Key Takeaways:
- The Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art has opened its doors on the ground floor of Place Ville Marie for the first time.
- It serves as the museum’s temporary home while renovations to its permanent home on Ste. Catherine Street, next to Place des Arts, is underway.
“It’s extraordinary because we started here in 1964,” said John Zeppetelli, the museum’s director and chief curator. “This was the site of our first temporary exhibitions.”
The exhibition, a collaboration between the research group Forensic Architecture and filmmaker Laura Poitras, investigates human rights violations committed by governments and companies worldwide through surveillance.
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A series of immersive video presentations displaying the consequences of what the producers refer to as “digital violence” will be included in the installations.
Personal accounts of journalists, activists, and others who claim to have been victims of illegal surveillance are also included as part of the show.
Poitras’ contribution to the exhibition is a documentary that follows Forensic Architecture’s investigation into an Israeli cyber firm’s alleged use of software to spy on and target people.
“So we interviewed people who had been allegedly infected to see what the emotional consequences were,” she explained. Poitras stated that this project is personal to her because she has also been the target of government surveillance.
“We know what it’s like to have your most private information compromised and being listened to by states and companies,” she said at the start of the show. Forensic Architecture founder and director Eyal Weizman believes the exhibition will open visitors’ eyes to the reality of surveillance.
“They will see the scale of the problem when they come to this exhibition,” he told Global News. “They will see that it is a global problem, that civil society defenders in countries all over the world are being targeted in the same way.”
Renovations at the museum’s current location are scheduled to be finished by 2025.
Source: Global News
