Bus tour date and time: Thursday June 5, 2014 – 12:30-21:00

June 5, 2014 – a year after Snowden.
8 hours by bus into the surveillance culture of Berlin, plus whistle-blowing, films and performances.

June 5, 2014 marks one year since NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was introduced to a worldwide public. On this date, transmediale/resource teams up with N.K. Projekt and Leslie Dunton-Downer, fellow at The American Academy in Berlin, for a programme exploring Berlin as the global capital of informed response and resistance to mass surveillance.

The June 5 project interlays the contemporary and the historical to ask what Berlin's surveillance culture can teach us about the actual powers of today's data-hungry states, organisations, and corporations. By addressing this issue, the attempt is to strengthen thriving new alliances in the resistance to covert massive data collection and exploitation. The programme invites the city's current composition of courageous hackers, technology-based artists, radical politicians, lawyers, journalists, and whistleblowers to outline possible creative interceptions for the fifth estate.

Detailed Programme June 5, 2014

8:00 - 8:30 – Whistleblower Sun Salute (Public Event)

Gather at Brandenburger Tor to welcome June 5 with a whistle-blowing session led by Colin Hacklander of N.K. Projekt. Bring a whistle to pay tribute to Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers, and to create a public work of participatory art. Read more.

12:30 - 21:00 – The Magical Secrecy Tour, Berlin by Bus post-Snowden

A one-off investigation into the past, present, and possible futures of surveillance. Throughout Berlin, passengers discover sites of historic and current relevance to surveillance culture and the Snowden leaks. Passengers also join participating artists, activists, and experts in a rolling "panel" discussion and debate about the significance of Berlin and about possible responses to surveillance culture in the here and now. Moderated by transmediale artistic director Kristoffer Gansing.

Hints about locations and discussion subjects covered in the tour: sites of dissidence, the German Constitution, treating humanity as big data, Martin Luther King & civil disobedience, sousveillance, economic espionage, data-dealing corporations, digital Stalinism, the legacy
of hacker culture for self-exiles in post-Snowden Berlin, and (of course!) Merkel's Handy.

21:00 – Happening at N.K. Projekt, Elsenstraße 52, 12059 Neukölln (Public Event)

Door charge: €10

N.K. Projekt curates an exceptional evening with musicians and artists responding to data politics, surveillance & privacy issues, cultures of fear and Snowden's actions. Come hear sonified metadata; experiments in computer-controlled instruments and stroboscopes; algorithmic composition via different programming environments; and see familiar NSA slides in a new light. With Mattin, Jan Tilman Schade, Hacklander\Hatam with Fredrik Olofsson, Matthew Goodheart, Paul Brody, The New Berlin Oriental Quintet, and others... Read more.

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FUSE:  applied algorithmic decay & controlled experiments in encryption – Prepare for June 5th by listening to the US Constitution, German Constitution, UN Declaration of Human Rights & A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace in states of change and contradiction, embodying the residual & renewable allure of authority and its opposites.

This piece's 3-day saga will reach its dramatic/temporary conclusion at N.K. Projekt on June 5 during the Happening. A production by Farah Hatam, Colin Hacklander and Leslie Dunton-Downer.

Tune in here for the live stream from 03.06.2014 05:00 until 05.06.2014 12:00.

> Detailed Project Information (pdf)

Programming:  Farahnaz Hatam
Composition & Preparation:  Colin Hacklander & Farahnaz Hatam
Editing:  Colin Hacklander
Librettist:  Leslie Dunton-Downer
Voices:  Léa Wegmann, Jordan Rountree, Samuel Simon & Benjamin Kühni from the Hochschule für Schauspielkunst "Ernst Busch" Berlin

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Lars and Jonathan: A Berlin Friendship - German actor Lars Eidinger + American novelist Jonathan Lethem worked with director A.K. Barrett to make a short fiction film that playfully engages questions about trust and friendship in the post-Snowden world.

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Press inquiries: press[at]transmediale[dot]de

The Magical Secrecy Tour is co-produced by transmediale/resource, N.K. Projekt, and Leslie Dunton-Downer.