[Nettime-bold] CTRL [SPACE]

[Keenan Jwadmin <jwadmin@bard.edu>]

http://mediaserver.zkm.de/ctrlspace/index.html
http://on1.zkm.de/zkm/e/ausstellungen/ctrlspace

Opening this Friday at the Zentrum fuer Kunst und Medientechnologie/
Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany

CTRL [SPACE] 
Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother 

Opening :: October 12th, 2001, 7 pm
Exhibition :: October 13th, 2001 - February 24 th, 2002 
[ZKM, atria 8 and 9] 
Curator :: Thomas Y. Levin [Princeton University] 

In 1785, the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), founder of
the doctrine of Utilitarianism, began working on a plan for a model prison
called the panopticon. The signature feature of this design was that every
one of the individual jail cells could be seen from a central observation
tower which, however, remained visually inscrutable to the prisoners.
Since they could thus never know for sure whether they were being watched,
but had to assume that they were, the fact of actual observation was
replaced by the possibility of being watched. As a rationalist, Bentham
assumed that this would lead the delinquents to refrain from misbehaving,
since in order to avoid punishment, they would effectively internalize the
disciplinary gaze. Indeed, Bentham considered the panoptic arrangement,
whereby power operates by means of the spatial design itself, as a real
contribution to the education of man, in the spirit of the Enlightenment. 

While long the subject of theoretical and political debate, the panopticon
was reintroduced into contemporary philosophical discussion in 1975 by the
French philosopher Michel Foucault who insisted on its exemplary role as a
model for the construction of power in what he called a "disciplinary
society."  Ever since, the controlled space of the panopticon has become
synonymous with the cultures and practices of surveillance that have so
profoundly marked the modern world. When we hesitate to race through a red
light at an intersection where we see a black box, not knowing whether it
contains a working camera but having to suppose that it might, we are
acting today according to the very same panoptic logic. 

Challenged by the disturbing (and constantly expanding)  omnipresence of
surveillance in our daily life to investigate the state of the panoptic
art at the beginning of the 21st century, the interdisciplinary exhibition
CTRL [SPACE] will explore the wide range of practices -- from more
traditional imaging and tracking technologies to the largely invisible but
infinitely more powerful practices of what is referred to as
"dataveillance" -- that today constitutes the extensive arsenal of social
control.  However, taking its cue from the central role in the genealogy
of surveillance played by an architectural model, the focus will be on the
complex relationships between design and power, between representation and
subjectivity, between archives and oppression. If a drawing could become
the model for an entire social regime of power in the 18th-century, to
what extent does that regime change (if at all) along with shifts in
dominant representational practices? What happens, in other words, when we
reconceive the panopticon in terms of new infrared, thermal or satellite
imaging practices? Indeed, what are the sociological and political
consequences of a surveillant culture based increasingly on entirely
non-phenomenal logics of data gathering and aggregation? Is there a
history of surveillance and, if so, how have contemporary practices of,
and attitudes toward, surveillance changed? 

As it turns out, these and other key questions concerning the practices,
transformations and experiences of surveillance have long been explored
not only by sociologists, political theorists, and philosophers, but also
by artists of all sorts. These include Vito Acconci's following pieces and
Andy Warhol's explorations of "real-time" and early closed-circuit video
in the 1960s, Bruce Nauman's video corridors, Dan Graham's "Time Delay
Rooms" and Rem Koolhas' "Project for the Renovation of a Panoptic Prison"
in the 1970s, Sophie Calle's documentation of a detective hired to spy on
her, and Michael Klier's by now classic compilation of found surveillance
footage in "Der Riese"  in the 1980s, and Thomas Ruff's night photographs,
various installations by Diller & Scofidio and the ironic surveillant
science of the Bureau of Inverse Technology in the 1990s.  Whether it is
the photographic documentation of public surveillance cameras by Frank
Thiel and their systematic mapping by the New York Surveillance Camera
Project, or Laura Kurgan's refunctioning of declassified satellite
reconnaissance images and Josh Harris's "we-live-in-public.com," a brutal
experiment in life under continuous real-time cyber-surveillance in the
new millennium, panoptical questions are far from a new concern even as
they have increasingly become a major focus of contemporary cultural
production. Yet, curiously, with the exception of a handful of small
gallery shows, there has never been a systematic museum overview of this
so important issue. 

In order to grasp the stakes of highly visible developments such as the
self-conscious soap-operatic panopticism of the global television
phenomenon "Big Brother" and the increasing tendency towards "real"-time
in the so-called "reality-TV"  paradigm, not to mention the dramatic
proliferation of surveillance both as subject matter and as narrative
structure in much of today's cinematic production (witness "The Truman
Show" or "Enemy of the State") it is essential that we map the full range
of cultural engagements with panoptic issues. In its exploration of the
historicity of surveillant practices in their relationship to changing
logics of representation, CTRL [SPACE] will offer both a state of the art
survey of the full range of panopticism -- in architecture, digital
culture, video, painting, photography, conceptual art, cinema,
installation work, television, robotics and satellite imaging -- and a
largely unknown history of the various attempts to critically and
creatively appropriate, refunction, expose and undermine these logics.
With an exhibition structure that will itself be thoroughly saturated by
multiple tracking systems, CTRL [SPACE] promises to be an experience that
is at once fascinating, frightening and above all enlightening. Indeed,
the latter seems especially important, given that the German word for
enlightenment, Aufklaerung is also the term used to refer to aerial
reconnaissance, i.e. surveillance. 

List of Artists :: 

Vito Acconci, Merry Alpern, Lutz Bacher, Lewis Baltz, Denis Beaubois,
Jeremy Bentham, Niels Bonde, Bureau of Inverse Technology, Paul Bush,
Sophie Calle, Jordan Crandall, Peter Cornwell, Jonas Dahlberg, David
Deutsch, Bart Dijkman, Diller + Scofidio, Harun Farocki, Dan Graham,
Graft, G.R.A.M., Jeff Guess, Harco Haagsma, Jon Haddock, Institute for
Applied Autonomy, Juergen Klauke, Michael Klier, A.P.  Komen & Karen
Murphy, Rem Koolhaas/OMA, Korpys/Loeffler, Laura Kurgan, Langlands & Bell,
Ange Leccia, Chip Lord, Jenny Marketou, J Mayer H, Michaela Melian, Dan
Mihaltianu, Heiner Muehlenbrock, Pat Naldi & Wendy Kirkup, John
Lennon/Yoko Ono, Bruce Nauman, Chris Petit, Walid Ra'ad, Daniel Roth,
Thomas Ruff, Julia Scher, Cornelia Schleime, Ann-Sofi Siden, Lewis Stein,
Stih & Schnock, Surveillance Camera Players, Frank Thiel, Zoran Todorovic,
visomat inc., Jamie Wagg, Andy Warhol, Peter Weibel. 


The exhibition will be accompanied by an extensive catalogue, published in
collaboration with MIT Press.

 
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