One of the most distinctive features of contemporary mass surveillance is its lawlessness,1https://lpeproject.org/blog/the-legal-construction-of-discriminatory-mass-surveillance/ particularly in light of the fact that surveillance of surveillance is so widely documented. For something so commonplace, its purpose seems less and less justified to the public. Why is surveillance so rife? What is it for?
Safety seems like the obvious answer, but another less abating answer is capital. In our digital age, surveillance=data and data=profits. Something as basic as Google, which is used as an integrated daily referencing tool for a wide array of information, is in its most essential incarnation a surveillance platform.
What users perceive as a kindly librarian helping them navigate the vast index of the internet is actually tracking their behaviour. From a business perspective, the purpose of Google is not to educate but to surveil; more precisely to encourage its users to reveal information about themselves, after which it uses the information as a product from which to monetise.
Aside fom the now widely acknowledged economical motivations for surveillance, behavioural scrutiny functions as a tool of social control, which we will hence refer to as cultural surveillance, and is what this month’s articles seek to explore.
A palpable and widespread symptom of cultural surveillance is censorship and/or cancel-culture. One of the most recent iterations of cancel culture in the art world is the permanent postponement of an exhibition by artist Ai Wei Wei at London’s Lisson Gallery after the artist posted tweets in support of Palestine and against the Israeli assault on Gaza.
He is not the first artist to be canceled in this manner, and reading the news reminded me of Wei Wei’s recent intervention, Middle Finger. In this project, he took a corporeal stance against blind collectivism and the institutions that propagate false culture, inviting people all over the world to do the same.
Middle Finger challenges people to question their adherence and acceptance towards governments, institutions, and establishments. He points his middle finger at buildings, not at people, as a way to depersonalise the gesture and simultaneously suggest that people are the ones that will be able to enact change.
Most of the time, the institutions he is pointing at are the ones that tend to stop or hinder free speech, social empowerment or so-called democratic values. He demonstrates time and time again that we must exercise our own values, not only those created by the faceless institution.
If there was a book called Surveillance for Dummies, it would not fail to mention that to understand surveillance one must begin at the penitentiary and with the restriction of speech. Jeremy Benthem wrote about the Panopticon as a mechanism of social control, within which authoritative forces come not only from the government, but from within the society itself. In other words, the call is coming from inside the house! This is a well known trope from horror films in which the threat of danger is not only prevalent and imminent, but embedded within the furniture of civilisation. It is already inside our house.
The first essay discusses artist/activist Candice Breitz’s recent protest event, We Still Still Still Still Need to Talk, in which the artist addresses censorship and cancel culture as experienced in the cultural landscape of Germany, where she lives and works. The title references a 2022 symposium developed by Breitz and Professor Michael Rothberg titled We Still Need to Talk for Berlin’s Akademie der Künste.
The symposium, which was meant to have brought together scholars, activists, and historians into a dialogue about the impact of Germany’s “memory culture” on the state of cultural affairs, was canceled by the Academy’s internal committee without any concrete explanation. Vague reasons were offered, such as timing and sensitivity issues. When Breitz and Rothberg tried again in 2023 to organise the symposium for a second time, this time in partnership with Germany’s Federal Agency for Civic Education, bpb, the event was also canceled.
In a third and less formal attempt, Breitz registered to gather around Berlin’s Pariser Platz for an informal demonstration. The location was moved by police authorities, but not canceled. Several weeks later, the artist’s upcoming Spring 2024 exhibition at the Saarland Museum was canceled due to Breitz’s openly Pro-Palestinian views expressed on Instagram.
Social media as a form of lateral surveillance represents a shift in surveillance from the individual to the group, and a contemporary understanding of surveillance well beyond the concept of privacy. The relationship between surveillance and social inequality also becomes prevalent in society’s emerging imaginaries and the inextricability from the social media profile and the human identity.
The construction of an identity is one of the most important exercises of humanity, and the suppression of the built identity has become one of the most obvious ways to escape surveillance. If you don’t want to get canceled, sometimes it’s easier to say nothing at all.
This kind of behavioural surveillance is explored in an interview with Jane Doe, a cultural worker employed at one of London’s most prestigious commercial art institutions. After encountering workplace censorship and inappropriate levels of surveillance, Doe approached us wanting to share what it is really like working behind the scenes of these high pressure establishments.
Lastly, the final essay explores surveillance in the advent of AI technology and cartography. Used as a security measure, mapping has become a tool of surveillance as well as one of navigation, yet remains highly unregulated. Maps are not defined as weapons, but could they be? When does navigation become dangerous? When does surveillance become dangerous? Is a weapon always something that kills you, or can it be something that tracks, identifies, and manoeuvers you? This essay observes the ongoing evolution of interactive maps and their implications on the politics of discrimination.
Happy reading!
