Surveillance Camera performance
"WHO WE ARE & WHY WE'RE HERE
We're the Surveillance Camera Players, a group formed in New York City in November 1996. We protest against the use of surveillance cameras in public spaces because these cameras violate our constitutionally protected rights to privacy and free assembly. We manifest our opposition by performing specially adapted plays directly in front of surveillance cameras. We use our visibility—our public appearances, our interviews with the media, and our web site—to explode the cynical myth that only those who are "guilty of something" are opposed to being watched by unknown eyes" (SCP, We Know, 147).
Through their performances, the SCP enact a complex articulation of embodied performance as a means of intervening in what they call a "theater of conformity," staged by surveillance cameras, where "people perform either by ignoring the cameras," or "in conformity with societal forms" (Brown in Schienke 2003, 360). The SCP's interventions take over a technological system already in place (CCTV cameras) to overturn a performatic field inhabited by pre-set players/performers and spectators: "We don' t bring theater to the cameras, it's already a part of their set-up. Even though they' re camera, you would think it would be video-photography-film that would be called into play first. Because these cameras have a very specific social positioning, it is theater they call upon before any other art form" (Ibid.)
Operating in a public space that is allegedly articulated as a field of vision so that repressive forces are able to respond "in the event of crime," the SCP turns the ubiquity and pervasiveness of surveillance cameras into an event in present tense: neither a technology of deterrence to prevent a crime that might be, nor a tool to solve a case that will be past; the SCP turn the issue of vigilance into a matter of here and now. Through their "inappropriate" performances, the SCP alter the choreography of expected, normal behavior, producing physical interference within a system used to read bodies against very concrete codes of conduct. Moreover, in turning their appearance on camera into an event they turn the virtual presence of the omniscient gaze into the embodied response of security agents who come out to check what is going on.
We're the Surveillance Camera Players, a group formed in New York City in November 1996. We protest against the use of surveillance cameras in public spaces because these cameras violate our constitutionally protected rights to privacy and free assembly. We manifest our opposition by performing specially adapted plays directly in front of surveillance cameras. We use our visibility—our public appearances, our interviews with the media, and our web site—to explode the cynical myth that only those who are "guilty of something" are opposed to being watched by unknown eyes" (SCP, We Know, 147).
Through their performances, the SCP enact a complex articulation of embodied performance as a means of intervening in what they call a "theater of conformity," staged by surveillance cameras, where "people perform either by ignoring the cameras," or "in conformity with societal forms" (Brown in Schienke 2003, 360). The SCP's interventions take over a technological system already in place (CCTV cameras) to overturn a performatic field inhabited by pre-set players/performers and spectators: "We don' t bring theater to the cameras, it's already a part of their set-up. Even though they' re camera, you would think it would be video-photography-film that would be called into play first. Because these cameras have a very specific social positioning, it is theater they call upon before any other art form" (Ibid.)
Operating in a public space that is allegedly articulated as a field of vision so that repressive forces are able to respond "in the event of crime," the SCP turns the ubiquity and pervasiveness of surveillance cameras into an event in present tense: neither a technology of deterrence to prevent a crime that might be, nor a tool to solve a case that will be past; the SCP turn the issue of vigilance into a matter of here and now. Through their "inappropriate" performances, the SCP alter the choreography of expected, normal behavior, producing physical interference within a system used to read bodies against very concrete codes of conduct. Moreover, in turning their appearance on camera into an event they turn the virtual presence of the omniscient gaze into the embodied response of security agents who come out to check what is going on.
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