Watched! Surveillance, Art and Photography
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The exhibition Watched! Surveillance, Art and Photography reflects on the complexities of contemporary surveillance, with a specific attention to photography.
Our entire existence is being photographed and visualized to an unprecedented degree. This raises new questions about voluntary and involuntary visibility, discriminatory scrutiny and criminalization, as well as photohistorical issues of watching and being watched. The artists focus on technologies used by state and authorities as well as everyday monitoring practices that have become an integrated part of our lives, especially within social media. Some of the technologies appropriated by the artists in the exhibition, are; CCTV, Facial Recognition Technology, Google Street View, life-logging and virtual animation. They also reactivate older practices of spying, exposure and voyeurism.
Watched! Surveillance, Art and Photography is part of a research project on surveillance, art, and photography in Europe after the millennium, initiated by Louise Wolthers, Head of Research at the Hasselblad Foundation. The accompanying book, published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, artworks by forty artists, as well as in-depth essays on surveillance by leading scholars within the field.
Curators: Louise Wolthers, Dragana Vujanovic and Niclas Östlind
Exhibition period: 16 November–31 December
Opening: 16 November
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Jason E. Bowman (UK/SE)
James Bridle (UK)
Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin (ZA/UK)
Tina Enghoff (DK)
Alberto Frigo (IT)
Charlotte Haslund-Christensen (DK)
Mishka Henner (UK)
Hanne Nielsen & Birgit Johnsen (DK)
Marco Poloni (NL)
Meriç Algún Ringborg (TR/SE)
Ann-Sofi Sidén (SE)
Hito Steyerl (DE)
The exhibition and the book are collaborations between the Hasselblad Foundation in Gothenburg, Valand Academy, Kunsthal Aarhus, Galleri Image, ARoS and C/O Berlin.
