Italian version
.hacktivism
05.05.04 Empire North, fake non-lethal weapons.
One of the lessons to be learned from history is that one of the raison d'etre of art is to anticipate the most clashing paradoxes of society and to exorcize, with a good dose of humour, dangerous situations for the freedom of everybody which could be presented as acceptable in the near future. Empire North is a phony company which produces non-lethal hi-tech weapons. This extremely believable fake was made by Jakob S. Boeskov, an artist from Copenhagen, who already attacked icons and multinationals in the past with striking performances. The products advertised so far are two. 'ID Sniper' is a rifle for stealthily implanting GPS microchips. The targeted victim would be both filed by the police (thanks to a photo made by the device when aimed and fired) and controlled for his entire life. 'Juju, the citizen eye' is a delation device, a sort of digital camera with an indicator of dangerousness which can be used to photograph a suspected criminal and automatically send the picture to the police. These devices, so eerily plausible, hint at a horrifying future and succeed in keeping our consciences aware of the means of manipulations and control introduced by our repressive governments.