Destroyed Snowden laptop: the curatorial view

The remains of the PC desktop and the Mac laptop that GCHQ came to the Guardians offices in Kings Place and destroyed. Only the laptop is displayed in the exhibition. Photograph: Sarah Lee

This week the remains of the laptop used to store files leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, pointlessly but symbolically destroyed by Guardian editors under the eyes of GCHQ, have been put on display at the V&A, a museum of art and design.

It forms part of the All of this Belongs to You exhibition, open until 19 July. Through a series of interventions and installations, it aims to examine the role of public institutions in contemporary life and to ask what it means to be responsible for a national collection. It raises questions about democracy, as we run up to the election, and about institutional and curatorial practice.

V&A curator, Kieran Long, said that they gained the confidence to show the remains when it was recalled that the museum had broken objects in its own collection, which had been preserved because of the stories they told rather than the artefacts intrinsic beauty or interest. Thus it now forms part of a display on technology, secrecy and privacy.

Yet, interestingly, the decision was made to show just the laptop and not the other bits of destroyed hardware, as the images above and below show. This is presumably a reflection of the iconic power of Apple products themselves, something that goes beyond the Snowden and Guardian story. Perhaps the ubiquity of the object means that its destruction speaks to us all.

I havent yet seen the exhibition, but when I saw the photograph of the laptop on display - the shiny, desirable MacBook reduced to twisted metal and circuitry - I was keen to gauge reactions and asked some friends and colleagues, beyond the V&A itself, for theirs. All are expert in thinking about the history and display of objects, particularly ones related to science, technology and medicine. I am grateful for their comments, which provoke thought about technology, society and the role of museum collections and display.

It is difficult for museums to exhibit the public sphere of debate and openness. Its an even greater challenge when the public sphere exists inside our cellphones and laptops and in the circulation of bits over fiberoptic cables.

One way to display it is to focus on a point of attack, on the failure of the public sphere. The V&A exhibition of the shockingly defaced laptop that once contained National Security Agency secrets reveals that something has gone wrong. Why is a museum known for beautiful artefacts showing an act of violence? That the destruction was purely symbolic magnifies the impact.

I applaud the V&A curators for the display. I do wish they could have let themselves change their museum label style just a bit. Its not important where the laptop was designed or manufactured. Couldnt they have replaced that with the more relevant information: Destroyed in London, 2013.

Steven Lubar is Professor of American Studies, History, and History of Art and Architecture at Brown University and was Director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage from 2004-2014 and Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, 2010-2012.

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Destroyed Snowden laptop: the curatorial view