THE LIT ROOM Series: WHO WATCHES THE WATCHERS?
Ellen Curlee Gallery
Friday, August 3, 2007
Curated by Dana Turkovic
A multi-media installation and event exploring art using ideas of surveillance, exhibitionism and voyeurism.
Featuring local band Tone Rodent.
Project Description:
The Ellen Curlee Gallery is pleased to present its second installment of The Lit Room, "Who Watches the Watchers?" a multi-media installation and event exploring art using surveillance, exhibitionism and voyeurism by using a combination of fiction, theory and reality. "Who Watches the Watchers?" will aim to highlight where these concepts begin and end and pointing to places in which they overlap and interact in society and in art. The concept for the installation is inspired by a prison design called the Panopticon by the late 18th century English philospher Jeremy Bentham, a circular design with a central control tower, designed to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell if they are being observed or not. Bentham described the Panopticon as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind" successfully leaving the watching to the watched in hopes that they would internalize the disciplinary gaze.
The central component of this Lit Room is the realization of a simultaneous panoptic atmosphere including a performance by local band Tone Rodent. To exploit the psychology behind this idea, they have been instructed to play in "lockdown" at a secret location in order to create an experience that will aim to be both frightening and enlightening. During the opening night, the band will be playing across town and via live webchat projected onto the wall at Ellen Curlee Gallery. In turn, the viewers/visitors at Ellen Curlee Gallery will be projected behind the band, creating a simultaneous viewing experience of watching the performance and watching ourselves watch and interact with the band at another location. Also included will be a small projected survey of the influence of surveillance in digital culture, video, photography, and installation. Although, the practices and experiences of surveillance have long been examined by political theorists, sociologists, and philosophers as well as many artists, "Who Watches the Watchers" will ideally and subsequently tie in the idea of sousveillance or "observing the observer", to showcase the perversity of those who take pleasure in spying and punishing.
