A year ago, we were invited by the Swiss embassy in Berlin
to present our art projects.
We are used to invitations, but this invitation really thrilled us.
The Swiss embassy in Berlin is special.
It is the only old building in the government district
that was not destroyed during the Second World War,
and it sits right next to the Federal Chancellery.
No one is closer to Chancellor Merkel than the Swiss diplomats.
(Laughter)
The government district in Berlin also contains the Reichstag --
Germany's parliament -- and the Brandenburg Gate,
and right next to the gate there are other embassies,
in particular the U.S. and the British embassy.
Although Germany is an advanced democracy,
citizens are limited in their constitutional rights
in its government district.
The right of assembly and the right to demonstrate are restricted there.
And this is interesting from an artistic point of view.
The opportunities to exercise participation and to express oneself
are always bound to a certain order
and always subject to a specific regulation.
With an awareness of the dependencies of these regulations,
we can gain a new perspective.
The given terms and conditions shape our perception, our actions,
and our lives.
And this is crucial in another context.
Over the last couple of years,
we learned that from the roofs of the U.S. and the British embassy,
the secret services have been listening to the entire district,
including the mobile phone of Angela Merkel.
The antennas of the British GCHQ are hidden in the white cylindrical ??.
By the listening post of the American NSA is covered by radio transparent screens.
But how to address these hidden and disguised forces?
With my colleague Christoph Wachter,
we accepted the invitation of the Swiss embassy,
and we used this opportunity to exploit the specific situation.
If people are spying on us, it stands to reason
that they have to listen to what we are saying.
(Laughter)
On the roof of the Swiss embassy, we installed a series of antennas.
They weren't as sophisticated as those used by the Americans and the British.
They were makeshift ????? antennas, not camouflaged but totally obvious
and visible.
The Academy of Arts joined the project,
and so we built another large antenna on their rooftop
exactly between the listening posts of the NSA and the GCHQ.
(Laughter)
Never have we been observed in such detail while building an art installation.
A helicopter circled over our heads
with a camera registering each and every move we made,
and on the roof of the U.S. embassy, security officers patrolled.
Although the government district
is governed by a strict police order,
there are no specific laws relating to digital communication.
Our installation was therefore perfectly legal,
and the Swiss Ambassador informed Chancellor Merkel about it.
We named the project "Can You Hear Me?"
(Laughter)
The antennas created an open and free wifi communication network
in which anyone who wanted to would be able to participate
using any wifi-enabled device without any hindrance,
and be able to send messages to those listening
on the frequencies that were being intercepted.
Text messages, voice chat, file sharing:
anything could be sent anonymously.
And people did communicate.
Over 15,000 messages were sent.
Here are some examples.
"Hello world, hello Berlin, hello NSA, hello GCHQ."
"NSA Agents, Do the Right Thing! Blow the whistle!"
"This is the NSA. In God we trust. All others we track!!!!!"
(Laughter)
"#@nonymous is watching #NSA #GCHQ - we are part of our organizations.
#expect us. We will #shutdown"
"This is the NSA's Achilles heel. Open Networks."
"Agents, what twisted story of yourself will you tell your grandchildren?"
"@NSA My neighbors are noisy. Please send a drone strike."
(Laughter)
"Make Love, Not cyberwar."
We invited the embassies and the government departments
to participate in the open network too,
and to our surprise, they did.
Files appeared on the network, including classified documents
leaked from the parliamentary investigation commission,
which highlights that the free exchange and discussion of vital information
is starting to become difficult, even for members of a parliament.
We also organized guided tours to experience and sound out
the power constellations on site.
The tours visited the restricted zones around the embassies,
and we discussed the potential and the highlights of communication.
If we become aware of the constellation,
the terms and conditions of communication,
it not only broadens our horizon,
it allows us to look behind the regulations that limit our worldview,
our specific, social, political, or aesthetic conventions.
Let's look at an actual example.
The fate of people living in the makeshift settlements
on the outskirts of Paris is hidden and faded from view.
It's a vicious circle.
It's not poverty, not racism, not exclusion that are new.
What is new is how these realities are hidden
and how people are made invisible in an age of actually global
and overwhelming communication and exchange.
Such makeshift settlements are considered illegal,
and therefore those living in them
don't have a chance of making their voices heard.
On the contrary, every time they appear, every time they risk becoming visible,
merely gives grounds for further persecution,
expulsion, and suppression.
What interested us is how we could come to know this hidden side.
We were searching for an interface, and we found one.
It's not a digital interface, but a physical one: it's a hotel.
We named the project Hotel Gelem.
Together with Roma families, we created several Hotel Gelems in Europe,
for example in Freiburg in Germany, in Montreuil near Paris,
and also in the Balkans.
These are real hotels.
People can stay there.
But they aren't a commercial enterprise.
They are a symbol.
You can go online
and ask for a personal invitation to come and live for a few days
in the Hotel Gelem, in their homes.
eating, working, and living with the Roma families.
Here, the Roma families are not the travelers,
the visitors are.
Here, the Roma families are not a minority,
the visitors are.
The point is not to make judgments
but rather to find out about the context that determines these disparate
and seemingly insurmountable contradictions.
In the world of globalization,
the continents are drifting closer to each other.
Cultures, goods, and people are in permanent exchange,
but at the same time, the gap between the world of the privileged
and the world of the excluded is growing.
We were recently in Australia.
For us, it was no problem to enter the country.
We have European passports, visas, and air tickets.
But asylum seekers who arrive by boat in Australia
are deported or taken to prison.
The interception of the boats
and the disappearance of the people into the detention system
are veiled by the Australian authorities.