- Theories of Surveillance
Few of the connotations of surveillance are positive. And yet, in contemporary Western society we have largely embraced surveillance; while we worry about the limits of privacy and about things getting into 'the wrong hands', in general a burgeoning of electronic surveillance is accepted as a means of making our world safer...For a field which has such a vast range of imagery and ideas associated with it, the practice of surveillance had, for several years until very recently, undergone profound and massive growth with relatively little critical engagement.
A Baudrillardian reading can see surveillance only as a symptomatic of hyper-real society, of the need to repeat obsessively the mediation of our already mediated selves and experiences...I am interested not only in reading surveillance as yet another proof of the mediation of experience, but in exploring whether, within our mediated world, the current proliferation of surveillance practices provides any indications of new understandings and consciousness.
From the very beginning of the text, it opens up the multi-faceted dilemma that is raised when considering surveillance; what do we think about surveillance as an individual and what do we think about as a collective group? Are our feelings towards surveillance and privacy different within a social unit or group from that as an individual? There also seems to be too very different images connected to the idea; from being the epitome of safety and protection to a symbol of control and dictatorship. This answers up to many further questions: what is the hegemonic opinion of surveillance culture? Is this something that should be questioned rather than just excepted? How is each side of the debate promoted or demonised in the public eye?
- Public Performance, Authorial Voice and Identity of the Individual
The interpellating voice of the policeman not only restricts us within the behavioural and rational framework of the state, it also makes sense of our relationship to the state and its police. It carries the promise that if we are in the position to answer politely - 'Who me, officer? I live here.' - we will not be arbitrarily crushed by the state's power. Yet with the policing camera we are offered no such opportunity to respond.
Because of the association with the domestic, the protection of privacy often becomes equated in public discourse with protection of the weak, of women and children.When the privacy of politicians is invaded by the press, it is the innocence of the 'wife and family' that is routinely defended.Here McGrath explores the differing relationship an individual has with the state or the figure of power in the context of surveillance. In the first instance, McGrath demonstrates how the peaceful, mutual relationship between the I and the state has been lost when the figure of authority, e.g the policeman, becomes disembodied, losing the humanity in interaction. Without this, McGrath suggests, surveillance can be seen as the invasion of the individuals privacy, the arbitrary crushing of their personal space by state power. Yet, in the second instance, McGrath points out that this concept also greatly depends of the individuals definition of their privacy and personal space.
- Privacy & Space
We also experience privacy very much in spatial terms - to be in private is to be in a special, often domestic, place.To explore in more detail the complex relationship between private space, public space and surveillance space, we could do worse than look at the experience of individuals who, we might say, are on the avant-garde of privacy loss, i.e. some of the many groups who never really had access to privacy in the first place.
A key figure here is Henri Lefebvre, perhaps the theorist who most thoroughly, and most unmetaphorically, extends spatial analysis beyond its relegation to the specifics of the familiar three dimensions in the post-Hegelian philosophical environment. In his typology of space - perceived space, conceived space, lived space and a hoped-for differential space - Lefebvre refuses a hierarchy between the space through which we move and the understandings of space we carry....and propagates a fundamental misunderstanding of the ways in which space structures our lives.- Cameras, Video & Surveillance in Performance
With these theories and questions in the air, McGrath uses this awareness to have an insightful view into how the use of camera and video feeds in performance influence an audience's interpretation of the piece, and taking a practical use of how elements of survallience have an effect in a performative environment.
In one production, in which the audience was informed that it was under surveillance and instructed to 'act realistically', an extraordinary sense of improvisation took over among audience members, who used the opportunity of the instructions to play at acting.
The directors most accomplished in the use of on-stage video are very aware of the destruction of stage illusion that video equipment can enact...the use of video in theatre - and particularly uses that incorporated either live feed of performance or audience... - tended to emphasise the in-completions, the edges, the obscurities of the theatrical space. Introducing surveillance-like moments into theatre pieces myself - sequences in which the audience appeared, through video, on stage, or where the stage space itself was interrogated by its reappearance on screen - I found that the audience reaction was often quite gleeful, very different from the reluctant response that accompanies attempts to bring the audience bodily on stage, or to expose stage illusion through other means.
My key experience of using surveillance technology in theatre was one of the ways in which the presence of technology could - immediately it was switched on, revealed or noticed - alter the very feel, the mood, the dimensions even, of the space that we were in: our lived experience of space changed as soon as the space became surveyed.
...keeping away from an easy and lazy cliché of commentary on surveillance - the idea that surveillance is turning the whole life into a public performance.From these examples and the reading of the text in general, I've gained an appreciation of the significant influence the presence of cameras has in modern performance, packed with complex ideologies. While this complexity isn't something to shy away from neccessarily, I think it is clear that it to start introducing such elements could dominate as quite a strong theme of the project. If this is a route we'd quite like to focus on then thats fine, but I would be cautious to not include anything that could sway or overwhelm the audience's interpretation of the other sections.
Texts & Links:
- McGrath, John E, Loving Big Brother: Performance, Privacy and Surveillance Space, Routledge 2004
- Richard Potter, Return To The Silence, http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v349/123/78/755855608/n755855608_1997358_5677.jpg & http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v349/123/78/755855608/n755855608_1997362_6647.jpg
