Why do your paintings resemble CCTV photos?
Surveillance cameras are ubiquitous, yet so mundane that they largely go unnoticed. I live in an apartment with a CCTV system installed around the building. I use photos from this system as a compositional source.
Surveillance is a signifier of the divide between values of the collective social order and the individual. In the late 1700’s, the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham, designed the Panopticon, a circular building intended for use as a prison, with cells around the perimeter and a central guard tower. The view from the guard tower into every cell was unobstructed. The guard tower windows were blinded in such a way as to conceal the presence of the guards. The prisoners had to assume that they were constantly under surveillance. This design increased the power of the authorities because constant scrutiny made prisoners vulnerable. Once controlled, the prison population was then given increasingly detailed codes of conduct to govern behaviour.
The management model best suited to the panopticon and the penal code was easily adapted to other fields including education, hospitals, the military, and manufacturing.
The first surveillance cameras began to appear in Germany in the early 1940’s. CCTV systems are now cheap and widely available with few restrictions on their installation. They watch over property, monitor behaviour everywhere, and their applications are extending to all areas of everyday life.
It may seem that everybody is watching everybody, but this is not symmetrical. The object of the camera’s gaze opposes the power that comes with discreet omniscience.
Behind the camera, which we must assume is always operational and through which someone is always watching, is the authority, the structure, the moral correctness of our social order. The subject of the camera’s scrutiny will always be the individual outsider; the law breaker.
This contrast between the collective and the individual, between clear boundaries and uncertain open-endedness, between certitude and questionability, is the real subject of my work.