Anti-Surveillance Fashion

Anti-Surveillance Fashion

15 September–22 October 2023

Kornhausforum, Bern, Switzerland | Website

Anti-Surveillance Fashion brings together projects and products that resist surveillance in public spaces. Anyone who wears this fashion disappears in the digital background noise. Fashion is concerned with appearance in two ways: how do you walk the fine line between avant-garde fashion and digital invisibility? How do you dress so that machines see you in one way and people see you in another? It’s about more than just fashion: computer-aided video surveillance in public spaces is a hot topic. The topic is currently in the news and media almost every day – from the planned expansion of video surveillance at train stations by the SBB to the operation of video cameras without a permit in the bicycle stations in the city of Bern.

The currently applicable regulations for the protection of privacy in Switzerland date from 1992. Many aspects relating to the use of the increasingly precise computer vision software are simply not regulated. In this sense, “anti-surveillance fashion” only shows individual attitudes to a question to which a collective societal answer must be found.

The exhibition ranges from speculative fashionable prototypes to products that can be bought off the shelf to DIY knitting patterns for the individualized Dazzle sweater. The exhibition is supplemented by photographic and artistic contributions.

Curated by Rebekah Domig