Performance Lecture & Seminar with Susan Kelly and Birkbeck School of Law Artist in Residence Margareta Kern. The performance and seminar assembles images and material that explore the connections between positive psychology, technology, governance and soft military power.

Nobody But Us looks at the techniques of persuasion, instruction, coercion and prediction used by companies who specialize in big data ‘behavioural change’ and ‘influence operations’ (SCL, Cambridge Analytica, Google etc.), and the history of ‘dual use’ civilian and military research that enabled them. The project interrogates histories of dual psychological and military practice in counter-insurgency struggles in the former British colonies where ‘rehabilitation’ techniques were used to ‘cleanse’ and re-constitute compliant colonial subjects.

https://www.margaretakern.com/nobody-but-us

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/35916