Conceived by Laura Poitras as a guide for living in a society that collects extraordinary amounts of information on individuals, this book features responses to the modern-day state of mass surveillance and the “war on terror” from a diverse group of artists, novelists, technologists, graphic storytellers, and data journalists, among others. These texts raise important questions about the role of surveillance and collective privacy—central tennents of Poitras’s work. Also included are primary documents, a range of stills from the artist’s films, and new work made for the Whitney’s exhibition.
The excerpt available here features a foreword by Adam D. Weinberg, an introduction by Jay Sanders, and a preview of a text by Cory Doctorow. Astro Noise: A Survival Guide also includes contributions by Ai Weiwei, Jacob Appelbaum, Lakhdar Boumediene, Kate Crawford, Alex Danchev, Dave Eggers, Jill Magid, Trevor Paglen, Laura Poitras, Edward Snowden, and Hito Steyerl.
