Beyond Surveillance Workshop (a Chicago portion of the International Day Against Video Surveillance)

2pm Sunday, March 19, 2006
Mess Hall
6932 North Glenwood Avenue, Chicago
‘Morse’ stop on the Redline

An informal workshop experimenting beyond surveillance.

1. Participants will share their experiences in various formats (as you desire).

… reworded slave spirituals… surveillance cameras, massage therapy and the global sex trade… neighborhood surveillance cam survey… camera confiscation… your experience here…

2. Participants will discuss some of the central issues around surveillance.

* Cameras attempt to project the image they desire (to prevent). They are not (only) passive recorders of cultural exception, but rather active projectors of desired cultural norms. What changes when the “master” becomes much more abstract and disembodied? And what kind of embodied resistances make sense under such conditions? How can we go on? What are the positive aspects and positions of power which all participants take up? What does surveillance enable?

* Recording prevents change. You are whoever you were as far as the cameras are concerned. At what point are we no longer the person on the video? Are we ever? Are we addicted to seeing images of ourselves? What modes can we inhabit?

3. Participants will come up with some ways to move beyond surveillance AND actually try out and experiment with a few of them.

…live mock technical glitches!!!… pre-written actions undermining the “capture” of reality by presenting it as scripted… parodies of what cameras WANT to project/see… or don’t want to project/see, strut with labels on like “drugdealer”

To download flyers (if not attached to this email):
M19chi-bs-idavs.pdf
Contact:
beyondsurveillance at thefrictioninstitute.org
Also:
http://www.notbored.org/IDAVS.html