Sports under surveillance
08-15, 15:30–16:30 (Europe/Berlin), Digitalcourage
Language: English

This creative workshop is about sports and surveillance. We love games and sports, we want to have fun and play together, support our favorite teams ... but ... drones are following us, cameras are watching, coupled with biometric algorithms they are inspecting our "suspicious" behaviours: how we move, what we wear, if lying down or staying still for too long, if shouting loud or holding objects, if drinking, smoking, kissing, breathing ...
Let's fight this surveillance, let's imagine together all kind of actions, let's disturb them, mock them, sabotage their systems in the most inventive and playful ways. Let's prepare together for the Paris Olympic games and the European football cup in Germany in 2024 ;-)


In 2024, France is hosting the Olympic Games, while Germany is hosting the European football cup. For the occasion, the French parliament allowed biometric surveillance, illegal before that, in order to track "suspiscious behaviour" in public spaces and to be used and experimented in all art and sport gatherings, from 2023 until the end of 2025.
Also for the occasion, homeless people will be transferred outside of Paris during the event. Yes, cities need to look nice and neat during the games, sooo they hide poverty and other disturbances, and use biometric surveillance system to make sure of controlling public space and events.

As for football fans, all over Europe they are being targeted by biometric surveillance and treated as potential criminals, while the corrupted football economy and its organizations are allowed and encouraged to speculate and make billions of profit upon this old popular sport, without the slightest concern about climate, social and human impacts.

As we are preparing the fight against this new form of surveillance in France, we want to collectively think about concrete, fun and spectacular actions to do in Paris, Berlin or elsewhere, to denounce such instrumentation of sport events in order to surveil us. This workshop would be the place to imagine creative forms of protesting - fake olympic contest (people running behind drones, boxing game against cameras ..), funny masks, counter definition of "suspiscious behaviour", sabotage ideas ...

Let's imagine various type of actions to perform back in our countries and shed light on these surveillance phenomena during games, sport events or protests! Let's creatively disturb their game systems! Bring your most beautiful sporty outfits and gadgets and let's play together!


Content Notes

biometric surveillance, olympics, football, fight

I'm Nono from La Quadrature Du Net