The New Green Heart
Regeneration projects developing across London have caused the sprawl of privately-owned public spaces in the city. These spaces, which seem like public land, are owned and controlled by landowners and corporations. Using security cameras, private security guards, and fences, these corporations enforce their own rules and regulations. Protesting, drinking alcohol, or even taking pictures will result in a security guard asking you to leave.
The rising number of these privately-owned public spaces in London has resulted in the privatization of genuine democratic public land, restricting access and expression in city spaces and menacing democracy's fundamental right to freedom.
The rise of new technologies such as face recognition and gait analysis has given private landowners even more control over people using their spaces. Monitoring centers are now tracking every movement in these private parks and plazas to collect data about individuals. That data can later be analyzed to predict future trends in the spaces or sold to other parties. And as most of the time, these spaces lack a specific set of "terms and conditions," we use them being unaware of this.
The New Green Heart is a video piece situated in Elephant Park -a privately owned park at the center of the regeneration project in the former site of the Heygate Estate in South London- aiming to critique the use of technology and private security to enforce control and to collect data in a seemingly public space. By mocking facial recognition and gait analysis technologies to detect clothes, coffee, bags, plants, and humans, the project wants to render visible the amount of data that can be collected through these surveillance systems. Who owns this data? Can we enjoy a coffee in a park without being recorded and analyzed?
The rising number of these privately-owned public spaces in London has resulted in the privatization of genuine democratic public land, restricting access and expression in city spaces and menacing democracy's fundamental right to freedom.
The rise of new technologies such as face recognition and gait analysis has given private landowners even more control over people using their spaces. Monitoring centers are now tracking every movement in these private parks and plazas to collect data about individuals. That data can later be analyzed to predict future trends in the spaces or sold to other parties. And as most of the time, these spaces lack a specific set of "terms and conditions," we use them being unaware of this.
The New Green Heart is a video piece situated in Elephant Park -a privately owned park at the center of the regeneration project in the former site of the Heygate Estate in South London- aiming to critique the use of technology and private security to enforce control and to collect data in a seemingly public space. By mocking facial recognition and gait analysis technologies to detect clothes, coffee, bags, plants, and humans, the project wants to render visible the amount of data that can be collected through these surveillance systems. Who owns this data? Can we enjoy a coffee in a park without being recorded and analyzed?
