“While the internet has in some ways an ability to let us know to an unprecedented level what government is doing, and to let us co-operate with each other to hold repressive governments and repressive corporations to account, it is also the greatest spying machine the world has ever seen,”

Julian Assage

The internet has turned identity into a commodity which can be bought, cloned and stolen. Credit card numbers are traded in their millions; revolutions sparked by a tweet, and lives wrecked by careless leaks. In the digital age information truly is power.

We mapped Franz Kafka’s stories The Trial and In The Penal Colony across East London’s nooks and crannies and online. New fears about technology have given Kafka’s paranoid works a renewed relevance.

Participants of The Trial followed Joseph, a character modelled on Kafka’s Joseph K. As in The Trial, Joseph is assailed on all sides, persecuted for reasons he cannot ascertain.

Sinister government departments, bizarre characters and underground rebellions reveal themselves to you, online and in reality, as you follow Joseph’s journey through increasingly surreal and dangerous territory. Narratives will be interwoven into our physical locations, events and planted web content. You will have the scope to explore, engage and question our narrative, characters and motives across a three month period, three physical locations curated by us, and pervasive and rich real and virtual content scattered online and across East London.

All photography Camilla Greenwell