SURVEILLANCE WORKS
A few years ago my wife and I were in Leipzig in Germany. Leipzig had been in East Germany before the re-unification in 1989 where the secret police (the Stasi) was extremely active in spying on its citizens.
The headquarters for the Stasi in Leipzig was a large anonymous building known to the people of the city as the Runde Ecke (Round Corner). Although there had never been any outward signs to advertise its function, the people of the city knew.
Nowadays, the Runde Ecke exists as a fascinating museum to the Stasi and its oddly banal operations, displaying all kinds of strange ‘spying’ paraphernalia, prison cells, etc. But even more interesting to me were the displays of endless numbers of often quickly and badly taken snapshots of citizens going about their everyday business.
I took photos of the photos in their display cases without quite knowing what I would do with them, or why they even interested me. But back in England, I decided to use them as the basis for a set of artworks.
I started making tiny reductive oil paintings imitating the unconsidered compositions and often blurred images that I was looking at in the photos. I kept them close in size to average snapshot prints, and also gave them that same glossy finish. I was trying to create something of beauty out of subject matter that was at best banal and worst, sinister.
Later, I started searching the Web for surveillance images from other countries and also looking at live webcams from around the world, which lead me into other drawings, paintings and mono-prints.
I am still not sure why these things fascinate me so much. Maybe a little bit of Big Brother paranoia, but I think I like the idea that these were anonymous and mostly innocent people. They were completely ignorant of the fact that these unremarkable moments of their lives had been recorded.
I imagine many are still walking around out there, and no doubt would be shocked to know that they were photographed back then in the 70s and 80s, and maybe even more so to find themselves as subjects for present day art !
D.D. 06.2011
