The series of photos
Capture is composed of French police officers’ faces. The artist, Paolo Cirio collected 1000 public images of police in photos taken during protests in France and processed them with Facial Recognition software. Cirio then created an
online platform with a database of the resulting 4000 faces of police officers to crowdsource their identification by name. Cirio also printed the officers’ headshots as street art posters and posted them throughout Paris to expose them in the public space. This provocation triggered the reactions of the Interior Minister of France and the police unions, which then forced censorship of the artwork.
Capture comments on the potential uses and misuses of Facial Recognition and Artificial Intelligence by questioning the asymmetry of power at play. The lack of privacy regulations of such technology eventually turns against the same authorities that urge the use of it. Ultimately, as an activist, Cirio introduced a
campaign to ban Facial Recognition technology in all of Europe by organizing a petition in collaboration with privacy organizations.
Video playlist
Selected shows and presentations history
Panorama 22 exhibition at Le Fresnoy, 2020, (Censored), Tourcoing - France
Cybernetics of the Poor, exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien, 2020, Vienna - Austria
Artissima Unplugged, solo show at GAM Musuem, 2020, Turin - Italy
Plan B, exhibition at NOME Gallery, 2020, Berlin - Germany
