Astro Noise: A Survival Guide for Living Under Total Surveillance

Astro Noise: A Survival Guide for Living Under Total Surveillance is the catalogue for filmmaker and artist Laura Poitras's first major museum exhibition, staged at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2016, and doubles as a guide to living under mass surveillance.

Poitras invited a wide range of contributors, including artists, novelists, technologists, and former detainees, to respond to material she gathered while working with the National Security Agency documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Contributions include writing and imagery from Ai Weiwei, Lakhdar Boumediene, Kate Crawford, Cory Doctorow, Dave Eggers, Jill Magid, Trevor Paglen, and Hito Steyerl, alongside an introduction by Whitney curator Jay Sanders. The book reproduces material connected to the exhibition's installations, which placed viewers inside classified surveillance footage and declassified government documents.

Poitras is best known for her post-9/11 documentary trilogy, which culminated in Citizenfour (2014), winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and a chronicle of her work with Snowden. Astro Noise marked her move from film into gallery-based installation, and the book was published by the Whitney to coincide with the exhibition's run from February to May 2016.