The Culture of Surveillance and the Poetics of Observation Technologies

in context of the exhibition “faceless”
www.artisticbokeh.com

Opening: 3.July, 2013 19:00h, MuseumsQuartier Vienna

Fotos: www.flickr.com/photos/artisticbokeh/sets/72157634440642553/with/9190519391/
PDF Folder: goo.gl/Q42a1

Surveillance work can be challenging - according to the U.S. Department of Labor it includes stress, danger, confrontations with angry or upset individuals, physical discomfort, lethal hazards, fieldwork in high crime areas, monotony, constant alertness to threatening situations, irregular hours, and a heavy toll on private life, among other risks. The surveillance worker has to possess “great self-discipline to control unproductive ethical impulses to look away” since the “humanity of the surveillance worker has always been a weakness of surveillance systems” (Maxwell, 2005). Who are those people and employees observing us in all possible situations of our lives? Surveillance workers are “in reality, reflexive and knowledgable social actors, involved in a variety of sense and decision making activities” (Ball, 2005), though they are people with diverse backgrounds and individual biographies that are rarely recorded and often disregarded in history.

(1) Artistic Bokeh Showroom: Documenting Surveillance
Installation, opening with the Faceless exhibition on wednesday 3.July 2013

The exhibition-booth of the initiative “artistic bokeh” features an abandoned surveillance room, which shows artifacts and leftovers of an active operation - even the technology is still in order. The work environment, the tools among individual items of the surveyor produce different narratives of what might have happened, while at the same time showing small but significant flaws in the story. The technology and the devices used might not fit together from their times - what might look as flaws in the staging at first sight unfolds as an act of distortion of history, which represents a meta-narration that forces a critical observation of facts and fiction.

(2) >Asymmetric Love Nr. 2<
Public installation, viewable from July 2013

The installation >Asymmetric Love Nr. 2< by Addie Wagenknecht and Stefan Hechenberger was created to mimic a familiar and comfortable iconic baroque chandelier composed out of surveillance cameras.

(3) Performance “Anonymity” by Wagenknecht and Hechenberger
2013-07-03 19:00, MuseumsQuartier Vienna

By censoring the eyes, we censor a essential part of our expression, becoming ‘faceless’ and anonymous in nature. Six hundred black glasses will be distributed to the visitors opening night and documented by ARISTIC BOKEH. Addie Wagenknecht and Stefan Hechenberger developed “Anonymity” in New York in 2007, and adapted it for the opening of the exhibition FACELESS part I and part II.

Artistic Bokeh is an initiative to qualitatively explore, map and extend the electrosphere with parameters of artistic research and development. The initiative is part of the project Artistic Technology Research at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna and funded by the FWF.

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