Data Dérive (ESR4)

As the surveillance apparatus has permeated every corner of public and private life, what are everyday tactics we can use to challenge the power asymmetries inherent in surveillance systems? Data Dérive constitutes a series of design probes that engage different publics to playfully examine the power relations informing surveillance systems and to collectively create ways of reconfiguration. Building on the Situationist practice of the dérive, or “drifting,” and the notion of tactics pioneered by French sociologist Michel de Certeau, Data Dérive invites participants to wander in the city while interfacing with urban surveillance systems, probing their underlying social relations, and developing new modes of embodied resistance and subversion.