Secret Power takes its title from investigative journalist Nicky Hager’s 1996 book, which first revealed New Zealand’s involvement in US intelligence gathering. Initially produced for the 2015 Venice Biennale, Secret Power was partly prompted by the impact of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s leaks of PowerPoint slides outlining top-secret US telecommunications surveillance programmes to the world media. These slides highlighted New Zealand’s role in US intelligence work, as a member of the US-led Five Eyes alliance; now in the open, the slides have come to represent international surveillance work and its impact on individual privacy.
Secret Power is a case study in NSA visual culture. Situating servers amidst maps and allegorical paintings, it stages an inquiry into the current iconography of geopolitical power, and its resonance with earlier ones. Viewers trawl through data and metadata, engaging in analytics, pattern recognition, and profiling, trying to make sense of the era of global security and its visual manifestations.
Originally created for the New Zealand Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennial (2015).
Exhibitions
-
Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, NZ2016Secret Power
-
New Zealand Pavillon, 56th Venice Biennale, Venice, IT2015Secret Power
-
Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Frankfurt, DE2020We Never Sleep
-
MAXXI - National Museum of 21st Century Art, Rome, IT2017Please come back
-
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, US2017Unfinished Conversations: New Work from the Collection