CCTV
Do we feel safer when someone's watching us?
Given the importance that images have in our society and the concern that different organisms instill into our minds – maybe with some hidden interests – to make us want to control our privacy, it is surprising how fearlessly we accept the fact that others might be watching our movements. We allow the control over our presence in many public spaces under the frivolous pretext of collective security. We could define this set-up as a pact: we exchange our privacy for supervision; our independency for vigilance. Is the population aware of that pact? Is video-vigilance a proportionate pact? Do we feel safer when we know someone’s watching us? Does it make us a better and more peaceful society?
CCTV is a project that wants to raise people’s awareness. It develops the concept of identity theft. The project upholds that the “security pact” that we all do in public spaces is unequal and not something desirable for civilized societies – a self-controlled society will constantly raise its fear, as an endless loop.
The project consisted of several pictures that I took from random citizens using a public photo booth located on a tube station. The photographs, though, were taken against the people’s will, literally squeezing them in – or even holding them – while the booth was shooting. With this hostile act, the photo booth and the project cooperators that push the unlucky candidates into the booth I create a metaphor of the imposition that the CCTV cameras represent, which steal images without the complete agreement of the population. The rebelliousness gesture on people’s faces reflect the dissatisfaction that video-vigilance would produce if it wasn’t made by silent cameras located in discreet corners of the public space. Therefore, the purpose of this project is to reproduce in a comprehensive and more accessible way what CCTV cameras do, which is actually stealing in a violent way portraits of random people.
All this embarrassing situation is also recorded with cell phones by other volunteers. This act of filming with phones was both documenting the action and representing other identity theft that we all commit: people record impulsively anything that grabs our attention.
CCTV is something that worries me. The western societies tend to rely on these robotic eyes to provide a false sense of security to the population. Also, the concept of security that we use in the public space is evil: we spread the feeling of an abstract danger, something intangible, uniform, omnipresent. Recording our streets and our stations isn’t the real way to create security; it is the education that will change things for real.
Plus, in the end, images have very little credibility in the era of photomontage.
Special thanks to
Clara Ayxandri, Pablo Barreda, Miki Murillo, Iván Pizarro & Rober Pallás.
“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”
1984, George Orwell
Given the importance that images have in our society and the concern that different organisms instill into our minds – maybe with some hidden interests – to make us want to control our privacy, it is surprising how fearlessly we accept the fact that others might be watching our movements. We allow the control over our presence in many public spaces under the frivolous pretext of collective security. We could define this set-up as a pact: we exchange our privacy for supervision; our independency for vigilance. Is the population aware of that pact? Is video-vigilance a proportionate pact? Do we feel safer when we know someone’s watching us? Does it make us a better and more peaceful society?
CCTV is a project that wants to raise people’s awareness. It develops the concept of identity theft. The project upholds that the “security pact” that we all do in public spaces is unequal and not something desirable for civilized societies – a self-controlled society will constantly raise its fear, as an endless loop.
The project consisted of several pictures that I took from random citizens using a public photo booth located on a tube station. The photographs, though, were taken against the people’s will, literally squeezing them in – or even holding them – while the booth was shooting. With this hostile act, the photo booth and the project cooperators that push the unlucky candidates into the booth I create a metaphor of the imposition that the CCTV cameras represent, which steal images without the complete agreement of the population. The rebelliousness gesture on people’s faces reflect the dissatisfaction that video-vigilance would produce if it wasn’t made by silent cameras located in discreet corners of the public space. Therefore, the purpose of this project is to reproduce in a comprehensive and more accessible way what CCTV cameras do, which is actually stealing in a violent way portraits of random people.
All this embarrassing situation is also recorded with cell phones by other volunteers. This act of filming with phones was both documenting the action and representing other identity theft that we all commit: people record impulsively anything that grabs our attention.
CCTV is something that worries me. The western societies tend to rely on these robotic eyes to provide a false sense of security to the population. Also, the concept of security that we use in the public space is evil: we spread the feeling of an abstract danger, something intangible, uniform, omnipresent. Recording our streets and our stations isn’t the real way to create security; it is the education that will change things for real.
Plus, in the end, images have very little credibility in the era of photomontage.
“Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself.”
1984, George Orwell
Special thanks to
Clara Ayxandri, Pablo Barreda, Miki Murillo, Iván Pizarro & Rober Pallás.