Chelsea Manning To Make First Public UK Appearance at London's ICA

The US whistleblower, former intelligence analyst and activist Chelsea Manning is coming to the UK. Her first public appearance in the country comes courtesy of London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts. Manning is to be honoured at the ICA’s Annual Friends dinner, and will take part in a public Q&A on 1 October at the Royal Institution, hosted by the ICA.

Manning is set to speak on the relationship between artificial intelligence and public policy, the impact of algorithms on democracy, the recent Panama Papers and Cambridge Analytica cases, as well as LGBTQ rights.

ICA director Stefan Kalmár, who invited Manning, commented: ‘Honouring Chelsea Manning in today’s media and political landscape will, I hope, show that the power of an individual can change the world through bravery, courage, determination and vision.’

Manning spent seven years in a military prison after being convicted of leaking classified government documents to Wikileaks. She was sentenced to 35 years under the Espionage Act, but this was commuted by then-US president Obama in 2017, just three days before he left the White House.

Kalmár, who joined the ICA in November 2016, told frieze last year of his radical ambitions: ‘Can the ICA be an organization that revitalizes the belief of civic responsibility in cultural institutions, but also of progress within society? I think that we have the right conditions to make a strong case for that.’ Read the profile in full over here.