Edward Snowden & The Yes Men

Edward Snowden & The Yes Men

Background

It took around five years to co-develop a convincing site-specific project involving The Yes Men at Roskilde Festival. After exploring various concepts, we finally decided on a project featuring Edward Snowden giving a talk on privacy via satellite from Moscow. Since the topic can be complex, we devised a secret side project to assist festival-goers in better understanding privacy.

Challenge

How can you encourage intoxicated, ecstatic festival-goers to contemplate challenging issues like mass surveillance at a music festival?

Solution

Together with Edward Snowden and The Yes Men, we devised a hoax with the sole intent of provoking the festival-goers personally, hoping for a reflection and reaction. Only a handful of people knew about this secret hoax so in case of a shitstorm we made a plan on how to navigate it and how to harness the build up anger. With only five simple, yet thought-provoking signs strategically placed around the camping site, we were successful in prompting festival-goers to reflect on privacy at a personal level. This led to various reactions at the festival as well as in the media outside of it.

Outcome

In the end there was a tremendous interest in the Edward Snowden talk. It was both serious and "hyggelig" (cozy) at the same time. This demonstrates that even when you're at a festival enjoying yourself, you can still contemplate important issues.

• Between 5,000 and 10,000 people attended the Edward Snowden talk
• We deliberately created a social media shitstorm, with agitated individuals inside and outside the festival grounds expressing concerns about privacy.
• The most agitated individuals were invited to participate in the hoax and had the opportunity to ask Edward Snowden a question.