Paolo Cirio

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Paolo Cirio
Born
Paolo Cirio

1979
Known for
net art, street art, hacktivism

Paolo Cirio is a

hacktivist and cultural critic
.

Cirio's work embodies

hacker ethics, such as open access, privacy policies, and the critique of economic, legal, and political models. He received a number of legal threats for his Internet art performances, including practices such as hacking, piracy, leaking sensitive information, identity theft
, and cyber attacks.

Paolo Cirio is known for having exposed over 200,000

Sotheby’s auction records in Derivatives[6] and he attempted to profile 4000 French police officers with facial recognition in Capture.[7] His early works include his cyber attacks against NATO and reporting on its military operations since 2001 [8]
.

Career

Paolo Cirio has won a number of awards, including the Golden Nica first prize at Ars Electronica in 2014;[1] the Eyebeam Fellowship in 2012; and the Transmediale second prize 2008, among others.

Cirio has exhibited in international museums and institutions, he regularly gives public lectures and workshops at leading universities, and his artworks have been covered by hundreds of media outlets worldwide.

2001 - 2004

In 2002, Cirio's first international action was called Anti-NATO Day. As an act of

anti-war web portal called StopTheNato.org, which he launched in 2001 and updated periodically until 2006.[4]

In 2004, Cirio joined the Illegal Art Show network, which organized street art happenings in Italy in line with the Temporary Autonomous Zone philosophy. They occupied public spaces and invited artists to create and show artworks during the events. Cirio created several street art pieces [5] and organized three such events independently: two in Turin in 2004 and a third in London in 2005.[6]

2005 - 2007

In 2005, Cirio hacked Google's

internet bots for a click fraud in order to buy Google's shares with its own money. In an attempt to stop the project, Google sent a cease and desist letter to the artists mentioning legal consequences for the project.[9] Cirio worked on the project Google Will Eat Itself (GWEI) in conjunction with Alessandro Ludovico and Ubermorgen. The project questioned the information monopoly of Google and its revenue model.[7]

In 2006 he eluded

copyright laws
for digital content misappropriated by private corporations.

Face to Facebook, Amazon Noir and Google Will Eat Itself together form the Hacking Monopolism Trilogy.[9][10]

2008 - 2010

Between 2008 and 2010, Cirio worked on experimental storytelling, involving actors and audiences to present real facts and issues through fictional stories across multiple media platforms. He called this technique of documentary fiction [11] "Recombinant Fiction." This socially engaged genre of transmedia storytelling has resulted in two projects: Drowning NYC (2010) and The Big Plot (2009).

In 2010, in reaction to the

basic income guarantee system. In the following years, he presented the projects in relation to the economic recession and the related Occupy Wall Street
protests.

2011 - 2012

Since 2011, Cirio has been addressing the cultural shift and mainstream media attention toward popular perceptions of privacy and ownership of public and personal information, with the projects Street Ghosts, Persecuting.US, and Face to Facebook. The methodology used to create these artworks was eventually formalized in a series called Anti-Social Sculptures.

In 2011, Cirio created Face to Facebook with Alessandro Ludovico. For this piece, Cirio collected one million

Tagesschau, and Apple Daily
.

With the Street Ghosts project in 2012, Cirio recontextualized photos of individuals found on

wheatpasted
on the walls of public buildings without authorization. These interventions took place in public spaces of several major cities, including London, Berlin, and New York.

In 2012, his web project Persecuting.US profiled the political affiliations of over one million Americans who used Twitter during the months leading up to the 2012 United States presidential election. Cirio appropriated the data and algorithmically determined users’ political affiliations to raise awareness on voter profiling and polarization in social bubbles that can be targeted for political manipulation.

2013 - 2014

In 2013, Cirio investigated offshore financial systems with the project Loophole for All. The project made public the list of all the companies registered in the

Certificate of Incorporation documents signed with his name. This information was published on the website Loophole4All.com, engaging international participation through selling the real identities of anonymous Cayman companies for 99 cents. This provocation elicited reactions from Cayman authorities and global banks as well as legal threats by multinational companies, international law firms, and local Cayman businesses.[16] After three weeks of selling conceptual and subversive artworks in the form of limited editions of firms’ identities, PayPal suspended the account, claiming the sales activity was in violation of PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy.[17][18] The project offered a creative approach to democratizing and making-known the financial privileges afforded to moneyed individuals and multinational corporations.[19] In 2014 the project won the Golden Nica, first prize of Prix Ars Electronica
.

In 2014, Cirio created the Global Direct project, a creative political philosophy that the artist outlined for worldwide participatory democracy within the potentials offered by the Internet. To illustrate the conceptual work, the artist drew a series of fifteen Organizational charts to inspire values and functions for a global and participatory society. The fifteen diagrams of Global Direct were informed by the artist’s research into the social science of ancient, contemporary, and emergent democracy.

In 2014 Cirio created Daily Paywall by hacking the

Pearson sold both The Economist and the Financial Times and Cirio republished the whole content of DailyPaywall.com. He entire artistic act was pre-scripted as a performance for illustrating critical issues on the Information economy
that Cirio outlined within the launch of the project.

2015 - 2016

During the spring of 2015, Cirio conducted the street art campaign OVEREXPOSED concerning the aftermath of

selfies from Facebook and Twitter accounts of civilians, were rendered with a particular technique called High Definition Stencils invented by the artist for the street art campaign that took place in NYC, London, Berlin and Paris between April and May 2015. The intervention generated media coverage and public interest internationally and particularly in Germany [21]
German Parliamentary Committee investigating the NSA spying scandal
.

In 2016, Cirio created the project Obscurity in which he obfuscated over 10 million online mugshots and the criminal records of victims of

Right to be Forgotten
in United States.

2017 - 2018

During 2017, Cirio curated the Evidentiary Realism [13] exhibitions in NYC and Berlin art galleries featuring artists engaged in investigative, forensic, and documentary art. He articulated a particular form of realism in art that portrays and reveals evidence through investigation and research-based work. The exhibitions included historical artists such as Hans Haacke, Mark Lombardi, Jenny Holzer, and Harun Farocki. A collection of essays about the works presented were published in the book Evidentiary Realism [14].

In 2018, Cirio published the project Sociality [15] with over 20000 patents of algorithms, devices, and interfaces of social media, online advertising, and other Internet technologies, that he collected from Google Patents. He then rated the patents for finding the most potentially socially harmful ones. A selection of patents ordered by categories such as discrimination, polarization, addiction, deception, control, censorship, and surveillance were published on The Coloring Book of Technology for Social Manipulation [16]. On the project’s website, visitors are invited to share, flag, and ban these patents in relation to the regulation of the information technology for monitoring and manipulating social behaviors. Furthermore, as a form of protest, Cirio posted printed patent titles and images at the main universities in U.S. such as at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Berkley, and Columbia. This project responded to the scandals of Cambridge Analytica and Youtube algorithms that broke in 2018 and broadly it documents the history of the Internet with the advent of targeted advertising, corporate surveillance, and information feed filtered by artificial intelligence.

2019 - 2020

During the fall of 2019, Cirio presented three new projects related to his concept of Internet Photography[17] focusing on the economic and legal aspects of images circulating online. Rather than addressing privacy, with these projects Cirio looked at the relations between cultural and economic values of online photos. In particular with the artwork Attention[18], Cirio addressed subtle forms advertising by Instagram influencers. Cirio collected hundreds of photos by online influencers promoting controversial products without disclaimers and in partnership with the University of Maastricht he investigated the legal implications of moderating and regulating such subtle advertising.

In the spring of 2019 with his work Foundations[19] he put forward an aesthetics of contemporary

flowcharts to work with socio-economic information systems and a separate text book[20] for the project Foundations where he curated a selection of artworks, exhibitions, and publications from the history of conceptual art to identify an ontology of an aesthetics of social complexity
.

In June 2020, Cirio launched the project Derivatives[21] online, with a database of over 100,000

financial derivative contract for the sale of his derivative works. By betting against future prices of derivative works, with Cirio’s concept everyone can ironically participate in the financialization of art. In addition, the project campaigns for enacting more transparency and fairness in the art market. In order to provoke regulation, Cirio has investigated secrecy and manipulation of art auctions with extensive research [23]. This project was reported by the international outlets as a controversial and investigative work.[24] [25] [26]

In October 2020, Cirio created the project Capture [27] with 4000 faces of French police officers assembled by a

EDPS with over 50,000 signatures supporting his petition.[32]

2021 - 2023

On October 9, 2021, Cirio established the first international climate crime tribunal though a solo exhibition at the historical museum of

Climate Justice
from a legal and economic standpoint. Cirio gathered data, graphs, and images as evidence to hold major oil, gas, and coal companies responsible for their greenhouse gas emissions. The historical scientific, legal, and economic evidence is presented by Cirio through fine artworks, online platforms, public events, and interviews with experts.

Cirio’s Climate Tribunal integrates the science of the

Carbon Majors Database by the Climate Accountability Institute, the first to establish precise responsibilities for each international fossil fuel firm, and deduced that the major 100 oil, gas and coal producers have generated over 70% of greenhouse gas emissions
.

For

Carbon Tax
dedicated to the preservation of ecosystems vulnerable to climate change. The project was awarded and presented at Fondazione Merz in 2022.

Between 2022 and 2023, Cirio received three grants to expand the conceptual framework of the Climate Tribunal, from

Carbon Majors Database
.

In January 2023, Cirio launched the Climate Class Action, a campaign to organize lawsuits which would allow citizens to claim compensation from major fossil fuel companies. Cirio created the platform ClimateClassAction.com[36], where citizens can calculate monetary compensation for the personal damage caused by climate change.

Awards

Selected awards include:

  • Prix Ars Electronica 2005, Honorary Mention Net Vision category, for GWEI
  • ibizagrafica 2006, Honorary Mention, for Amazon Noir
  • St. Gilgen International School Media Award, 2006, for Amazon Noir
  • IBM AWARD FOR NEW MEDIA/Stuttgarter Filmwinter, 2007, for Amazon Noir
  • Transmediale Award 2008, Second Prize, for Amazon Noir
  • Cairo Prize 2009, Nominated, for Open Society Structures
  • Prix Ars Electronica 2011, Award of Distinction, for Face to Facebook
  • Share Festival Prize 2011, First Prize, for Face to Facebook
  • Eyebeam 2012, Fellowship in New York City[27]
  • Prix Ars Electronica 2014, Golden Nica, for Loophole for All

Notes

  1. ^ "Loophole for All". Ars Electronica Center. Retrieved 27 November 2020.
  2. ^ IWS INFOCON (30 May 2002). "OCIPEP Daily Brief Number: DOB02-071". The Information Warfare Site.
  3. ISBN 0920231365
    .
  4. ISBN 9788178299471
    .
  5. ISBN 978-3-89955-151-8
    .
  6. ISBN 9781848858572
    .
  7. ^ Dewey, Caitlin (21 March 2014). "Google Will Eat Itself: A Q&A with the creators of a subversive, oddly timeless piece of conceptual art". The Washington Post.
  8. ^ Transcript from the lecture delivered at the University Paris 8 on 4 January 2012.
  9. ISBN 9783775731805
    .
  10. ^ Cirio, Paolo and Alessandro Ludovicio. 2013. The hacking monopolism trilogy. ISEA International. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/9673.
  11. ISBN 9788876062643
    .
  12. ^ Lechner, Marie (7 May 2011). "Credit Revolver". Libération. p. 10.
  13. S2CID 237576098
    .
  14. ^ Allsop, Laura (11 February 2011). "Art 'hacktivists' take on Facebook". CNN. Archived from the original on 7 July 2012.
  15. S2CID 249993158
    .
  16. ^ Paolo Cirio (2015). Loophole4All.com by Paolo Cirio in Manchester at FutureEverything 2015 - Loophole for All. Manchester: FutureEverything. Retrieved 26 February 2015.
  17. ^ Laura Flanders (15 April 2013). "Tax Loopholes for All!". The Nation.
  18. ^ Yanyan Huang (7 January 2014). "Paolo Cirio Discovers a Tax Loophole for All". The Wild. Archived from the original on 9 February 2014.
  19. S2CID 233595956
    .
  20. ^ Paolo Cirio (2015). FutureEverything 2015: Paolo Cirio. Manchester: FutureEverything. Retrieved 26 April 2015.
  21. Sueddeutsche Zeitung
    .
  22. Frankfurter Allgemeine
    .
  23. ^ "Wir überwachen zurück!". Die Zeit. 22 May 2015.
  24. ^ "Künstler plakatiert Fotos von Geheimdienst-Chefs in Berlin". Der Tagesspiegel. 22 May 2015.
  25. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 25 November 2020.
  26. ^ "Reconnaissance faciale : Un artiste veut identifier 4 000 visages de policiers - Le Monde Informatique". LeMondeInformatique (in French). October 2020. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
  27. ^ "Paolo Cirio | eyebeam.org". eyebeam.org. Retrieved 28 January 2016.

Further reading

External links
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