Child Force, 2007
Exploring the interrelations between technology and ideology, Wollersberger’s work looks at how emerging technologies serve a contemporary political agenda by enabling a state of surveillance. Child Force is a social fiction, looking at how childhood might change when genetic engineering converges with a state of surveillance. The setting for the narrative is an imaginary society based on aspects of current western politics, such as social selection and surveillance. In the UK, citizens from the age of three are monitored for conspicuous behaviour; DNA samples of 50.000 children are already registered. Simultaneously, scientists claim to have discovered the “criminal gene”. If scientific findings could be used to decode DNA, will our children be the first to undergo genetic tests for socially undesirable traits? Would children with “clean” DNA gain superior status?
