Trouble In Paradise will interrogate
issues of power, privacy and secrecy
in the current technological age.
“The Internet itself has become the most significant surveillance machine that we have ever seen. It’s not an age of transparency at all…the amount of secret information is more than ever before.”
– Julian Assange
Martyn Coutts (APHIDS) will lead a development to create a new media performance event called Trouble in Paradise. The development process will include collaborators Dylan Sheridan, Elizabeth Dunn, Tristan Meecham, Lara Thoms and Willoh S. Weiland over three weeks at Salamanca Arts Centre, Tasmania. Trouble In Paradise will interrogate issues of power, privacy and secrecy in the current technological age.
Using a format similar to the SBS television program Insight, Trouble In Paradise is a forum style event lead by a pair of charming (yet disarming) hosts. The hosts provoke the audience with scenarios that ignite a series of questions the audience will answer to the best of their ability. These questions and answers will then be used to playfully illuminate the ease of gathering personal information and how this information can be used or misused.
Experts will join the discussion via live feeds that are streamed into the space. These experts shed light on the serious possibilities of this medium and could include a bioethicist discussing the access of medical companies to DNA records, or an Egyptian revolutionary who used social media to challenge state power.
An integral part of our development will be to test participatory elements on an audience. As such, we will work with local artists and their feedback will inform the trajectory of the work. We will engage Salamanca Arts Centre’s community of Hybrid Arts practitioners to take part in this process and development of Trouble In Paradise.
Trouble in Paradise will be developed over a three week period in December 2012 in residency at Salamanca Arts Centre (SAC) in Hobart. This development period will end with a showing for invited guests.