Culturehacking: A Panel with Simon Denny, Heba Amin, Ryan Gallagher and Brett Scott, in conversation with Charlotte Higgins
On the occasion of his exhibition at the Serpentine North Gallery, artist Simon Denny discussed networks, power, revolution and surveillance with artist and researcher Heba Y. Amin, journalist Ryan Gallagher and journalist and campaigner Brett Scott. The evening was moderated by writer and journalist Charlotte Higgins.
In collaboration with the School of Fine Art, Royal College of Art.
Heba Y. Amin is an Egyptian visual artist, researcher and, visiting assistant professor at the American University in Cairo. Amin’s projects are research-based investigations addressing themes related to urbanism and technology. They question modes of development and construction within a political context and look at contested territory through junctures, glitches and flawed memory. Recent exhibitions include Berlinale’s 9th Forum Expanded; the IV Moscow International Biennale for Young Art; the WRO 15th Media Art Biennale, Poland; Les Rencontres Internationales de la Photo de Fès – 8ème Edition; Zentrum für Kunstprojekte, Vienna; the National Gallery of Mongolia and Gotlands Museum, Sweden.
Simon Denny (born 1982 in Auckland, New Zealand)’s projects include New Management (2014) and most recently the installation Secret Power (2015), New Zealand’s pavilion for the 56th Venice Biennale. Employing content from the tech industry, the language of advertising and the aesthetics and ideologies of corporations or government bodies, Denny’s work scrutinises technology’s role in shaping global culture. Denny’s installations translate the often problematic histories and events associated with management and governance into visual form. His exhibition, Products for Organising, is on view at the Serpentine North Gallery until 14 February 2016.
Ryan Gallagher is a Scottish investigative journalist based in Brighton, England. He is currently a senior reporter for US news website The Intercept. Gallagher has previously reported for Slate, The Guardian, Ars Technica, the Huffington Post, the New Zealand Herald, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and The Financial Times, among others. He is a Future Tense fellow at the New America Foundation and a graduate of the University of Edinburgh.
Charlotte Higgins is the chief culture writer of The Guardian and a member of its editorial board. This New Noise, a book based on her nine-part series of essays on the BBC, is to be published by Guardian-Faber in 2015. A classicist by education, Higgins is the author of three books on aspects of the ancient world. The most recent, Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain (Vintage, 2014), was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction, the Thwaites Wainwright prize for nature writing, the Dolman travel-writing prize and the Hessell-Tiltman history prize. Her May 2015 profile on Simon Denny for the Guardian can be read here.
Brett Scott is a journalist, campaigner and the author of The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money (Pluto Press: 2013). He works on financial reform, alternative finance and economic activism with a wide variety of NGOs, artists and students, and writes for publications such as The Guardian, New Scientist, WIRED magazine, Aeon and CNN.com. He tweets as @suitpossum
