Tag: surveillance

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Art Peace China Daily

In springtime 2018 I spent a few weeks inside the modern world’s dystopian dream, living under constant video surveillance and being identified by face recognition software wherever I went. The authorities aim to control everybody and everything with an ever-growing number of cameras. The daily paper informed me of whatever anomalies the omnipresent cameras recorded and also what had escaped them. Art Peace China Daily is the report of my sojourn in this country.
2018
digital print, b/w
14.8 x 10.5 cm, 72 pages
softcover, perfect bound
100 copies
16 €

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Fifteen Minutes on Broadway

On September 29, 2014 I set up a surveillance camera on the sidewalk in front of the former home of Andy Warhol‘s factory on 33 West Union Square in Manhattan. The camera automatically took a photo every 30 seconds recording pedestrian traffic between 10:38 and 10:53 am. No celebrities were spotted during these fifteen minutes.
2014
digital print, b/w
14.8 x 10.5 cm, 72 pages
softcover, sewn
100 copies
16 €

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X Marks the Spot

Dallas, Texas, Dealey Plaza. The site where John F. Kennedy was assassinated is a major tourist magnet. White Xes on the pavement mark the spots where the president was fatally shot – in the middle of a freeway on-ramp. Visitors often wait for a gap in traffic, hurry to one of the Xes, get their photos taken and leave the road before the next cars arrive. Some of those photos end up in online photo sharing sites such as Flickr, with captions along these lines: “I don’t know why I felt the need to stand by the X but judging from everyone else, it would appear to be the thing to do.”
A webcam is positioned in a window on the sixth floor of the former Texas School Book Depository, the site where, on November 22, 1963, an assassin allegedly fired the shots that killed Kennedy as the presidential motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza. The camera’s perspective exactly matches that of the assassin: it now shoots the tourists shooting their own memorial photos, and we can watch this in real time.
The book combines snapshots taken by tourists at Dealey Plaza with footage from the webcam.
2013
digital print, colour
14.8 x 10.5 cm, 84 pages
softcover, sewn
100 copies
second edition 2014: 100 copies

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X Marks the Spot (2013)

Dallas, Texas, Dealey Plaza. The site where John F. Kennedy was assassinated is a major tourist magnet. White Xes on the pavement mark the spots where the president was fatally shot – in the middle of a freeway on-ramp. Visitors often wait for a gap in traffic, hurry to one of the Xes, get their photos taken and leave the road before the next cars arrive. A webcam is positioned in a window on the sixth floor of the former Texas School Book Depository, the site where, on November 22, 1963, an assassin allegedly fired the shots that killed Kennedy as the presidential motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza. The camera’s perspective exactly matches that of the assassin: it now shoots the tourists shooting their own memorial photos, and we can watch this in real time.
Twenty-one pigment ink prints, 18 x 24 cm on 24 x 30 cm paper each, edition of 3 copies + 1 AP


^ Hollybush Gardens, London November 2016