Artistic Presentation

Surveillance & Society Vol 10, No 1 (2012)

This on-line exhibition presents a small selection of works by Latin American artists who incorporate in their creations technologies traditionally linked to surveillance and control processes.

By Surveillance Aesthetics we understand a compound of artistic practices, which include the appropriation of dispositifs such as closed circuit video, webcams, satellite images, algorithms and computer vision, among others, placing them within new visibility, attention and experience regimes (Bruno and Lins 2007; 2010).

The term referred to in the title of this exhibition is intended more as a vector of research than the determination of a field. In this sense, a Latin America Surveillance Aesthetics exhibition is a way to propose a myriad of questions, starting from the works presented here. How and to what extent do the destinies of surveillance devices reverberate or are they subverted by market, security and media logics in our societies?

If, in Europe and the USA, surveillance is a subject related to border control and the war against terror, what can be said about Latin America? What forces and conflicts are involved? How have artistic practices been creating and acting in relation to these forces and conflicts?

In Latin America, art produced in the context of surveillance devices and processes has been modestly analyzed by academics and curators. Our intention is to assemble a selection of works indicating the existence of a wider base of production that cannot be considered occasional and needs to be investigated.

Fernanda Bruno
Communication and Culture,
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
(UFRJ), Brazil.
bruno.fernanda@gmail.com

Paola Barreto
Visual Arts, Federal University of
Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil.
paoleb@gmail.com

Milena Szafir
University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil.
milena@manifesto21.com.br