01 January 2014

Surveillance is so 2013




2013 was about the watchers. So someone here plays on this, of course. But this is already dated; the panopticon is already in place, art hasn't exemplified it and its certainly not based on cameras, which seem ridiculously old-fashioned and maybe plain wrong, at least for the UK. We are seduced by the US surveillance scandals when in the UK our Govt. is all about not looking, turning away, rigorously, relentlessly not seeing...

The pretence of caring might add some open surveillance cameras to our streets but the people in charge in the UK right now simply aren't ever on the streets and, quite literally, don't even truly understand that they are there. It's a kind of comic (not funny), cosmic indifference to the world that's hardly unprecedented (remember Thatcher & the near abandonment of Liverpool) but is now wrought large across the country.

The panopticon, on the other hand, is us. And in 2014 we've got to start stopping.


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