Playlist:

Surveillance

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In this week's Playlist we present a selection of videos by our our members that deal with surveillance.


Matthew Humphreys, Living Room, 2013

Living Room
3m35s
Single Channel Video Loop
Colour Sound

It’s called a Living Room, as in many houses that is where life happens. The attentive camera captures a lucid rendition of this most central part of a household, where bodies share couches, share television, share news and information and personal stories that shape them. A foucauldian surveillance of family life.

See Matthew Humphreys' profile on Axisweb >


Dominique Rey, Circular Surveillance, 2011

Digital video with sound, part of a collaborative project with Nicola Naismith through Satellite for the show Space Exchange at Aid & Abet, Cambridge. The artists acted as research assistants and were asked by Dave Evans, The Royal Standard, Liverpool, to investigate U.F.O sightings in East Anglia. The incident under investigation here was 'Operation Charlie', 1947.

See Dominique Rey's profile on Axisweb >


Paul McConnachie, Space in-between, 2013-14

An exploration into what Michel Foucault describes as the space in-between, of other spaces and Heterotopia. This video highlights my interest in surveillance and our reaction to it. It was while walking around the Art college in Liverpool when all the students had gone home that the atmosphere of the building had changed from a loud bustling hive of creativity to one of silence.

See Paul McConnachie's profile on Axisweb >


Chris Oakley, The Catalogue, 2004

Single-channel video
Year of Production: 2004
Duration: 5’ 30 ”

In The Catalogue Chris Oakley presents the scenario of a perfect world of consumption, where a video surveillance system films the interior of a department store in which the individuals, together with their data, become entities-identities traceable and transparent thanks to their personal data. The individuals are followed through the crowd by motion tracking and are given graphical labels that list their purchase habits and general information regarding themselves.
The Catalogue is a symbolic rendering of the logic of a computerized market research system, which classifies individuals using a wide variety of data in order to assess their buying power and their future needs. The identity of each individual is reduced to the analysis and prediction of his or her consumption habits. The title of the work highlights the fact that each individual who meets the automatic eye of the video camera is entered in a database, a catalogue in which each person must be assigned to predetermined categories, thus assuming his or her place in the system

-Franziska Nori, IDENTITÀ VIRTUALI

See Chris Oakley's profile on Axisweb >


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