Entanglements interrogates the relationship between states and technology companies. These relationships are lawful, yet can perpetuate violence towards minoritised groups. It is therefore important when describing these relationships and their effects on people to move away from the potentially sanitising framing of legality vs illegality and situate this as part of a wider pattern of behaviour that keeps replaying across history and geographies just in different forms; as part of a continuum of the subjugation of people away from power by entities of power.
The systematic, often unnoticed and seemingly harmless harvesting of individuals' data is weaponised against minoritiesd groups. Enabled through partnerships between government bodies and private technology companies, we have seen tech solutionism, normalising language, lack of consent and obfuscation as neo-colonial behaviours of these entities of power, designed to maintain and extend that power.
This project seeks to demystify technological concepts and develop a conceptual understanding in people. Collectively, public-private contracts are interrogated, detangled and then reimagined.
Supported by Arts Council England, presented at the Creative Computing Institute, Disruption Network Lab and Linnaeus University.