Performing for Surveillance

An Essay on Performative Behaviour in Space

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Surveillance has become a regular part of contemporary daily life, from the camera filled streets to the smartphones we carry, our actions and movements are constantly monitored and recorded. What does it mean to be watched and how does that alter the performance of everyday? How do you react to the signs that reads smile you’re on camera or this area is under surveillance? How do you respond to the Zoom’s robotic notification that this meeting is being recorded? Do your actions change, do you move faster or slower, how does surveillance effect the way we perform in space? We live in a world where it is no longer a question about whether you are being recorded or not, but rather how do you respond and react to surveillance. In this essay, I examine the often-unnoticed presence of surveillance and how it alters the performance of everyday life in the context of the hyper-surveilled city of Johannesburg, how the body reacts to surveillance, how one is seen by surveillance. These questions are unpacked through two artists, Nicole Prior and her work titled, PROJECTIONS : REFLCTIONS,(2018: Castlefield Gallery) and the collaborative work of the architect firm, Herzog & de Meuron and anti-establishment artist and activist, Ai Weiwei in their project Hansel and Gretel (2017:Weiwei, de Meuron and Herzog).

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How do you respond when being watched from a short distance versus being watched from afar? The two-part installation, Hansel and Gretel, by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei challenges these questions and explores the performance of being watched and watching. The immersive installation located at New York’s Park Avenue Armory, creates an environment where it is impossible to hide from surveillance. It unpacks how surveillance can transform a public space into a controlled space. The first part of the project allows viewers to be observed and gives them the opportunity to enjoy the strange sensation of being watched. In the dark hall every action is tracked and recorded via motion senses, drones, and video cameras. The footage is streamed globally but is also then projected onto the floor of the installation, giving viewers the ability to see and interact with their own images. Although initially unsettling, viewers grow curious and begin to perform, moving in different way to create new versions and images of themselves for the cameras to record and playback. The intimate relationship between seeing and responding to your own images allows for this playful behaviour to occur. It allows viewers to move away from feeling unsettled and uncomfortable with being watched, to be able to enjoy observing one’s own reflection. 

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When you are the only one watching yourself, you can act and behave in any way, but when there is an audience, when you know you are being watched your behaviour changes. According to a 2019 study by the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, this can be a positive experience (2019:Cañigueral and Hamilton). If one believes that they are being watched and recorded their behaviour can change in different ways, this is known as the ‘audience effect.’ The audience effect can result in positive behaviour changes for example, when people feel that they are being observed they “tend to increase their prosocial behaviours” (Cañigueral and Hamilton, 2019). The data from this study demonstrates that people are more likely show acts of kindness and behave in way that benefits others if they thought that they were being watched. On the other hand, part two of Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei’s project reveals the negative and uncomfortable experience of having an audience and being watched constantly. 

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In the second stage of Hansel and Gretel (2017:Weiwei, de Meuron and Herzog), viewers move from the space of being observed to becoming the observer. In a separate room viewers watch the footage from the drones and security cameras, giving them the perspective of a surveillance control room. In addition, using facial recognition they can identify their own images from wandering through the installation earlier. This part of the project allows viewers to be both the audience and the actor in the experience. Seeing their images from the control room, viewers were alarmed. It was now revealed that they were not the only ones watching and observing their every movement and action. They were no longer the only ones to have access to their images. The installation of Hansel and Gretel highlights a state of being uncomfortable when an unknown and unfamiliar eye of surveillance is revealed.  This same experience can be felt in the streets of Johannesburg. The walls of the northern suburbs of Johannesburg are filled with security cameras, and it can be easy to ignore these many watchful eyes as they have become the norm. However, if one begins to acknowledge their presence and become aware that they are being constantly watched in these public spaces, their behaviour shifts. Suddenly the familiar and mundane space, turns into an unnerving experience. Instead of just looking and walking ahead, they begin to seek out the cameras, their head turns from side to side carefully scanning every wall and fence. With the growing number of cameras, it becomes unsettling and strange when you start to see and take note of the landscape of surveillance of Johannesburg.

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Nicole Prior’s PROJECTIONS: REFLECTIONS (2018: Castlefield Gallery) combines the psychological impact of surveillance and space, producing an installation that is playful but also strange and alarming. Using screens, mirrors, projectors, and security cameras, viewers are able to see their own reflections as well as the images and movements of previous participants viewing the work. Her work considers the interaction between the mirrors and the recordings, the interactions between the image of the familiar and the image of strangers. Prior’s work further highlights the question of presence and absence in a space and introduces the idea that a surveillance system is an archive of thousands of different times brought together into one repository. After you leave the installation, your image still remains for others to observe and interact with, allowing the viewer to be absent from a site but still remain present in the space for other strangers to observe and watch. Screens, such as community watch WhatsApp groups have a similar sort of effect on the spatial dynamics of surveillance. They have the power to create fictional or dislocated narratives. These WhatsApp groups create a space that allows for dodgy behaviour or suspicious people to remain present in a space, even when they are no longer there physically. These screens have the ability to shape and reshape the spatial dynamics of surveillance. 

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With technologies of surveillance being so omnipresent in our city, these artist and architects expand on the human behaviour and relationships with surveillance. Both of these projects, PROJECTIONS: REFLECTIONS(2018: Castlefield Gallery) and Hansel and Gretel (2017:Weiwei, de Meuron and Herzog), explore the relationship between who is watching and who is being watched. They challenge how one’s behaviour changes when they are the only member of an audience watching versus when there are multiple, unknown eyes observing one’s behaviour. Nicole Prior, Herzog & de Meuron, and Ai Weiwei all examine the pervasive presence of surveillance, how surveillance technologies alter the performance of everyday life and the effect of being watched constantly, whether it is known or unknown.  It is important to expose the changes in behaviour as a result of surveillance, in order to understand the relationship between the subject and observer through the mechanical gaze of surveillance in Johannesburg and to reposition the power of surveillance in space. 

 

Bibliography:

Herzogdemeuron.com. 2021. 455 HANSEL & GRETEL - HERZOG & DE MEURON. [online] Available at: <https://www.herzogdemeuron.com/index/projects/complete-works/451-475/455-hansel-and-gretel/image.html> [Accessed 18 July 2021].

NICOLE PRIOR. 2021. Projections : Reflections — NICOLE PRIOR. [online] Available at: <https://nicoleprior.co.uk/projections-reflections> [Accessed 18 July 2021].

Cañigueral, R. and Hamilton, A., 2019. Being watched: Effects of an audience on eye gaze and prosocial behaviour. Acta Psychologica, [online] 195, pp.50-63. Available at: <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332124557_Being_watched_Effects_of_an_audience_on_eye_gaze_and_prosocial_behaviour>

Ball, K., Haggerty, K. and Lyon, D., 2014. Routledge handbook of surveillance studies. London: Routledge, pp.81-90.