“Snowman”: A new book project and exhibition show how artists critically engage with the Snowden disclosures

I type “Snowden”, and the autocorrection function suggests “Snowman”. Certainly a fitting codename for a man in Russian exile. Is my word processor really pre-Snowden? Older than the leak? And who decides which names to feed into the spelling assistance software? Will future generations of autocorrect recognize Snowden?

It seems the way my attention – my suspicion, really – was drawn to autocorrectʼs failure – for this anonymous entity that wants to read my mind – is the whole story of the Snowden files in a nutshell. Because, yes, the signals units of the US, GB, Germany et al. also want to read our minds. And much like autocorrect, they react to keywords in an automatic fashion. Even those words we do not send, the words we discard, erase, censor. And much like I come to avoid words, we have come to avoid certain

keywords in the digisphere. After all, we now know there is a ghost in the machine that we donʼt want to wake – as if this form of self-censorship would help us ...

In any case, Snowdenʼs disclosures have altered our relationship to the machine, as what they have

disclosed is not surveillance per se, but the potentiality of it – and that makes all the difference. In these times, machines assist writing, and killing, and pretty much everything else. For todayʼs power, security has become an informational problem to be managed by technology. In that sense, the logic

behind mass surveillance is based not on the psychology of suspicion of everyone, but rather on machine learning and artificial intelligence. Under these conditions one imperative goes practically uncontested: the more data, the better.

What Snowdenʼs files have provided is a freeze-frame in this data storm: data is image-giving, is giving birth to image. The imagery is ugly,but what does ugly mean when there is no beholder? In this sense, the files are a battle cry for artists, archivists and activists alike, as the book “A Field Guide to the Snowden Files” affirms.

Like most people, I have never read the files, but have followed the ‘story’. As a matter of fact I have checked out some files, not to read them, but to see proof that they actually exist. Why do we have books on our shelves? Not to read them, mostly. But rather for the potentiality of reading and re-reading. And as proof, to ourself and to others, that we have read them. Abstractions of memory.

In many ways, Snowdenʼs decision to provide the crude material in need of refining, material that has to be transformed in order to reach us ‘properly’, reflects this logic of potentiality: We need to know that the files are there, a few clicks away, in order to believe the ‘story’. A distant echo of the NSA’s own interpassive approach perhaps.

Video-Statement by Christoph Hochhäusler

This distance towards the real thing reminds me of the alleged burial shroud of Christ, “proof” that he once was a man. We will never see the sacred body of the security state either, but the Snowden files at least confirm its existence. And the religious parallels donʼt end here. The Anglo-American world, the one that needless to say pretty much dominates the discourse, generally refers to the disclosures as the ‘Snowden revelations’ – thereby echoing the Christian eschatology of the New Testament.

Meanwhile, the modern ‘intelligence community’ is united by a single belief: that security is ‘signals exegesis’. Which really is a whole new religion. Previously, security was considered something that comes into being by action. Now, itʼs all about knowing. About text. And ultimately, about the idea that truth can be owned. And this is something that we canʼt let them have.

So let us explore the many inspiring impulses that this book offers, e.g. with regard to unlocking the potential of the files for artistic practice, creatively appropriating the files for writing social history, or making access to the files sustainable and democratically accountable – and in the course of this let us explore ways to engage upon new exchanges and encounters in order to come to terms with our machine-driven present.

A FIELD GUIDE TO THE SNOWDEN FILES is the first book to critically engage with artists responding to the NSA-files leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The book has been conceived in the context of SIGNALS, a project by Berliner Gazette e. V. which was funded by the Capital Cultural Fund. The book is published in conjunction with SIGNALS. AN EXHIBITION OF THE SNOWDEN FILES IN ART, MEDIA AND ARCHIVES, September 12-26, 2017, at DIAMONDPAPER Studio, curated by Magdalena Taube and Krystian Woznicki. More info: https://berlinergazette.de/signals.

Christoph Hochhäusler is the critically acclaimed director of films such as “The City Below” (2010) and “The Lies of the Victors” (2014).