th, 2022.
In Terror Contagion, FA used the condition of global lockdown to turn its gaze to the digital violence of cyber-weapons. Contagion is the operative metaphor for this ongoing investigation of Israeli cyber-weapons manufacturer NSO Group, and the much-discussed abuses enabled by its malware Pegasus, sold to governments across the world. A powerful cyberespionage tool, Pegasus can be covertly installed on mobile phones and other devices, enabling operators of the tool to read text messages and emails, track calls and location, collect passwords as well as activate microphones and cameras. The 2021 Pegasus Project revelations rattled the world as a list containing thousands of potential "infections" of human rights defenders and high-profile individuals was leaked.
The investigation, Digital Violence: How the NSO Group Enables State Terror, led by Forensic Architecture director Eyal Weizman and researcher-in-charge Shourideh C. Molavi, along with team members Nathan Su, Lola Conte and Zac Ioannidis, examined dozens of targets of state surveillance—fellow investigators, journalists, opposition figures and activists, including the group's friends—to map the terrain of a new digital battlefield in which the state wages war against its own people.
Hundreds of Pegasus infections and the corresponding physical violence are mapped in the installation presented at the MAC. We are brought into the workings of an ever-expanding digital platform visualizing almost two thousand data points documenting digital infections and physical attacks, as well as other related incidents. A sense of pervasive menace is heightened by an accompanying data sonification, a collaboration with renowned musician and producer Brian Eno.
Collectively titled The Pegasus Stories, the video testimonials are narrated by Edward Snowden, who exposed the largest US state surveillance project, anchoring the investigation in the lives of human rights defenders and their grounded struggles.
The exhibition also features a new short film by acclaimed documentary filmmaker and artist Laura Poitras, a long-time collaborator of FA, who accompanied the research agency throughout the investigative process. Poitras's film is a visual study of the investigation by FA. Poitras has herself experienced invasive surveillance by different US agencies in response to her involvement in the Snowden leaks and, as recently revealed, high-level CIA officials had lobbied to designate Poitras as an "agent of foreign power" to pave the way for her prosecution.
The exhibition includes two FA projects of cases in which their friends and partners were hacked by Pegasus. The first is The Enforced Disappearance of the Ayotzinapa Students, which investigated the orchestrated attack on a group of students from the Ayotzinapa Teacher's College in Mexico, in which six died, dozens were injured and forty-three were forcibly disappeared. The investigation illustrated that, contrary to the state's assertion that the attack was committed by organized crime, assailants included police, military and other branches of the Mexican security forces. In 2017 FA learnt that its local partners on this investigation—members of Centro Prodh—had been hacked by the Mexican government using Pegasus.
More recently, FA's partners at the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq—with whom FA has just inaugurated a new investigative office in Ramallah—were also targeted by Israeli security forces using Pegasus. The Extrajudicial Execution of Ahmad Erekat, an investigation made in collaboration with Al-Haq, at the request of the Erekat family, and narrated by Angela Davis, examines the killing and degrading treatment of twenty-six-year-old Ahmad Erekat after his car crashed into a booth at a checkpoint in the Israeli occupied West Bank.
Quotes
John Zeppetelli, MAC Director and curator of the exhibition said: "In an age of surveillance and right-wing 'post-truth,' Forensic Architecture forges a new politics and poetics of evidence gathering and truth production, resulting in a significant contribution to legal and cultural discourse, while helping us to re-imagine what an engaged political art could look like."
Eyal Weizman, Director of Forensic Architecture said: "NSO emerged as a central player in Israel's ecosystem of surveillance groups, developed and tested in the context of Israeli domination of Palestinians and exported to repressive governments around the world. When surveillance seeks to intimidate and break one's network of professional connection, confronting NSO could be achieved by building solidarity amongst the targeted, between Palestinian and Indian human rights activists, Mexican and Saudi journalists, Emirati and Rwandan dissidents."
Shourideh C. Molavi, Forensic Architecture's Researcher-in-Charge said: "Today, faced with a new digital terrain of battle, activists and human rights defenders around the world join FA in speaking back to those that target us. This exhibition is a showcase of research into the destructive capabilities of malware like Pegasus in real space."
Nathan Su, Forensic Architecture's Data Visualizer said: "The experiences brought forward by those surveilled by Pegasus make it clear that digital violence has the potential to affect all aspects of daily life. From intimidation, to arrests, raids, and even murder, those targeted by NSO's malware have faced life-changing professional, psychological, and physical consequences."
Laura Poitras, filmmaker and journalist said: "The outsourcing and privatization of nation-state level surveillance technology is terrifying, and NSO's cyber-weapon Pegasus is a cautionary tale about what can and will go wrong."
Forensic Architecture
Working across the disciplinary boundaries of art, activism, architecture and investigative journalism, the London-based research agency Forensic Architecture probes violence, injustice, and corruption, producing audiovisual analysis and documentation of worldwide human rights violations, environmental crimes and state, police and corporate violence. Its investigative aesthetic is akin to putting time under a magnifying glass, while space is reconstructed through multiple lenses and perspectives. An array of methods and technologies are deployed: open-source intelligence gathering, architectural software, volumetric studies, 3D renderings, recreations of crime scenes, spatial and temporal cartographies, satellite imagery, sound-mapping and machine learning data analysis, as well as witness testimonials. All these contribute to a growing catalogue of investigations of investigations, resulting in a form of citizens' counter forensics. Over the past decade, Forensic Architecture has undertaken over seventy forensic investigations to counter official narratives of contentious incidents, with and on behalf of the communities affected and human rights groups, and often for use in citizen tribunals and law courts.
Laura Poitras
Laura Poitras is an American filmmaker and journalist. Citizenfour (2014), the third part of her 9/11 trilogy, won an Oscar for best documentary. The first film in the series, My Country, My Country (2006), which documents the US occupation of Iraq, was nominated for an Academy Award. Part two, The Oath (2010), focuses on the Guantánamo Bay prison and Al Qaeda. Poitras's reporting on NSA mass surveillance and Edward Snowden received the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. She is also the recipient of many other awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship.
PUBLIC PROGRAM
Opening Conference
Terror Contagion: A Conversation with Eyal Weizman, Laura Poitras and Shourideh C. Molavi. Introduced and moderated by John Zeppetelli.
Le Gesù, 1202 Bleury Street
Wednesday, December 1st, 6 p.m., in English
Walkthrough
With John Zeppetelli, Director and Chief Curator of the MAC and curator of the exhibition
Visit in French: Wednesday, December 15, 2021, 5 p.m.
Visit in English: Wednesday, January 12, 2022, 5 p.m.
Max and Iris Stern International Symposium
The fourteenth Max and Iris Stern International Symposium, presented in March 2022, will bring together a broad panel of international figures to discuss the activities of the NSO Group in the context of global cyber-weapons. The event will include the participation of targeted civil society figures speaking about the new terrain of warfare against human rights work. Participants will also discuss the issue of accountability in the art world among other topics.
A downtown presence orchestrated with the collaboration of Ivanhoe Cambridge
Always keen to promote contemporary art and to play an active role in the revival of the downtown area, the MAC enthusiastically supports Ivanhoe Cambridge's efforts to make its collection and programming available to the clientele who frequent PVM and its surroundings. As a result, 10 sculptures from MAC's collection are currently on display on the recently revitalized Esplanade PVM.
Acknowledgements
The Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal is a provincially owned corporation funded by the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications du Québec. It receives additional funding from the Government of Canada and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal
For more than fifty years, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal has brought together local and international artists and their works with a variety of audiences, celebrating art as an essential component of life in Montréal and Québec. The Museum's headquarters, located in the heart of the Quartier des spectacles, are set to undergo a major architectural overhaul, changing the face of the famed Place des arts. In the meantime, the MAC has temporarily relocated its activities to Place Ville Marie, an iconic location in Montreal's Business district. As of December 1st, 2021, and throughout the renovations, the Museum will continue drawing in audiences with temporary exhibitions featuring outstanding artists and showcasing a variety of approaches. In addition to two main exhibitions per year, the MAC at PVM will continue offering public programs as well as an array of educational services and community outreach activities. www.macm.org
SOURCE Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal
MAC, Anne Dongois, Responsable des relations publiques, T. 514 826-2050 / [email protected]
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