SOUSVEILLANCE - THE EYE OF COUNTER-POWER

At a time when surveillance is becoming commonplace, technologies digital technologies sometimes seem to be used to serve an "anti-social" policy. resurgence of control devices following the attacks of September 11, 2001, the controversial establishment of so-called "global security" laws, but also the injunction to confinement or curfew following the outbreak of the pandemic of covid-19, have constituted as many liberticidal measures which undermine the fundamental rights and privacy. Under the cover of shared vigilance, presented as a factor for improving social life, states have adopted increasingly intrusive technologies: video surveillance, data surveillance, drones, biometrics, geolocation, RFID chips, etc. In this context, artists and citizen associations join forces to develop counter-fires, regain control or reverse the roles of supervisors/surveilled. Is it possible to restore and guarantee democracy? surveillance? Can citizens exercise a right to surveillance in this sense? surveillance? Can art have a role to play here? Blind spots, camouflage, obfuscation, counter-visualities: this work proposes the examination of tactics or tricks with the eye of power, doubly aesthetic and political, at the crossroads of art and citizen activism. At the border of the " surveillance studies”, drawing on the works of different artists international – Hito Steyerl (Germany), Forensic Architecture (UK, Israel), Paolo Cirio (Italy), Thierry Fournier, Samuel Bianchini, Antoine d'Agata, Eléonore Weber (France) – it is a question of questioning the role technopolitics of “operative images” and surveillance practices or of counter-visuality invented by art as an alternative and counter-power to vision machines.