Art, State Security and the Politics of Operative Knowledge

Why do authoritarian regimes fear artists?

Who Is Afraid of Artists?

A work of nonfiction in progress

Based on years of research in the archives of former state security services across Eastern Europe, Who Is Afraid of Artists? tells the story of an unexpected encounter: artists experimenting with new forms of freedom—and intelligence agencies developing equally sophisticated techniques to observe, classify, infiltrate and ultimately manipulate artistic communities.

The book argues that secret services did not merely monitor art—they produced knowledge about it — and extended their knowledge by imitating artistic practices.

They developed theories of performance, systems of classification and operational concepts that transformed aesthetic expertise into an instrument of political power. State security archives emerge not simply as repositories of surveillance, but as laboratories in which authoritarian regimes learned how to understand, predict and govern artistic practice.

Drawing on previously overlooked archival material from Hungary, the book reconstructs this hidden intellectual history for the first time.

At a moment when authoritarian governments once again target artists, manipulate cultural discourse and weaponise knowledge through surveillance and disinformation, these archives reveal not only how the past operated, but why it continues to matter.

Moving between archival discoveries, intellectual history and contemporary debates on surveillance, disinformation and authoritarianism, Who Is Afraid of Artists? traces how the hidden infrastructures of cultural control continue to shape the present.