PENG! Collective
Call a Spy
Past dates
8/17/16
5:00 PM
8/18/16
1:00 PM
8/18/16
4:00 PM
8/19/16
2:00 PM
8/19/16
5:00 PM
CALL A SPY is the first public call center worldwide to put you in direct conversation with a real intelligenceservice employee.
The media activists of Peng! Collective have excused themselves for Agenda 2010 on the German government’s behalf or, promoted the idea of helping refugees cross the EU borders by giving them a lift on the way back from holidays. And, with INTELEXIT they’ve founded a globally active platform for people seeking to exit the spy world. They drove around the headquarters of the NSA, British intelligence service GCHQ and the BND with giant recruitment posters, and used brochures to explain what options employees have for exiting the service and resocializing. Now they are installing CALL A SPY on the festival grounds – a public call center in which audience members are trained as employees of INTELEXIT. You will be provided with sample profiles of intelligence workers, argumentation strategies and techniques for maintaining a conversation, and led step by step to the point at which you can call a (real!) employee of an American, German or British intelligence service. Here you can then get to know the person who, in the name of national security, has access to the world’s most intimate information, and try to convince them to leave their jobs.
Live-call-session
At the end of the week, the installation will close with The Call A Spy show, a Game Show where 3 contestants will compete in a series of fun and humorous challenges, to create the best live phonecalls with unsuspecting intelligence agents from the North American secret services. Our show starts at 5pm which means the agents will have recently arrived at their offices and hopefully be in a good and chatty mood, ready for our show. The calls are completely improvised and we never know who will we reach so be ready for surprises.
The installation is open to visitors Wed 17th to Fri 19th, 20:00-22:00.
Find out more about this years focus ART AND DIGITAL ACTIVISM here.