Seminar talk at the TAMK International Week 2018 (Friday 27th April 2018). Artistic approaches can be powerful tools for mobilising social actions against unjustice or socio-political problems. Artivism, referred to as ‘aesthetic-political interventions’ (Rigamonti 2014) and ‘a new form of politics’ (Rigamonti in 2016), can be embedded in curriculum. Such entanglements of aesthetics and politics politicize and underline the criticality of the learning content in artistic languages. In this talk, I will share my experience of encouraging students to engage with artivism for defending privacy and defying surveillance. I will discuss not only the opportunities of artivism in shaping the public discourse around privacy and surveillance, but also the challenges in including artivism in the teaching.

1. Artivism:
Teaching ‘Privacy’ &
‘Surveillance’ to
students in art and
media
Dr. Yuwei Lin
Division of Communications, Media and
Culture, University of Stirling, UK

2. Objectives for this talk:

Tradition of teaching Privacy and Surveillance in Arts Education

What is artivism and why artivism

My method for delivering the key concepts to students in Higher Education in England

Some exemplary artworks

Reflections
Based on my article:
Lin, Y. W. (2017) ‘A reflective commentary of teaching critical thinking of privacy and
surveillance in UK higher education’. Big Data & Society.
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053951717694054

3. Privacy and Surveillance in Art Education
- Privacy has always been an important subject in art education. Without
private spaces, it is difficult for the self to develop and to form an identity.
- Many photographic works have explored the notions of privacy and intimate
moments, various ‘veillance’ practices of seeing and being seen.
- These artworks have invoked debates about the relationship and power
dynamics between those who are watched and those who watch (e.g., male
gaze), voyeuristic fascination, the notions of self, secrecy, and the boundary of
the private and the public.
- Media workers (journalists and documentary makers) also have to balance
the fine line between public interest / public’s right to know, and not invading
other people’s privacy.

4. Privacy and Surveillance in Today’s Society
Post-Snowden era
Different ‘ways of seeing’ (veillance practices):
– sou-veillance (self-surveillance, self-monitoring),
– mutual watching (social surveillance),
– Corporate surveillance
– State surveillance
Transparency: voluntary, imposed, degree of transparency
How we view ‘privacy’ is contextual, shifting, dynamic.

5. What is artivism? And why artivism?
What is artivism:

Aesthetic-political interventions’ (Rigamonti 2014)

A new form of politics’ (Rigamonti in 2016)
Why artivism:

Such entanglements of aesthetics and politics politicize and underline the
criticality of the learning content in artistic languages.

Connecting learning and teaching in the HE with societal and political issues

Deepening learners’ engagement with the subject
Artistic approaches can be powerful tools for mobilising social actions against
unjustice or socio-political problems.

Echoing this morning’s presentations on design and its social values

6. My method for teaching privacy and surveillance
- Issue-based, Discussion around current affairs,
- Research-informed and research-driven (based on discussion
with colleagues at the UK ESRC-funded Data-Psst! Workshops)
- Law and regulations: Digital Economy Act 2010, Investigatory
Powers Bill 2015, EU data law / GDPR (2018)
- Artist residency: Digital Artist Helen Varley Jamison
- Screening: CitizenFour (2014), Channel 4’s Hunted (2015), Tales
of three hackers to explore different kinds of transparency (Edward
Snowden, Arron Swartz, Julian Assange)
- Fieldtrip to London: Big Bang Data Exhibition at Somerset House,
the Open Data Institute

7. Assignment:
You are asked to make a 3-minute video to raise awareness of privacy and surveillance in a digital
society. The target audience is university undergraduate students in England and Wales. You can
focus on different issues (e.g., state surveillance, data protection law, social media platform Terms of
Services, just to name a few).
To make an interesting and engaging video, you need to survey the knowledge level of your
audiences in order to provide the right kind of content to them. The genres of the video can vary: it
can be an animation, a talk show, journalistic news format, an investigative documentary or a drama.
The ESRC-funded project Data-Psst! offers a lot of details of academic debate and insights (see
http://data-psst.bangor.ac.uk/policy.php.en).
To accompany your 3-minute media work, you need to provide a 750-word written text explaining
what the video is about, why you produce the video in this way, what are the challenges faced during
the production, and what materials or sources you have consulted to make this video. Please note
that all sources or references used for the production have to be included in the end of the video
(credit list must be provided). You also need to consider a viable licence for releasing your video
online.
The submission procedure is: Upload your video to Vimeo or YouTube (or other similar services
where your video can be viewed publicly) and submit the 750-word written text including the URL to

8. We show students some examplar artworks and projects, including:
#PrivacyProject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcjtEKNP05c - 2m video
"Terms & Conditions May Apply" http://tacma.net/ - documentary film
Terms of Service Didn't Read https://tosdr.org/ - browser add-on
"mind reader" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7pYHN9iC9I - 2.28m
video
The Internet Machine - http://www.elasticspace.com/2014/05/internet-
machine
trailer: https://vimeo.com/95044197
Drones http://booktwo.org/notebook/drone-shadows/
Secret Power, Simon Denny http://www.nzatvenice.com/
We Are Angry http://www.weareangry.net/

9. Students’ responses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5TQ1EYgcm8&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ij2JTC8Y3A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dswcOI_K05k&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fac3UuVYGyQ&feature=em-
upload_owner
Choice-based game http://philome.la/MediaUCA/age-of-privacy-by-alex-
howard/play

10. Reflections
One of the goals of art education is to inspire ‘creative responses’ to
societal issues. Teaching privacy and surveillance to artists also has
ethical and social implications.
Creating arts proves to be a useful way to engage adult learners in
critical thinking and problem solving through experiential learning
(learning by doing).
Other similar efforts: eg., Granham Cooper’s ‘Surveil the Surveillors’
mapping project
Challenges: How to evaluate learning outcomes?

11. Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive domain (1956).