Eavesdropping

Eavesdropping used to be a crime, but now it’s everywhere. This exhibition explores the politics of listening in our post-Snowden moment. But it isn’t just about big data, surveillance, and security, it’s also about our personal responsibilities as earwitnesses.

Eavesdropping explores diverse technologies (audiotape, radio telescope, networked intelligence) and politics (surveillance, settler colonialism, detention). Scale ranges from the intimate to the forensic, the microscopic to the cosmic, the split second to the interminable.

The show features works by an international line-up of artists: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Fayen d’Evie and Jen Bervin, Sean Dockray, the Manus Recording Project Collective, Susan Schuppli, Joel Spring, and Samson Young. It’s an ongoing collaboration between Liquid Architecture and Melbourne Law School. It was first presented last year at Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne.