Audio By Carbonatix
Thirty million surveillance cameras operate in the United States, shooting four billion hours of footage each week, say Nothing to See Here curators Christina Battle and Adán De La Garza. “Let’s just stop and think about that for a second — the average person (with a life expectancy of 75 years) is only alive for about 675,000 hours,” they write in a joint e-mail.
With privacy anxiety on the rise, the duo has organized We Know You Are Watching, a series of videos addressing the surveillance culture that includes works by Sang Mun, Jacqueline Goss, the Surveillance Camera Players and De La Garza; the program also explores tactics for disrupting and evading surveillance. “We somehow have bought into this idea that surveillance makes us safer. It doesn’t. Cameras are often declared as being preventative measures, but statistically speaking, they don’t prevent, they just document crimes…and usually quite poorly. More often than not, the threat that surveillance cameras carry isn’t enough to deter crime. This culture of surveillance carries with it the presumption that we’re all criminals and deserving of alienation,” they explain.
The show starts tonight at 8 p.m. at Buntport Theater, 717 Lipan Street; there’s a suggested donation of $5. For more information, go to nothingto-seehere.com or call 720-946-1388.
Sun., June 22, 8 p.m., 2014
