_Holograms for Freedom

In 2015, a new public safety law—popularly known as the Gag Law (Ley Mordaza)—took effect in Spain. It banned many forms of protest and set down heavy fines—up to €600,000—for unauthorized protests, demonstrations outside Parliament and other government buildings, and even documenting protests or publishing information about them. The No Somos Delito (“We Are Not Crime”) movement against the bill, made up of over 100 social justice, political opposition, and human rights groups, sought to raise awareness of the new restrictions and agitate for the bill to be repealed.

Together with advertising agency DDB Spain, No Somos Delito created Hologramas Por La Libertad/Holograms for Freedom, “the first hologram protest in history.” They called on people around the world to participate by recording shouts, writing sign slogans, or sending in photos or webcam videos of themselves. These crowdsourced contributions, as well as professionally recorded participants, were used to digitally render thousands of holograms for a protest in front of the Parliament building in Madrid. This holographic event offered an avenue for public protest when physical demonstrations were prohibited; in evoking the proscribed physical protests, it also foregrounded questions of who has the right to occupy and use space.