The Observer Effect is a live arts event staged within a public space. It is an urban history tour set 14 years into the future. The tour guide recounts the sanitised events of the 2028 privacy riots, which occurred in response to two events: the creation of a biometric database for residents of the city (ostensibly for efficient delivery of city services), and the local police force being granted access to private live camera feeds. As the group move through the square, they learn that the impact was far more wide-reaching and insidious than the official version of events.

Nehal El-Hadi is a Toronto-based writer, researcher, and editor. An environmental journalist with a PhD in urban planning, Nehal’s work explores our relationships with materials, technologies, objects and spaces/places that define what it means to be human. Her scholarly and academic writing has been published in academic journals, magazines, edited collections, anthologies, and exhibition catalogues. She recently completed a residency at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre, where she presented the shadow puppetry/live animation fairytale Ramla and the Desert, and she holds a residency at Toronto’s Theatre Centre, where she is developing The Observer Effect, a public space performance that examines the impacts of surveillance.