14 November, 19:00
WASP – Working Art Space & Production, 67 -93 Ion Minulescu Str. Bucharest

WASP STUDIOS invites the public on the 14th of November, 19:00 to take part in a dialog about the influences and presence of the surveillance cameras in our life and routine. In a dialogue moderated by Andreea Căpitănescu, philosophers Anda Zahiu, Constantin Vică, Cristian Iftode, Cristina Voinea and artist Iosif Király propose a public analysis of the ethics of surveillance in contemporary society.

The topic of surveillance is increasingly of interest, and after a global “tsunami” such as the one experienced in spring 2020, when both in the press and among ordinary people the Israeli secret services were given as positive examples, using all their technological arsenal to see who is and who is not complying with the restrictions imposed by the government, or when in China and in Europe drones were watching who was leaving the house, the discussion about “Security OR Privacy” is all the more interesting and topical.

The pandemic context and the wave of conspiracy theories, fake news and the growing debate about rights and limitations imposed by governments, as well as the laxity with which we allow ourselves to provide personal information and images on social media, are some of the issues proposed to be addressed in a dialogue that brings into discussion an artistic as well as an anthropological and philosophical perspective.

An important direction of the dialogue between the guests of WASP Studios, is the perspective of overlapping the present reality of the theme of surveillance with the historical trauma of the generation that lived during the totalitarian communist regime – the surveillance of the police (security).

How do artists, young people and the general population relate to this theme?
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Anda Zahiu is a PhD student at the Faculty of Philosophy (UB) and a member of the Research Centre for Applied Ethics, specialising in political philosophy and applied ethics. Her research interests focus on the impact of new technologies on the sphere of morality and the different ways in which we can conceptualize the right to privacy.

Constantin Vică is a lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest. He teaches courses on Ethics of Technologies, Ethics and Politics of New Technologies, Technology and Development, Morality, Business and Information Technology, Ethics of Cognitive Technologies, Philosophy of History, Philosophy of the Future and Digital Culture. His areas of interest are in applied ethics, computer and information ethics, philosophy of computer science and artificial intelligence, bioethics, social and political philosophy. He has published various articles on Internet and cognitive enhancement, Artificial Intelligence and the ethics of the future, accountability of AI systems, epistemology and open data policy, hacker politics, robots as assistants and companions, conflict between intellectual property institutions and informal online norms.

Cristian Iftode is the Director of the Department of Practical Philosophy and History of Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Bucharest, where he teaches courses in ethics, therapy philosophy, aesthetics and contemporary philosophy. He has published numerous studies in collective works or specialized journals in the country and abroad (The New Bioethics, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, AJOB Neuroscience, Ingenium, Public Reason, etc.), as well as authored volumes, among which we mention Aristotle. The Problem of Analogy and the Philosophy of Donation (Editura Univ. of Bucharest, 2015), The Good Life. An Introduction to Ethics (Ed. Trei, 2021) and Philosophy as a Way of Life: The Sources of Authenticity (Ed. Trei, 2022, second edition). He is constantly giving public lectures, workshops on practical philosophy and is a regular contributor to the press (Dilema veche, Scena9, etc.), which aims to demonstrate the relevance of philosophy to everyday life.

Cristina Voinea is an assistant professor at the Department of Philosophy and Sociohuman Sciences, Academy of Economic Studies. He received his PhD in 2019 from the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, with a thesis studying how private and state power intertwine in internet governance. In her research, Cristina traces how new technologies influence our moral lives, working at the confluence of several fields, such as the ethics and politics of new technologies or moral psychology. Her studies have been published in journals such as Technology in Society, Science and Engineering Ethics, Ethics and Information Technology and Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, among others.

Iosif Király is a visual artist, professor at the National University of Arts Bucharest, where he has been teaching since 1992. He is co-founder of the Department of Photography and Dynamic Image (1995). His work investigates the relationship between perception, time, synchronicity and memory through photography, installation-art, drawing and more recently, video. He has initiated, coordinated, and, together with architects, visual artists, and anthropologists, participated in research projects related to the changes having occurred in post-communist Romania: D-Platform, RO-Archive, Triaj, Tinseltown. During the 1980s, Iosif Király became active in the mail art network, an international underground movement established by Fluxus. After 1989, he exhibited both individually and within the subREAL* group.

Andreea Căpitănescu is curator of WASP Working Art Space and Production, cultural manager and artist. With a background in contemporary dance (UNATC), project management in English (SNSPA) and doctoral research in the arts (UNARTE), she is interested in experimenting with new multidisciplinary frameworks with the potential to catalyse artistic and theoretical exchanges that modify and influence creative processes and propose new personal, authentic versions. Since 2005 she is director of eXplore festival and since 2008 co-organizer of the European project Jardin d’Europe and Life Long Burning. She was curator of the performing arts programme for the EUROPALIA Romania festival (Brussels), and since 2021 he is a lecturer at the Lucian Blaga University in Sibiu.
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Producer: WASP Studios // Co-producer: 4Culture

Project co-financed by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund AFCN. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the National Cultural Fund Administration. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how the results of the project may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the grantee.