TExt
A School for Tourists: Online
As part of Night School, Birmingham School of Art, Margaret Street
What is your online identity? Who created it? Who has access to it? And who controls it? Join artist Emma Smith, IKON’s Youth Programme and students from Birmingham City University to contribute your ideas to an art manual for comprehending and protecting our data selves.
In an age where dataveillance is big business, how can we understand how our online identities and data are used; who has rights to our surveillance, who owns and governs our online selves, and how can we protect our civil liberties?
This open session for Night School will involve the creation of a new guide considering creative strategies for understanding and negotiating the hidden governance of our online selves as American exports.
Join us to contribute your ideas to our live print room where we will be producing a zine to be shared in venues across London and Birmingham. Guests and contributors to SFT: Online include special guests Paul Bradshaw, online journalist, blogger, course leader for MA Data Journalism and MA Multiplatform and Mobile Journalism, and consultant data journalist for the BBC data unit, Richard Hale, Lecturer of Digital Forensics at Birmingham City University and former Senior Digital Forensic Investigator and Laboratory Manager at SYTECH Consultants, Salameh Abu Rmeileh from the Centre for Enterprise Systems, Bimingham City University and contributor Nafeez Ahmed, award winning investigative journalist, author, academic and founding editor and chief of INSURGE Intelligence, specialising in international security and complex systems theory. The publication will be printed in association with BAAAD press and in collaboration with The Holodeck print and design studio.
A School for Tourists: Online is part of American Export – a series of site-specific projects developed for Birmingham City University, the Library of Birmingham, Millennium Point and Thinktank Planetarium. Curated by Christina Millare, American Export features newly commissioned and pre existing work by international artists, Jen Liu, Hetain Patel, Emma Smith and Tito & Tita, that explore the impact of American cultural and economic ideas on Britain, China and the Philippines – three countries with a distinct and unique relationship with America.
Emma Smith has a social based practice and creates installations, events and performances through research and collaboration. Recent solo exhibitions include: 5Hz and Euphonia at HOME, Manchester UK, The Whistling Orchestra at Temple Contemporary, Philadelphia USA (2019); Wunderblock at Freud Museum London UK (2019); We at The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge UK (2019); 5Hz at Primary, Nottingham UK (2018-9) and Euphonia at Bluecoat, Liverpool UK (2018). Recent group exhibitions include Hauser & Wirth Somerset (2018); Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (2018) and touring exhibition material / rearranged / to / be with Siobhan Davies Dance that premiered at the Barbican before touring to Whitworth Manchester, Bluecoat Liverpool, and Tramway Glasgow UK (2017). Previous works include commissions for Art on the Underground, Tate Modern, Tate Britain, South London Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery, Delfina Foundation, ICA, London UK; MAAS, Sydney Australia; B-A-U, Italy; Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland; and Matadero Madrid, Spain.
American Export is developed with support from The Centre of Research and Education in Art and Media (CREAM) at the University of Westminster, Grand Union and Arts Council England.