Wednesday, 23 December 2009

copy and paste Folha de SP

23/12/2009 - 07h02

Um milhão de câmeras de segurança gravam São Paulo em reality show às avessas

Quem transita pela capital paulista é gravado por mais de 100 câmeras diferentes, desde o elevador de seu prédio, aos cruzamentos de avenidas, à lojinha da esquina, à plataforma do metrô e até à mesa de trabalho. É tanta filmagem que daria para montar um longa-metragem diário e individual, tão arrastado como um filme iraniano e tão previsível como um blockbuster norte-americano.



Um reality show às avessas: 41 milhões de protagonistas e só poucas centenas de espectadores. Essa pode ser a definição do monitoramento eletrônico no Estado de São Paulo, que deve chegar até o final do ano com um milhão de câmeras de segurança (50% está na região metropolitana). A grande maioria está em mãos privadas.

GRUPO DE DISCUSSÃO

Você se sente protegido ou vigiado com tantas câmeras de segurança nas cidades brasileiras?

Esse número foi projetado pela Abese (Associação Brasileira das Empresas de Sistemas Eletrônicos de Segurança), com base nas vendas em 2009. E deve causar arrepio em quem tem mania de perseguição, mas a polícia prefere não pensar nisso.

"No começo, achei que poderia provocar uma paranoia, mas na verdade houve muita aceitação e poucas críticas", comenta Dalmo Álamo, superintendente de operações da Guarda Civil Metropolitana, que aponta 83 câmeras para vigiar o centro de São Paulo.

Suas lentes têm capacidade de zoom de um quilômetro para afastar ladrões, traficantes e camelôs. "Com essa capacidade poderíamos entrar pela janela dos apartamentos particulares, mas cada operador tem uma senha e um supervisor, para evitar qualquer desvio na função e quebra de privacidade", completa Álamo, que aponta a redução em 50% nos locais filmados.

ONIPRESENTE E ONISCIENTE

  • Leonardo Wen/Folha Imagem

    Câmera na entrada de igreja do Calvário, na zona oeste de São Paulo, tenta intimidar ladrões

  • Patrícia Stavis/Folha Imagem

    Circuito interno de loja mostra em uma só tela oito imagens, no estilo fragmentado dessa tecnologia

  • Tuca Vieira/Folha Imagem

    Centro de monitoramento da Praia Grande controla o movimento no centro da cidade litorânea

Ele chama de hot spot (pontos quentes) os cenários gravados. Em 2010, mais 135 deles entrarão no sistema, que deve ser integrado com o da Polícia Militar e CET (Companhia de Engenharia de Tráfego). E a tendência é migrar das objetivas para a periferia da cidade. "O videomonitoramento cria ilhas de segurança. O delito muda para outro lugar. E é para lá que mandamos nossos policiais", explica o superintendente.

É obrigatório o paralelo com o livro "1984", do escritor britânico George Orwell, que relata uma sociedade totalitária controlada pelo Big Brother (líder fictício cujo nome batizou o programa mundial de TV) por meio de "teletelas". O personagem principal escreve seu diário no único quarto que escapou do monitoramento estatal.

O próprio sistema de circuito interno de vídeo foi criado em 1942 na Alemanha nazista, desenvolvido em parte pela empresa Siemens e usado durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial para observar o lançamento dos foguetes V-2.

"Em um Estado brando como o nosso, as câmeras servem para segurança, mas em um governo policialesco poderiam servir para o controle político, assim como outras tecnologias", analisa Renato Janine Ribeiro, professor de filosofia da USP (Universidade de São Paulo) conhecido por suas opiniões sobre temas sobre violência.

O parâmetro de Estado policial também é germânico: a Stasi, polícia política da Alemanha Oriental, com 90 mil agentes infiltrados plantando câmeras e microfones nas casas e minutando o dia-a-dia dos potenciais opositores. Segundo Mário Louzã, psiquiatra do Instituto de Psiquiatria do Hospital das Clínicas, a combinação de tecnologias pode aumentar a sensação persecutória. "Colocar CPF nas notas fiscais ou rastreadores em carros geram mais informação sobre as pessoas do que as câmeras de segurança", afirma.

Já para Janine, a tecnologia é um instrumento que não gera poder, mas aumenta o poder de quem maneja esses vídeos - a maioria em mãos privadas. "A sociedade aceita porque essas câmeras criam uma sensação de segurança, mas é preciso estabelecer limites. Acho que as filmagens por celular podem ser perigosas, afinal, na maioria das vezes é difícil saber quem é o autor", opina o filósofo.

De acordo com o advogado especialista em direito público Carlos Ari Sundfeld, ainda é necessária uma regulamentação para as empresas de segurança, as grandes detentoras de tantas imagens. "São verdadeiras guardas privadas que cresceram muito nos últimos anos. É preciso criar regras para a gravação, armazenamento e apagamento dessas imagens."

Um exemplo disso é a empresa de segurança privada Haganá, que monitora 800 condomínios e 300 indústrias em São Paulo - chega a ter 100 câmeras em um único prédio. "Adotamos o conceito israelense de defesa: a guerra é da fronteira para fora. Por isso, as imagens têm que se concentrar na calçada do prédio, onde está nosso inimigo", define José Antonio Caetano, diretor comercial da empresa. Haganá, que significa "proteção" em hebraico, tem como diretor operacional José Bernardes Markuz, que serviu no exército de Israel.

O PODER DA IMAGEM

AFP
O procedimento padrão, tanto em órgãos públicos quanto em empresas privadas, é apagar automaticamente as imagens armazenadas após um período que vai de uma semana a um mês. Em geral, apenas um encarregado tem acesso a esse conteúdo durante esse tempo.

Contudo, o ponto mais frágil do processo e que pode gerar o vazamento de imagens por parte de hackers é a conexão das câmeras para as centrais de monitoramento. Em geral, é feita por banda larga. No caso do Metrô é diferente: como a companhia de transporte tem uma rede física, utiliza fibra ótica para a transmissão de vídeos.

A guarita blindada é o QG do prédio. O porteiro (ou controlador de acesso, como eles preferem chamar) é funcionário deles e não pode ser visto nem pelos moradores. Se deixa aberta a porta da guarita ou permite a entrada de alguém, é repreendido via rádio pelos operadores de monitoramento a quilômetros de distância. "Outro dia, um rapaz estranho entrou na guarita do prédio do [piloto de F-1] Felipe Massa. Acionamos nossas viaturas, mas depois descobrimos que era um pedreiro", conta Caetano.

Para Janine, essa vasta profusão de câmeras atualmente causou o surgimento das "imagens-lixo". "São vídeos sem informação, sem interesse. É impossível ver tudo isso tamanha a profusão de imagens."

Richard Pereira comprova diariamente isso. Ele é supervisor do Centro de Controle da Segurança do Metrô e comanda três operadores. O quarteto é encarregado de monitorar 948 câmeras, número que vai chegar a 1.400 no ano que vem. Um volume de pessoas entre catracas, corredores, vagões e plataformas desfilam diante deles durante as oito horas de expediente, acionando via rádio quando algum imprevisto acontece.

"Os trens e os passageiros seguem linhas retas. Qualquer movimentação diferente chama a atenção. Dessa forma podemos controlar tantas câmeras", passa a receita Pereira, que trabalha há 21 anos no metrô, que desde a inauguração em 1974 tem um sistema de TV interno. Só na estação Sé, há 35 lentes para acompanhar 750 mil pessoas que passam diariamente por lá.

Muitas dessas imagens, porém, acabam nos telejornais, como parte dos "giros de reportagem" e "show de imagens", como a do bebê que caiu nos trilhos na Austrália ou a bêbada que quase foi atropelada nos EUA. "Antes as câmeras eram caras e estavam na mão de poucos. Hoje, a mídia tem que lidar com essas imagens que não são produzidas por ela", afirma Laurindo Leal Filho, professor aposentado da Escola de Comunicações e Artes da USP.

Para Leal, um dos reflexos da enxurrada dessas imagens no noticiário é as pessoas se acostumaram com a estética desbotada e desenquadrada dessas câmeras. "Durante 30 anos o brasileiro foi condicionado com o tal padrão Globo de qualidade, mas essa profusão de câmeras e a internet derrubaram isso. As pessoas querem o conteúdo desses flagrantes. Acho que até por isso a TV digital não emplacou por aqui. As pessoas não querem ver o fio da bolinha de tênis, querem ver imagens que tragam informação, mesmo com a baixa qualidade dessas câmeras de segurança", analisa.

Wednesday, 9 December 2009

relações entre video e arquitetura

Conhecendo o trabalho de Aernout Mik pelas mãos da Dani, jóia.



Thursday, 26 November 2009

new link by milena

copiando um link inteiro pois vale mt a pena.

IMG MGMT: The Nine Eyes of Google Street View

Guest post by: JON RAFMAN

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[Editor's Note: IMG MGMT is an annual image-based artist essay series. Today's invited artist, Jon Rafman, lives and works in Montreal, Canada. His work will be featured next month in the exhibition POKE! Artists and Social Media in Houston, Texas, and he is currently working on an experimental narrative about pro fighting game culture. His Kool-Aid Man in Second Life project was featured as AFC's Best Link Ever on May 15.]

Two years ago, Google sent out an army of hybrid electric automobiles, each one bearing nine cameras on a single pole. Armed with a GPS and three laser range scanners, this fleet of cars began an endless quest to photograph every highway and byway in the free world.

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
Victoria Highway, Gregory, Australia

Consistent with the company’s mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” this enormous project, titled Google Street View, was created for the sole purpose of adding a new feature to Google Maps.

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
308 1st Ave. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Never hiding its presence, but never announcing its arrival, the Street View vehicle is a systematic pursuer of fleeting moments.

Every ten to twenty meters, the nine cameras automatically capture whatever moves through their frame. Computer software stitches the photos together to create panoramic images. To prevent identification of individuals and vehicles, faces and license plates are blurred.

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
20 Rue de la Vicarie, Saint Brieuc, France
Street View’s facial recognition software sometimes fails, unintentionally revealing an individual’s identity.

Today, Google Maps provides access to 360° horizontal and 290° vertical panoramic views (from a height of about eight feet) of any street on which a Street View car has traveled. For the most part, those captured in Street View not only tolerate photographic monitoring, but even desire it. Rather than a distrusted invasion of privacy, online surveillance in general has gradually been made ‘friendly’ and transformed into an accepted spectacle.

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
Subjects of their own gaze: the Street View car departs central HQ in Mountain View, CA to the enthusiastic cheers of Google employees.

One year ago, I started collecting screen captures of Google Street Views from a range of Street View blogs and through my own hunting. This essay illustrates how my Street View collections reflect the excitement of exploring this new, virtual world. The world captured by Google appears to be more truthful and more transparent because of the weight accorded to external reality, the perception of a neutral, unbiased recording, and even the vastness of the project. At the same time, I acknowledge that this way of photographing creates a cultural text like any other, a structured and structuring space whose codes and meaning the artist and the curator of the images can assist in constructing or deciphering.

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
Eagle Point Dr, Sherwood, Pulaski, Arkansas

Street View collections represent our experience of the modern world, and in particular, the tension they express between our uncaring, indifferent universe and our search for connectedness and significance. A critical analysis of Google’s depiction of experience, however, requires a critical look at Google itself.

Initially, I was attracted to the noisy amateur aesthetic of the raw images. Street Views evoked an urgency I felt was present in earlier street photography. With its supposedly neutral gaze, the Street View photography had a spontaneous quality unspoiled by the sensitivities or agendas of a human photographer. It was tempting to see the images as a neutral and privileged representation of reality—as though the Street Views, wrenched from any social context other than geospatial contiguity, were able to perform true docu-photography, capturing fragments of reality stripped of all cultural intentions.

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
S. Avalon Park Blvd. Union Park, Florida

The way Google Street View records physical space restored the appropriate balance between photographer and subject. It allowed photography to accomplish what culture critic and film theorist Siegfried Kracauer viewed as its mission: “to represent significant aspects of physical reality without trying to overwhelm that reality so that the raw material focused upon is both left intact and made transparent.”1

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
112 Vip Dr, Marshall, Pennsylvania
A momentary glimpse of a Street View driver.

This infinitely rich mine of material afforded my practice the extraordinary opportunity to explore, interpret, and curate a new world in a new way. To a certain extent, the aesthetic considerations that form the basis of my choices in different collections vary. For example, some selections are influenced by my knowledge of photographic history and allude to older photographic styles, whereas other selections, such as those representing Google’s depiction of modern experience, incorporate critical aesthetic theory. But throughout, I pay careful attention to the formal aspects of color and composition.

Within the panoramas, I can locate images of gritty urban life reminiscent of hard-boiled American street photography. Or, if I prefer, I can find images of rural Americana that recall photography commissioned by the Farm Securities Administration during the depression.

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
2588 N Hutchinson St. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
2104 S Lamar Blvd, Austin, Travis, Texas

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
Main Street, Rapid City, South Dakota

I can seek out postcard-perfect shots that capture what Cartier-Bresson titled “the decisive moment,” as if I were a photojournalist responding instantaneously to an emerging event.

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
Rue de la Huchette, Paris, France
The ‘indifferent’ gaze countered even the sentimentality of the ubiquitous embracing Parisian couple of French street-photography.

At other times, I have been mesmerized by the sense of nostalgia, yearning, and loss in these images—qualities that evoke old family snapshots.

from A Collection of Google Street Views: vol. 3, 2009. Screenshot: Jon Rafman, Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
58 Lungomare 9 Maggio, Bari, Puglia, Italy

I can also choose to be a landscape photographer and meditate on the multitude of visual possibilities.

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
76 Piazetta Cumana, Naples, Italy

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
412 US-9W, Bethlehem, New York
Camera errors can form weird voids and dark psychedelic landscapes.

from a Collection of Google Street Views: vol. 2, 2009. Screenshot: Jon Rafman, Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
A future historian may wish to study the architecture of this soon-to-be-demolished Northern Parisian banlieu. If Google chooses, their systematic storing of panoramic views serves photography’s historic role of cultural preservation.

Or I can search for passing scenes that remind me of one of Jeff Wall’s staged tableaux.

Jeff Wall, Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
Rue du Faubourg du Temple, Paris, France

Although Street View stills may exhibit a variety of styles, their mode of production—an automated camera shot from a height of eight feet from the middle of the street and always bearing the imprimatur of Google—nonetheless limits and defines their visual aesthetic. The blurring of faces, the unique digital texture, and the warped sense of depth resulting from the panoramic view are all particular to Street View’s visual grammar.

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
Warwick Street, Gateshead, England
Isn’t it appropriate that Google hides our identities? Do I not often see my neighbor’s face as an indistinct blur?

Many features within the captures, such as the visible Google copyright and the directional compass arrows, continually point us to how the images are produced. For me, this frankness about how the scenes are captured enhances, rather than destroys the thrill of the present instant projected on the image.

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
Calle del Padre Pedro Vallasco, Valencia, Spain

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
Berwick Rd. Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

Although Google’s photography is obtained through an automated and programmed camera, the viewer interprets the images. This method of photographing, artless and indifferent, does not remove our tendency to see intention and purpose in images.

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
10 IJsselmeerdijk, Zeevang, Netherlands
The new form of photography may have removed the photographer from the mechanical process, but Street View photographs nonetheless remain cultural texts demanding interpretation.

This very way of recording our world, this tension between an automated camera and a human who seeks meaning, reflects our modern experience. As social beings we want to matter and we want to matter to someone, we want to count and be counted, but loneliness and anonymity are more often our plight.

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
51 E. Claremont St. Edinburgh, Scotland
This tension between meaning and non-meaning is especially evident in those images that seek out the significance of the human, even if it is by illustrating its absence.

But Google does not necessarily impose their organization of experience on us; rather, their means of recording may manifest how we already structure our experience.

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
802 23rd Ave S, Seattle, Washington
Some, while searching Google Street View, adopt an investigative attitude and regale us with possible or actual crimes, such as muggings, break-ins, and police arrests.

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
Via Valassa, Rho, Lombardy, Italy
Others with a more libidinal nature may single out images of prostitutes captured by the roving Google vehicle.

Street Views can suggest what it feels like when scenes are connected primarily by geographic contiguity as opposed to human bonds.

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
24 Rue Neyron, Saint Bienne, France

A street view image can give us a sense of what it feels like to have everything recorded, but no particular significance accorded to anything.

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
26 Little St SE. Atlanta, Georgia
The detached gaze of the automated camera can lead to a sense that we are observed simultaneously by everyone and by no one.

These collections seek to convey contemporary experience as represented by Google Street View. We are bombarded by fragmentary impressions and overwhelmed with data, but we often see too much and register nothing. In the past, religion and ideologies often provided a framework to order our experience; now, Google has laid an imperial claim to organize information for us. Sergey Brin and Larry Page have compared their search engines to the mind of God and proclaimed as their corporate motto, “do no evil.”

Although the Google search engine may be seen as benevolent, Google Street Views present a universe observed by the detached gaze of an indifferent Being. Its cameras witness but do not act in history. For all Google cares, the world could be absent of moral dimension.

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
Rue Saunier, Toulon, France
In theory, we are all equally subject to being photographed, but the Street View collections often reveal it is the poor and the marginalized who fall within the purview of the Google camera gaze.

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
31 Calle de San Dalmacio, Madrid, Spain
Even though Google places a comment, ‘report a concern’ on the bottom of every single image, how can I demonstrate my concern for humanity within Google’s street photography?

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
308 SW Rose Garden Way, Portland, Oregon
It is we who must make sense of Google’s record of our experience, for good or for ill.

The collections of Street Views both celebrate and critique the current world. To deny Google’s power over framing our perceptions would be delusional, but the curator, in seeking out frames within these frames, reminds us of our humanity. The artist/curator, in reasserting the significance of the human gaze within Street View, recognizes the pain and disempowerment in being declared insignificant. The artist/curator challenges Google’s imperial claims and questions the company’s right to be the only one framing our cognitions and perceptions.

Rainbow, Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View
2368 IA-141, Dodge, Iowa

  1. Kracauer, S. Film Theory: The Redemption of Physical Reality. Princeton University Press: 1997. Pg. 23. []

Saturday, 21 November 2009

networking

list of links:

Recent anti-surveillance struggles in France (by Bill Brown):
http://www.notbored.org/video-canular.html
http://www.notbored.org/video-canular1.html
http://www.notbored.org/place-des-terreaux.html

by julio callado / milena:
http://blog.manifesto21.com.br/2009/11/08/become-a-viewer-for-free/

by gabriel menotti
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=366

Wednesday, 18 November 2009

Vigilância e Encenação

As imagens captadas por câmeras de vigilância são comumente associadas à idéia de um registro automático, realizado por sistemas que funcionam sem necessidade ou presença de realizador, fotógrafo ou operador de câmera - sujeitos indispensáveis na realização de filmes das mais diversas naturezas.

Neste sentido, um valor de objetividade é supostamente atribuído às imagens de vídeo-vigilância, o que faz com que sejam, via de regra, tomadas como prova daquilo que ‘realmente acontece’, e não como uma encenação, um recorte ou a expressão de uma subjetividade.

Esta problemática identificação imediata das imagens com o real coloca os circuitos de vídeo-vigilância em um terreno que situa-se curiosamente fora da chamada crise da representação, a qual as imagens da pintura, da fotografia, do cinema, e mesmo da televisão, parecem atravessar.

A carga ficcional que toda imagem traz consigo - e aqui vale lembrar da afirmação de Jean-Luc Godard, de que “todos os grandes filmes de ficção tendem ao documentário, como todos os grandes documentários tendem à ficção”[1] – parece a anular-se nestes circuitos. Onde surgem, as imagens justificam-se por sua veracidade instantânea: seja no âmbito dos flagrantes policiais, jornalísticos ou pornográficos; seja no universo dos reality shows, das câmeras escondidas e das pegadinhas.

Experimentos empreendidos no campo da arte contemporânea desde os anos 60, por pioneiros como Bruce Nauman, com "Video Surveillance Piece (Public Room, Private Room)"(1969-70), por exemplo, ou Dan Graham, com «Present Continuous Past(s)» (1974), entre outros, investiram justamente no jogo entre esta expectativa de um espaço/tempo real gerada pelo circuito de vídeo e a possibilidade de torcê-la, espelhá-la, invertendo a lógica do consumo das imagens e trazendo à tona sua inevitável dimensão perceptiva, cognitiva e afetiva.

Inspirados por estas práticas das artes visuais, vamos aqui investigar caminhos para um jogo entre os códigos sugeridos pela imagem de vigilância e práticas cênicas contemporâneas, justamente no sentido de subverter a forma como os circuitos são habitualmente experimentados, expandindo assim a experiência teatral. E aqui tomamos o Teatro não somente em seu sentido clássico, mas sobretudo na teatralidade presente em toda e qualquer situação, toda e qualquer imagem.

Para tanto iremos nos concentrar na análise de alguns trechos do espetáculo “Corte seco”, desenvolvido pela diretora Christianne Jatahy e sua Cia. Vértice de Teatro no Rio de Janeiro. Este espetáculo conta com um circuito fechado de vídeo composto por seis câmeras, instaladas em espaços aos quais o público da sala do teatro não tem acesso no momento da apresentação: os camarins, a coxia, o saguão de entrada e o exterior do teatro. Espaços supostamente fora de cena. Três monitores em cena permitem que estes lugares sejam televisionados para o público, produzindo uma situação aonde o espectador, assim como um vigia, terá de exercitar uma atenção múltipla, relacionando o que (acredita que) vê no palco com o que (acha que) vê na TV. A imagem técnica, asséptica, automática do circuito de vigilância resiste a tornar-se lugar de teatro, e apresenta-se como lugar de realidade. O jogo consiste em forçar esta resistência, esta irredutibilidade, sobrepondo ao que se vê no monitor de TV um discurso que contradiz a imagem, que semeia dúvida, e que proporciona novas experiências estéticas e artísticas a partir da presença do dispositivo de vigilância reconfigurado. A incerteza persiste: o que é encenado e o que é real? A cena está no palco, no monitor ou no olhar do espectador?


[1] Godard, Jean-Luc. L’Afrique vous parle de la fin et des moyens. In: Cahiers du Cinéma. N.º 94, Avril, 1959, p. 21.

Saturday, 31 October 2009

Dança em uma estação de trem da Bélgica

Estação Central (de trens) de Antuérpia, Bélgica. Dia 23 de março de 2009,
sem qualquer aviso aos passageiros que circulavam pela estação, foi feito
este vídeo.
Uma gravação de Julie Andrews cantando 'Do, Re, Mi' começa a tocar no
sistema público de som, e à medida que os passageiros vão se dando conta,
perplexos, de que algo diferente está prestes a acontecer, uns 200
dançarinos começam a aparecer da multidão e das entradas da estação.

Friday, 30 October 2009

Mesa Aprovada ABCiber

Fernanda Bruno (coord.) - UFRJ
Paola Barreto - UFRJ
Gabriel Menotti - Goldsmith College

17/11 - terça feira - manhã
Vigilância, imagem e práticas artísticas: encenação, sousveillance, found
footage

Sunday, 25 October 2009

simposio mexico


Termina 6a. feira dia 30/10 o prazo para envio de resumos (de 300 a 500 palavras) para o simposio internacional Identificação, Identidade e Vigilância na América Latina. David Murakami Wood, Fernanda Bruno e Andre Lemos fazem parte da comissão organizadora.

Monday, 19 October 2009

ABSTRACT

O governo do estado já instalou três das sete câmeras que vão ser monitoradas pela Polícia Pacificadora no Morro Santa Marta. No alto do morro será montada uma sala de monitoramento 24 horas por dia.

1 - cameras da policia



Os moradores reagiram ao escrutínio, apelidando o sistema de Big Brother, parodiando o programa transmitido pela Rede Globo no Brasil.



2 - cameras da milicia

Milicia, privatização da segurança pública
Paes defende Milicias em campanha

3 - cameras da classe média / ricos


4 - cameras dos traficas

Central clandestina de monitoramento de TV estourada na Favela de Parada de Lucas

12/9/2008 - ASCOM/PCERJ

Uma central clandestina de monitoramento de TV foi estourada, nesta sexta-feira (12/09), durante operação realizada por agentes da Delegacia de Repressão a Roubos de Cargas (DRFC), na Favela de Parada de Lucas, Zona Oeste. No local, foram encontrados diversos armamentos e 12 câmeras.

Segundo os policiais, na central era possível observar todas as entradas da favela. Além das câmeras, foram apreendidos um fuzil G3, calibre 7.62, duas pistolas, munições de diversos calibres, quatro coletes à prova de balas, uma TV de 29 polegadas e um colchão.

A central ficava escondida em uma parede falsa no segundo andar de um barraco localizado ao lado do Destacamento de Policiamento Ostensivo da PM (DPO), daquela região.

Os agentes acreditam que traficantes estariam no local, mas fugiram ao perceberem a chegada da polícia. Ninguém foi preso.


Mas não é só em parada de lucas...

Uma central de monitoramento formada por pelo menos 6 aparelhos de TV e diversas câmeras, capaz de controlar uma área de cerca de 500 m², usada por traficantes de drogas, foi estourada na noite de ontem no interior de uma favela localizada próximo ao Parque do Carmo, na zona leste da capital paulista. Há pelo menos uma semana, policiais militares vinham levantando dados a respeito da central depois que duas armas foram apreendidas com duas pessoas no interior da favela.

Wednesday, 30 September 2009

Thursday, 10 September 2009

performance presente futuro


imperdivel programação deste final de semana no oi futuro, com os surveillance camera players, vito aconcci e fernando salis entre outros.

Sunday, 30 August 2009

Sunday, 23 August 2009

Wednesday, 19 August 2009

artista é o rubinho jacobina

monto cftv. cobro 5 mil (pounds, euros ou reais, dependendo do país) pela mão de obra, fora despesas de transporte alimentação e hospedagem.

Thursday, 13 August 2009

Seminário Internacional Retornos do Real: cinema e pensamento contemporâneos

20/08/2009
CONFERÊNCIAS E MESAS-REDONDAS/LECTURES AND PANELS


09:00 – Mesa-redonda/Panels
Modalidades do Real/Panel Modalities of Realism
Ismail Xavier (Universidade de São Paulo)
Yingjin Zhang (University of California, San Diego)
mediador: Denilson Lopes



Ismail Xavier
O Exemplar e o Contingente no Teatro das Evidências

O binômio indexalidade-iconicidade postula(va) a imagem e o som do cinema como evidência de um confronto
com o Real que, por enquadramento e montagem, recebe(ia)m os ajustes portadores de sentidos. Filmes
contemporâneos exibem, entre outras estratégias, procedimentos miméticos afinados à narrativa clássica que
busca o exemplar (Ônibus 174), jogos de cena de um cinema-ensaio que explora o contingente e uma
exploração incisiva do estatuto das “evidências”, que embaralha esses dois pólos, não excluída a imagem digital
(Serras da desordem). Modalidades de realismo?

The Exemplary and the Contingent in the Theatre of Evidence

The binary indexicality vs. iconicity has taken, at least until now, the image and sound of cinema as evidence of
a confrontation with the Real, which, by way of framing and montage, received the necessary adjustments in
order to turn meaningful. Contemporary films exhibit, among other strategies, mimetic procedures akin to a
classical narrative in search of the exemplary (Ônibus 174), scenic games proper to a film-essayism that
explores the contingent (Jogo de cena – scene game – being the title of Eduardo Coutinho’s latest work, to
mention but one example), and an incisive exploration of the status of the ‘evidence’ that holds these two poles
in tension, including the use of digital imagery (Serras da desordem). Modalities of realism?

Yngjin Zhang
Paisagens em Movimento
Realidade, Visualidade e Translocalidade nos Filmes de Jia Zhangke

Esta comunicação analisa os filmes de Jia Zhangke, discutindo a realidade, a visualidade e a translocalidade. A
noção de “paisagens em movimento” refere-se ao fato de a natureza e cultura específicas de um lugar serem
crescentemente marcadas pelo capital translocal e pelos fluxos de trabalho. E, algumas vezes, a visualidade
cinemática é o meio fundamental para capturar o Real em transformação. Paisagens em movimento, portanto,
implicam na complexa negociação entre o artista, o Real e a tecnologia visual por meio de uma rede translocal.

Landscapes in Motion
Reality, Visuality and Translocality in Jia Zhangke’s Film

This paper approaches Jia Zhangke’s films in terms of reality, visuality and translocality. The idea of
“landscapes in motion” refer to the fact that nature and culture specific to a locality are increasingly
subjugated to translocal capital and labor flows and that sometimes cinematic visuality is the ultimate means of
capturing the Real in transformation. Landscapes in motion thus imply the complex negotiation between the
artist, the Real and visual technology through a translocal network.


10:30 – Conferência/Keynote Paper
Ivone Margulies (City University of New York)
apresentador e debatedor: Álvaro Fernández Bravo



A Presença Reencenada no Cinema Contemporâneo

Reencenação, definida como uma encenação que uma pessoa faz de eventos em que tenha tomado parte, é um
gênero performativo, próximo às narrativas de testemunho. Nas últimas duas décadas, a presença insubstituível
da pessoa Real tornou-se crescentemente conspícuo como um instrumento crítico para articular consciência e
história no cinema contemporâneo. Quero discutir a natureza e os usos dessa presença, analisando alguns filmes
contemporâneos, assim como a figura particularmente opaca e enigmática de Carapiru, índio da tribo Awa
Guaia, que reencena sua história no filme Serras da Desordem (2007), de Andrea Tonacci.

The Reenacted Presence in contemporary cinema

Reenactment, defined as the acting out, by a person of events in which she had taken part is a performative
genre close to the testimonial account. In the past two decades the unique, non-substitutable presence of the
original person has become increasingly conspicuous as a critical instrument to articulate consciousness and
history in contemporary cinema. I mean to interrogate the nature and uses of this presence by looking at a few
contemporary film examples as well as the particularly opaque enigmatic figure-that of Carapiru, an Indian
from the Awa Guaja tribe who reenacts his story in Andrea Tonacci’s 2007 film Serras da Desordem.



11:45 – Mesa-redonda/Panels
Repensando o Documentário / Panel Rethinking the Documentary
Andréa França (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro)
Emilio Bernino (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Universidad del Cine)
Mediador: Álvaro Fernandez Bravo


Andrea França
O Cinema Documentário e o Retorno Daquilo que Foi

Certos documentários contemporâneos têm feito da repetição um modo de projetar a possibilidade da diferença
em direção ao já terminado, isto é, ao passado. A partir do cinema brasileiro recente, minha proposta é discutir
certas modalidades expressivas de que fazem uso os filmes como forma de tornar visível a repetição – de
situações, falas, encontros, gestos e emoções – e garantir a possibilidade daquilo que já ocorreu, assim como
uma outra relação com as imagens de interpelação realista da mídia.

The Documentary and the Return of What Has Been

Certain contemporary documentaries have turned repetition into a mode of projecting the possibility of a
difference with respect to that which has already terminated, in other words, the past. With a views to recent
Brazilian cinema, my proposal is to discuss certain modalities of expression employed by these films as a way
of visibilizing repetition: situations, modes of speech, encounters, gestures, emotions – warranting the ongoing
possibility of what-has-been, at the same time as proposing a different relation with the mass – media’s images
of realist interpellation.

Emilio Bernini
Una Arqueología de la Imagen: el Documental de Found Footage

El documental found footage revela que la imagen de archivo, con la que se alimentó históricamente el
documental en sus formas más objetivas, no es más que un uso positivo de la imagen, unívoco, fundamentado
en su caracter indicial. En el posdocumental, en cambio, la condición indicial de la imagen fotográfica o
cinematográfica es a la vez aquello que afirma su sentido asignado en un primer grado y aquello mismo que
también permite negarlo o deconstruirlo.

An Archaeology of the Image: The “Found Footage” Documentary

The found footage documentary reveals that the archival image, on which the documentary in its most objective
forms has historically relied in crucial ways, is but a positivizing use of an image taken as univocal, based on
its indexical character. In the postdocumentary, on the contrary, the indexical condition of the photographic or
cinematographic image is at once that which affirms its meaning assigned in the original context and that
which allows to deny or deconstruct the former.



13:30 – Almoço/Lunch

15:30 – Conferência/Keynote Paper
Laura Marks (Dena Wosk University)
Apresentador e debatedor: Maurício Lissovsky



Desdobrando o Real: Mediação como um Tecido Conectivo

Como podemos pensar em mediação, não como uma barreira para o Real, mas como um tecido conectivo
contínuo entre o espectador e o observado? Esta palestra propõe uma estética do cinema, centrada nos
movimentos de dobra e desdobramento; o conceito de dobra como uma forma de mediação, presente no
pensamento de Deleuze, Leibniz e no neoplatonismo. Uma fenomenologia das mídias como envworlding,
desenvolvido a partir do pensamento de Heidegger, por Vivian Sobchack, também contribue para essa
perspectiva. Testarei o conceito em trabalhos de cinema e de mídias digitais.

Unfolding from the Real: Mediation as Connective Tissue

How can we think of mediation not as a barrier to the Real but as a continuous, connective tissue between the
beholder and the beheld? This talk proposes an enfolding-unfolding aesthetics for cinema. The concept of the
fold as a form of mediation arises from the thought of Deleuze, Leibniz, and Neoplatonism. A phenomenology of
media as enworlding, developed from Heidegger’s thought by Vivian Sobchack, also informs this approach. I
will test this concept on contemporary works in cinema and digital media.



16:45 – Mesa-redonda/Panels
Encruzilhadas do Novo Cinema Argentino /
Panel New Argentine Film at the Crossroads
Ana Amado (Universidad de Buenos Aires)
David Oubiña (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Universidad del Cine e New York)
Mediador: Jens Andermann



Ana Amado
Visitas Guiadas al Território de los Desclasado

Analizare las representaciones post crisis en algunas películas argentinas recientes, que ponen el enfasis en
movimientos, actitudes, voces locales, prácticas regionales y otros rasgos que definen audiovisualmente “lo
popular”. A partir de un realismo en primer término espacial, y al mismo tiempo “encarnado”, estas poéticas
de exhibición del otro los transforma en objetos etnográficos. Ya no desde el registro de observadores
ventrílocuos o sabihondos, sino con una suerte de contraestrategia que consiste en situarse en la
ambivalencia de la representación misma y contestarla con los argumentos y los codigos de los
representados...

Guided Tours to the Territory of the Dispossessed

I shall analyze representations in the aftermath of the crisis in some recent Argentine films, which emphasize
movements, attitudes, local voices, regional practices and other features that audio-visually define ‘the popular’. On the
basis of a primarily spatial, yet at the same time ‘embodied’, realism, these poetics of exhibiting the other transform
these into objects of ethnography. However, the register here is not one of ventriloquous or onmiscient observers but
rather a kind of counter-strategy, located in the ambivalence of a representation that is being contested by the
arguments and codes of those represented.

David Oubiña
Riesgos y Desafíos del Cine Argentino Reciente

En la década del 90 un nuevo cine surgió en la Argentina: eran films independientes, jóvenes, originales, provocadores.
Frente a las recetas solemnes y artificiales del viejo cine, uno de los grandes méritos de esa renovación consistió en
desplegar una mirada frontal y sin prejuicios sobre lo Real. Sin embargo, en los últimos años, ciertos hallazgos iniciales
han ido cristalizándose a menudo en fórmulas cómodas y vacías. El nuevo cine también ha terminado por generar sus
lugares comunes.

Risks and Challenges of Recent Argentine Cinema

In the 1990s a new cinema emerged in Argentina, made up of independent, young, original, provocative films.
Challenging the solemn and artificial formulas of the old cinema, one of the great merits of this renewal was the
introduction of a frontal and unprejudiced perspective on the Real. In recent years, however, some of these
initial achievements have started to settle down into routine and vacuous formulas. The new cinema has started
to generate its own commonplaces.



18:30 – Palestra de Encerramento/Closing Lecture
Karl Erik Schöllhammer (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro)
Apresentador e mediador: Jens Andermann



Além ou Aquém do Realismo de Choque?

A evocação de um “Retorno do Real”, feita por Hal Foster, em 1996, foi o pontapé inicial para a retomada do
interesse pelas formas de realismo extremo nas artes visuais contemporâneas. Rapidamente, a abordagem
expandiu-se para a literatura e para o cinema, enfocando temas e estilos de ruptura representativa e efeitos
estéticos de choque, por um lado, e linguagens híbridas entre documentalismo e encenação ficcional, por outro.
Partindo do mapeamento das formas históricas do realismo, a palestra discutirá os limites do realismo
traumático e o alcance da busca contemporânea por efeitos e afetos que se valem da presença material e do
agenciamento performático nas novas apostas de realismo.

Towards or Beyond a Realism of Shock?

The evocation of a “Return of the Real”, proclaimed by Hal Foster in 1996, was the point of departure for a
renewed interest in the forms of extreme realism in contemporary visual arts. This approach quickly crossed
over into literature and film, focusing on themes and styles of the break with representation and the aesthetic
effects of shock, on the one hand, and on the hybridities between documentarism and fictional staging, on the
other. The paper starts by mapping-out the historical forms of realism, moving on to discuss the limits of
traumatic realism and the scope of the present search for effects and affects in proposals of a new realism that
make use of forms of material presence and performative engagement.

call for papers, performances and workshops

thinking about a new project for the event

O Simpósio Nacional ABCiber é uma iniciativa da ABCiber – Associação Brasileira de Pesquisadores em Cibercultura, entidade científico-cultural, interdisciplinar, de âmbito nacional, sem fins lucrativos.

Em sua terceira edição, o evento é organizado pelo Grupo de Pesquisa em Comunicação e Práticas de Consumo (certificado no diretório do CNPq) e promovido pelo Programa de Mestrado em Comunicação e Práticas de Consumo da Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing – ESPM/SP.

O Simpósio reunirá, em três dias consecutivos, inúmeros artistas, coletivos, pesquisadores e alunos de Graduação e Pós-graduação de Ciências Humanas e Ciências Sociais Aplicadas de todo o país.

Por meio dos eixos cultural/artístico e científico, o evento tem como objetivo promover a reflexão e a circulação do conhecimento e das produções artísticas no âmbito da cibercultura.

.

Data: 16, 17 e 18 de novembro de 2009
Local: Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing – ESPM
Campus Prof. Francisco Gracioso (Rua Dr. Álvaro Alvim, 123 – Vila Mariana)

Sunday, 26 July 2009

Jill Magid

Major

Fri, Feb 20, 2009
7:00 PM

New Museum theater (directions)

Permission as Material: A talk with Jill Magid

Part of New Silent
Discussions

Jill Magid is a visual artist working in a variety of mediums, including literature, video, sculpture, photography, and performance. She seeks intimate relations with impersonal structures. Magid is also intrigued by hidden information, being public as a condition for existence, and intimacy in relation to power and observation. At this event, Magid will discuss recent projects and touch upon her new body of work currently in progress.

Jill Magid has had solo exhibitions at Stroom, The Hague; Gagosian Gallery, New York; Yvon Lambert, Paris; Centre D'arte Santa Monica; and Berlin and Sparwasser, Berlin. She has lectured and performed widely at venues including Orchard, Storefront for Art and Architecture, Eyebeam, and the Bowery Poetry Club.

Saturday, 25 July 2009

Sunday, 19 July 2009

uploading dreams

Início do Debate que fizemos na ECO 05/11
Em breve na íntegra no nosso canal vimeo



Thursday, 16 July 2009

MMC LUKA (Pula, Croatia)

© Jonas Dahlberg
Film still from View Trough a Park, 2009.
Single channel video installation.
Dimensions variable.

Architecture and Film: subjective spaces
MMC LUKA, Pula, Croatia
Cinemaniac is a sidebar program of the Pula Film Festival since 2002. The exhibition presents innovations and ideas concerning the presentation of moving images - works of film and video in the gallery context, where the infrastructure of the film festival provides a contextual and organizational platform as well as collaborative model. The exhibition works as an active context that enables the presentation of works of art. It is a meeting place that integrates social, cultural, technological, media, and aesthetic aspects, a meeting point for art, artists, institutions, and the audience. It investigates the relationship between film and visual arts by presenting recent Croatian and international production, as well as anthological videos, experimental films and multimedia installations.

Playing with the tensions between the dimensions of time and space, film codes and conventions create the view and the world, object and illusion, whereas alternative, experimental and artist' film explores and deconstructs internal laws and relations towards outer formative structures. This year's cinemaniac exhibition tries to point to a specific relation between the moving images (film, video) and architecture, and the meanings they produce, as it is formed around the manners in which specific films, film motifs or sequences, represent a suggestive, psychological and symbolic quality of architecture. It is in fact the interplay of (modern) architecture and film (cinematographic representation). The space here is perceived as one of the basic means of expression and as the place where the meanings are structured , whereas film language, with its means of expression and syntactic principles, enables special understanding of both space and reality. The space is thus the scene of a specific dramatic happening, a historic event or a life setting presentation and it becomes the object of an autonomous visual experiment.

In the exhibited works by four artists - View Through a Park by Jonas Dahlberg, August 2008 by Ra di Martino, Interiors by Ursula Mayer and The Boy with a Magic Horn by Damir Očko – presented spaces represent performance scenes for open narrative forms – places where camera movements, ambiance, architectural structures, music and dialogue meet with the protagonists. Relations between architectural structures and the possibility of social interaction, irrespective of whether a human being - a fictional character is present or not, can be discerned. In the scenes with or without dialogue, just like in spaces void of people and their physical presence, the presence of a subject is coded through the view, by means of a camera's technical characteristic – the lens – the intruder, a watching eye. The camera becomes an illusion mechanism for the creation of a renaissance space, a movement compatible with human eye and the presentation ideology that revolves around the perception of a subject. The darkness of the cinema auditorium or the setting of a dimmed gallery space play with the voyeuristic imagination of the audience and accentuate the illusion of sneaking into a private world.


Istarska 30,
Pula,
Croatia
Phone: 385 52 224 316
Fax: 385 52 388 308
Contact: Mirjana Grahovac
info@mmcluka.hr

www.mmcluka.hr

19th July- 9th August 2009
Opening:
Sunday, 19th July 2009, 20 h
Jonas Dahlberg, Ra di Martino, Ursula Mayer, Damir Očko
Curator: Branka Benčić

Wednesday, 15 July 2009

Multiple Views:


"Dan Graham: Beyond" at the Whitney Museum

By Carolyn Kane on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 12:04 pm.

Graham_pubicSpace19761.jpg
Image: Dan Graham, Public Space / Two Audiences, 1976

“[E]xperience is not arrayed before me as if I were god, it is lived by me from a certain point of view; I am not the spectator, I am involved, and it is my involvement in a point of view which makes possible both the finiteness of my perception and its opening out upon the complete world as a horizon of every perception.”

–––Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 1962
(Translation by Colin Smith)

Artist Dan Graham (born 1942) has embraced a wide range of media and genres including film, video, performance, installation, architecture (he collaborated with Jeff Wall in 1989 to build Children’s Pavilion), women’s magazines (Figurative—made in 1965 and reproduced in Harper’s Bazaar in 1968), and rock music (where he has collaborated with musicians such as Glenn Branca and Sonic Youth). Graham is well known for his documentary Rock My Religion (1982-84), a fifty-two minute video that explores the religious and spiritual tendencies underlying the American obsession with rock music. In the exhibition catalog for Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty, Diedrich Diederichsen claims that this video is “one of the most important texts on the theory of rock music.” Rock My Religion, as well as many other of these interdisciplinary projects are included in Graham’s current solo show, Dan Graham: Beyond, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

Alongside his versatile practice, Graham has also been influenced by a wide variety of thinkers. Chrissie Iles lists these as including the literary, anthropological, and scientific fields, such as the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, Gregory Bateson, Herbert Marcuse, Kurt Lewin, Wilhelm Reich, and Margaret Mead. The show at the Whitney takes account of these multidisciplinary footholds to great success, but for this review, I will focus on a particular niche of Graham’s work: his early performances and video installations from the 1970s, and the topical issues of performance art, the human body, and holistic perception that accompanies them.

The Merleau-Ponty quote noted above, according to Rosalind Krauss in “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalist Museums,” marks a “radically contingent subject” that is caught within the horizon of unfolding, yet fragmentary, perceptions. For both, this seemingly paradoxical point of view is also indicative of an orientation in the world that prioritizes the body as the primary vehicle for experience and knowledge. This premise, it seems to me, is also one that underlies Graham’s early performances, and is evident Two Consciousness Projections(s) (1972), Public Space / Two Audiences (1976) and Opposing Mirrors and Video Monitors on Time Delay (1974), all of which are included in the Beyond exhibition.

In Two Consciousness Projections(s) (1972), documentation of which is on display at Whitney, the bodies of two participants, and the audience, are the subject and site of the artwork. In the piece, a naked woman is seated in a chair, facing a monitor that displays her image on it, in real time. The image is being transmitted from a man who is fully dressed and stands in front of her, holding a video camera. He is positioned behind the monitor. As the woman watches the live feedback image of herself, she tries to articulate to the audience what is going on in her “conscious” mind. The man, whom she does not know, also begins describing what he sees as he watches her through the camera lens. The audience is perpendicular to them, watching and listening to both performers and the monitor.

SFMoMAOpposingmirrors21.jpg

SFMoMA_Opposing-Mirrors1-.jpg
Images: Dan Graham, Opposing Mirrors and Video Monitors on Time Delay, 1974 (Source: SFMOMA)

Two Consciousness Projections(s) demonstrates that even in one mind, consciousness is already multiple. Not only is a discrepancy between internal thought and verbal articulation exposed, but there is also an inconsistency between the girl’s visual reflection and her internal dialogue––while it may not be obvious, it is the starting point for the fragmentation of perception in the piece. Secondly, the fact that the man and woman influence each other’s perception and reality, through a live, mediated feedback circuit, is doubled by the fact that, as Graham describes it, the “audience performs as a superego.”

Chrissie Iles, in her essay “You are the Information: Dan Graham and Performance,” published in the Whitney’s exhibition catalog for Beyond, has contextualized this performance as a feminist one. She writes, the performance “disrupts the traditional dynamic between male and female. The female deflects the male gaze by commenting on her own live image, thereby altering and potentially controlling it.” Made at the height of the women’s liberation movement in 1972, Graham suggests, also in Iles’ essay, that the woman in the piece is indeed “more powerful than the man, as her subject and object are not separated. Whereas the more the man (to himself) strives to be objective, that much more does he appear to be unconsciously subjective to any observer on the outside.” This sophisticated notion delineates the distinction between the subject and object positions, yet also maintains that they are still connected. The paradox of being both one and many is pushed further in a second performance of the piece in 1975 at NSCAD, where both male and female performers are in the nude. This alteration effectively inverts the traditional art historical signifiers of the male gaze, while also maintaining them. Both male and female play object and subject, to themselves and for each other.

Beyond issues of feminism, Graham’s use of naked bodies is a recurrent motif. Iles suggests this has come as a result of his own experience in forms of body therapy, and in particular, from having undergone the therapy of Wilhelm Reich, whose techniques, she notes, sometimes involved “seeing patients in the nude.” A strategy that was no doubt in tune with the general tendency of the era; to view bodies and behaviors as forms of expression and communication systems, such as found in the work of Bateson, Mead, and even at the crux of Wiener’s cybernetics. Graham’s interest in bodies, people (performers, audience members) as communication systems equally reinforces Merleau-Ponty’s notion that it is by way of one’s physical involvement in a situation that makes perception and knowledge possible.

In this 1970s milieu, new electronic technologies also garnered an opening of perception in space and body consciousness. For Graham, this multifaceted human-machine vision was found with the then new media of video. This motif appears in both Public Space /Two Audiences (1976) and Opposing Mirrors and Video Monitors on Time Delay (1974 / 1993), both of which are fully reinstalled at the Whitney.

Opposing Mirrors uses the body to perceive and understand in a different, slightly less aggressive way than Two Consciousness Projections(s). The piece consists of two cameras set on top of two television monitors. Both the camera lenses and the monitors face a mirror. Each mirror-TV-camera system are positioned at two opposing sides of the room. So if I stand behind, but just to the side, of one monitor, my reflection is still caught in the mirror and the camera lens picks up the image. The cameras are also programmed to transmit their images to the monitors on five-second delay. Because of this delay, visitors could stand in front of one camera, not see themselves, and walk away. However, the person following them in line, as was the case when I visited the installation, would see their picture, and not my own. Not only is the expectation to see an image of myself undermined, but when an image of someone else appears on the screen, a strange collision and unexpected form of communication is elicited.

The piece does not use video feedback for its material or technical qualities. Instead, video is used as a vehicle for social communication––to rupture the normative silence and distance between strangers in a museum or gallery setting. In place of the presumed alienation between strangers, the installation’s capture and delay sets up a system of salutations between visitors. It is an enforced, non-verbal communication that breaks perceived boundaries in favor of proliferating connectivity, turning a line into a loop.

The myth of autonomous and isolated subjectivity is also undermined in Public Space /Two Audiences (1976), an installation that consists of a four-sided room with large ceiling-to-floor mirrors set up on two opposing sides of a room. In the middle is a thick transparent glass so that you cannot walk from one side to the other, and in each half of the room is a door to go outside, and back into the gallery. The instructions outside the installation instruct viewers to stay in the room for ten minutes.

Almost immediately after entering the space, the sounds of the museum disappear, bright white walls enclose you, and only the people on the other side of the glass can observe you––and you them, resulting in discomfort for those inside. I did not meet the ten-minute requirement. I quickly discerned that I was supposed to become a performer for the “audience” on the other side of the glass wall, while they were to become an audience for the people on my side of the glass. Public Space /Two Audiences is reminiscent of observation booths, where a hidden observer watches people. Yet in this case the power dynamic, as in Opposing Mirrors, is simultaneously upheld and inverted, as all visitors were made observers and subject to observation. Public Space /Two Audiences, also very much like Opposing Mirrors, places viewers in direct contact with the outside, without language, and only the visual façade to negotiate. All three of these pieces express conceptual and literal points of view typical of 1970s performance art and video installation, indicative of a time informed by the rise of systems based, non-verbal, visual communications and fractured, yet multiple, states of consciousness. These tendencies, apparent in this moment within Graham’s career, are an important precursor to the accelerated, multiple perspectives that mark contemporary experience.

Dan Graham: Beyond is on view at the Whitney Museum until October 11, 2009.

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