In the centre of the Great Hall above you, a translucent black dome hangs down amongst the lights; it is a silent observer. Through our counter-surveillance espionage-art the Waterloo Watchmen have discovered the name of this device: “SLC 3”.
SLC 3 is a guidable camera connected to a multi-screen display accessible by both the Campus Police and the student-operated Turnkey desk. However, despite this limited student access to this surveillance data, they are instructed to restrict access to it from the general student populace, thus effectively placing them in the disciplinary hierarchy between us and them. Our counter-surveillance measures revealed the ability of the Turnkey workers to connect to this camera remotely to change its position, as well as to zoom in on any particular person, object or event that tantalizes this surveillant gaze. It thus invests a Panoptic structure in the Great Hall – the unseen observer at the centre, offered total surveillance visibility while hidden by a reflective onyx casing to hide the direction of its gaze.
SLC Turnkey desk remote camera/multi-screen display controls.
One of the central concerns of the Waterloo Watchmen is to experiment with counter-surveillance techniques as a means of reclaiming, repurposing or reimagining the function and effect of surveillance space. In terms of theory, this desire for revolution has pointed us towards the Situationists, a group of French radicals who were set on the revolutionary reformation of modern life, whereby a Utopian future of adventure and play was to rebuilt from the alienating forces of capitalist existence. As such, we would like to briefly examine how surveillance culture on the Waterloo campus might be understood in terms of three central Situationists theories and revolutionary tactics: the society of the spectacle, psychogeography and detournement.
"The society of the spectacle" is a notion that comes from Guy Debord’s book of the same name. Debord, from his post-Marxist stance, argues that it is not the force of capitalist production that has come to identify all modern existence, but rather its drive for consumption. The spectacle is the notion of the commodification of society and culture: the consumption of the products engineered by the capitalist machine take on dominance over all interaction, and we invest such acts of consumption and commodity with a high level of reality-affirming power. Since we are alienated from genuine experience, we thus seek it out in whichever new ultimate product on the horizon that the spectacle has most recently filled with the promise of a Utopian life. Instead of engaging in actual experiences, we imagine our interactions as expressed through their mediation in the images constructed about the reality we desire, and by our appropriation of products that best embody a marketing strategy that speaks to the life we wish we had. How then might surveillance play into this spectacular society?
Most immediately, its effects of control and regulation are applied to maintain the ongoing operation of the spectacle. While performing this function, it also dually commodifies the experiences it records – surveillance data is extremely desirable from a commodity perspective, as it can be used to predict market trends, commodity desirability, etc. While this applies less to forms of surveillance that a camera like SLC 3 might perform, consider the surveillance data we’ve been convinced to willingly provide. A prime example is that ultimate realization of the spectacle – Facebook. Facebook’s aim is a totalitarian reign over all social experience and interaction; it seeks to mask its inherent alienation and distance in ever-expanding features and toys for disconnected social interaction. Moreover, this is clearly not a benign service, its obvious goal and business model being the collection of ever-increasingly detailed information on each participant involved in its use. Thus, while it comes to embody a whole host of social experiences for its users, it commodifies all of them, demanding that we construct reality through the tools of the spectacle – images uploaded to mediate a marketable and spectacular representation of the experiences they claim to represent. Our generation, completely submersed and constituted through the spectacle, has been taught to demand surveillance be performed on them. It is in the knowledge of our image being captured that we become real.
Yet on campus this largely remains a one-sided relationship. Cameras like SLC 3 let us know we are being watched, that we are being included in the spectacle, but deny us access to the pleasure we’ve learned to take out of our constitution in such images. The Situationists believed we could recapitulate the aspects of spectacular society to create a Utopia. On UW campus, we believe that must begin with counter-surveillance.
The Situationists proposed psychogeography and detournement as tactics for such a revolution. Psychogeography involves the mapping and design of spatiality from the perspective of its psychological effects on the individuals interacting with that space. Detournement is a process of subversion, whereby elements of the spectacle are recontextualized to perform more educative and radical functions. The Waterloo Watchmen are applying both tactics in a variety of ways so as to complicate surveillance space. In terms of psychogeography, our mere dedication to documenting and sharing our counter-surveillance data should have a positive effect. If we can recognize that surveillance is a necessary and inextricable aspect of society, then by highlighting its presence, by making aware the student population of its absolute proliferation, then we might examine and engage with its psychological effects. One of my colleagues is already exploring the psychoanalytic implications of such space, and I would insist that the mere description and discussion of such processes has the effect of re-constituting the surveillance spaces we have analyzed as potentially causing a situation that demands psychological reactions. If we have learned that we need to be seen, then counter-surveillance allows us to indicate the psychogeographic locales in which one is guaranteed the spectacular promise of being watched.
Moreover, the entirety of our counter-surveillance mission has been an application of detournement. Typically, detournement operates through the appropriation of images and words from the spectacle (and you have seen us use such techniques with our repurposing of the Watchmen comic); what we are interested in is performing detournement on spaces. By highlighting what is surveillance space on UW campus, we have already begun the process of detournement – the one-sided relationship of observer and observed is immediately complicated. By placing QR Code posters in these spaces that allow for playful interaction and description of that surveillance space, we give new educative value to this once simply spectacular consumption of surveillance information. Linking those spaces to the Waterloo Watchmen blog creates a forum for discussion, thought and complication of surveillance culture. Our intention is not to dictate, but rather to create the situation that might make surveillance culture a more pleasurable experience. And finally, through our performance and encouragement of counter-surveillance measures, we have created a situation whereby surveillance space might be invested with the real sort of adventure, excitement and play that simply being watched only promises but never delivers. It is not that we do not want to be watched – we simply want a taste of the power that comes with watching. Instead of understanding surveillance as performing only repressive and oppressive functions, we might learn how to interact with it as children might. It provides rich opportunities for imagination and roleplaying. The spectacle has taught us all to wish we lived a movie - and yet we already do every day. Surveillance culture turns the world into a soundstage, a set for the performance of whatever we might gain the most pleasure from acting out.
For example, this process involved in capturing this video had my heart-racing with the excitement of such insignificant, but ultimately pleasurable and performative espionage:
For further information on Situationism, please visiting Nothingness.org. Since they loathed copywriting so much, we now have the benefit of a resource where a large number of original Situationist International writings are available for free.
Do they sit and control the cameras and spy on everyone?
ReplyDeleteOnly when they feel like it.
ReplyDeleteWould you?