Thursday Night: James Bridle

With the Rio Olympics still fresh in the memory, artist James Bridle gives a lecture on security, surveillance and citizens’ privacy during the games. The respondent will be graphic designer Femke Herregraven and the ensuing discussion will be moderated by Klaas Kuitenbrouwer of Het Nieuwe Instituut.

Basing his talk on his essay Sneakers and Snoopers, Bridle will take the camera technology used to record the athletes in the stadium as his starting point and then zoom out to the citywide scale to analyse how Rio is spied upon and monitored long after the games have ended.

The evening is related to the exhibition Control Syntax Rio.

At 19.30 there is a short introductory programme around the interactive online documentary 51 Sprints about the highlight of the modern Olympic Games: the 100 metre sprint. This data game, initiated by Het Nieuwe Instituut, allows the public to match historical sprinters against each other. Cultural, economic and physical ‘advantages’ such as country of origin, colour and gender can be neutralised in order to see who is truly the fastest.