This exhibition critically examines the concept of security through the lens of technologies, featuring works created at the intersection of art and technology, politics and society. It exposes how security infrastructures and systems, while ostensibly designed for protection, actually function as instruments that reinforce authoritarian practices, creating pockets of authoritarianism embedded in seemingly democratic systems.
The project explores the manipulative and persuasive-ideological character of the security as a discursive figure, which often serves to intensify societal feelings of threat and fear. These mechanisms are based on real but exaggerated dangers with phantasmatic surplus, deliberate disinformation, or actual phenomena that are difficult to assess precisely in scale.
The exhibition investigates how security discourse and policies become tools to coerce social consent for expanding regimes of control and surveillance, implemented through increasingly ubiquitous infrastructures and technologies. The project focuses on areas such as: border and territorial protection, public order and domestic politics, armed conflicts and wars, critical infrastructure and digital threats, energy and the connections between security and technological development.
The project also poses key questions about the future: How will security-related practices evolve? What role will technologies play in them? Is it possible to harness the potential of technology to build security systems that genuinely protect civil rights and freedoms rather than restrict them?
Based on their previous cooperation, OFF-Biennale invited the team of Biennale Warszawa Foundation (_BW_Lab) to participate as guest-curators. Biennale Warszava is an interdisciplinary cultural institution conducting artistic, research, educational and social activities. It operates at the intersection of various disciplines, combining the area of culture and art with the area of theory and research, as well as social activism.
Curators: Bartosz Frąckowiak, Ewa Kozik, Paweł Wodziński / Biennale Warszawa Foundation (_BW_Lab)
Venue: Margit krt. 5/A. (District 2)
Opening: May 8, 17.00
Open: May 9 – June 15, Wednesday: 16.00–19:00, Thursday–Friday: 16.00–20.00, Saturday–Sunday: 10:00–16:00
Supported by: Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland from the Culture Promotion Fund, Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Polish Institute Budapest, II. District Municipality, Hello Margit! Festival
