Shahed
[[]]

Exhibited at WAM Turku City Art Museum, Lux & Umbra Exhibition in 2023.

Witness – sha-hed marks the third part of a series that reflects on the complex and intricate power dynamics spawned by the digital realms.

This series of art works delve into the mechanisms of how a surveillance society morphs into surveillance capitalism. This transition has been catalyzed by the ever-increasing number of digital platforms and services. Our lives are hijacked and commodified by these omnipresent environments where both our personal data and various data traces are processed through various platforms and digital operating systems. These processes take place with or without proper consent, voluntarily and involuntarily, but above all, these processes are not getting our full attention.

Meanwhile, we are being exposed to data processing that creates an expansive ecosystem forming a large web of interconnected data points. Through data aggregation and together with such things as profiling and microtargeting our online existence relates to a continuous stream of processes that are utilized for commercial and political gains, and also exploited in the context of hybrid warfare.

The power dynamics shifted dramatically when a vast number of companies and other entities within this data labyrinth have, without much resistance, taken over the narratives that shape our society. This said, we have become highly exposed and vulnerable, but also involuntarily contribute in the role of a prosumer, both in the role of a consumer and a producer of capitalizable content, in a vicious loop best defined as sousveillance – meaning surveillance not from above, but from below, as a structural element in the infrastructure itself rather than an outside observer – while constantly editing our virtual profiles in connected existence immersed in evolving digital landscape.

Witness – sha-hed examines the connection between the rising amount of hate speech and disinformation together with the proliferation of far right movements that are emerging from the digital platforms and services. These same systems are also part of a global network of emergent phenomena of contemporary warfare – automatic systems effortlessly crossing the virtual and in-real-life realms. While these site-specific works examine various forms of oppression in the age of information, they also relate to the different manifestations of the theme throughout history. Even though the structures have a long history, in recent decades we have become codependent on services, tools, systems and platforms provided by Big Tech companies.

Today, these structures relate and are utilized by authoritarian countries and eccentric billionaires that have entered the powergame by reaching beyond the geopolitical into an interplanetary scale. The very same tech billionaire with his satellites is manipulating the course of the war by following the terms of his individual economic interests.

The proliferation of war is apparent in our digital everyday, especially in relation to the internet which was a military technology for thirty years before it was commercialized and mainstreamed. Today, this technology originally created for the military-industrial-entertainment-complex has returned to its origins – or shown its true colors.

AS INTERACTIVE GENERATIVE EXPERIENCE:

The same day Elon Musk acquired X (formerly known as Twitter), the use of certain racist terminology escalated by 500%. The EU has warned that X has transformed into an echo chamber amplifying hate speech, far-right ideology and disinformation, which is also often part of contemporary propaganda networks.

This could be considered as part of global phenomena however equally in domestic Finnish political discussions as synchronized, the far-right and populist narratives are framed as “resistance to mainstream media” which is portrayed as 'manufacturers of fake news'. Whether global or national, these arguments can be tracked down to traditional propaganda rhetoric, most commonly recognised in the form of Russian trolls in recent years.

In this work Elon Musk audio deep fake reads aloud the names of 84,500 alt-right profiles found in social platform X. These names are filtered through an auto-tune filter, often associated with pop artist Ye (formerly known as K.West).

In reality, despite the public personas and their public presentations on social media, the hidden actors behind power structures remain invisible. Therefore, in WITNESS, the interplay of light, color, rhythm, and sound reacting real time with Dogecoin cryptocurrency transactions. Dogecoin is part of the neo-capitalist monetary system, which Elon Musk supports alongside his business ventures.

Furthermore, as the alt-right movement and its member-owned crypto wallets exchange transactions, the experience continues to evolve within different stages.

Additionally, a site- and theme-specific adapted soundscape presents a timeline from history to the present day. The self-developing and adaptive soundscape consists of elements of old and new technology, representing the relationship between power and surveillance systems.

The exhibition retrospectively plays soundscape from previous two works and their festival related IGposts together with posts related to Lux & Umbra exhibition. This way the audience can participate in this experience and its soundscape composition almost in real time.

About the name: “Shahed Shahid” derives from Arabic word شَاهِد (šāhid) meaning both “witness” or “martyr” where the root of the word sh-h-d (ش-ه-د) translates “to witness” or “to be present”. As we all at the currents times are exposed and living through multiple screens and devices. In Islamic culture this type of act in martyrdom is actively living through a struggle as behalf of a collective -as in our individualistic Western cultures it is considered as more passive, yet both ultimately sacrificing for higher truth then gaining higher status in afterlife. As in resistance of people in Iraq, Syria….
-Palestine

Text by: [[]] in artistic dialogue together with Jenna Jauhiainen