Laura Poitras and David Remnick Visit the Whitney Museum
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 8 February 2016
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Laura Poitras shared a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting based on Edward Snowden’s leaks, and won an Oscar for her film Citizenfour. Her latest project is neither documentary nor journalism but a museum exhibition at the Whitney, “Astro Noise,” which continues her investigations into mass surveillance through installation art. Poitras walked David Remnick through the show (which is named after one of the encrypted NSA files Snowden gave her), and explained how it aims to connect viewers to the central themes of her work through emotions rather than information.
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| 0:44.0 | Things people love. |
| 0:49.7 | I'm Dorothy Wickendon, and on today's Politics and More podcast, New Yorker editor David Remnick |
| 0:55.6 | visits the Whitney Museum of American Art with the filmmaker and journalist Laura Poitris. |
| 1:01.4 | Her newest project, Astro Noise, is an installation currently on exhibition at the Whitney. |
| 1:09.4 | Filmmaker and journalist Laura Poitris is arguably the fiercest and most vivid chronicler and critic of the War on Terror. |
| 1:16.6 | When Edward Snowden copied countless NSA files about surveillance, and he wanted to leak them to the press, he reached out to Laura Poitris. |
| 1:25.6 | The stories that followed led to a Pulitzer Prize |
| 1:27.8 | that Poitra shared with journalists at The Guardian |
| 1:29.8 | and the Washington Post, |
| 1:31.3 | and her documentary film about Snowden, |
| 1:34.0 | Citizen Four, won an Academy Award. |
| 1:37.9 | But her newest project is quite a different thing. |
| 1:40.5 | It's a museum exhibit, |
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