August 10,2008

My co-conspirator Sondra Arkin and I are curating a show called "Under Surveillance" that will open on September 18 at the Nevin Kelly Gallery in Washington, DC. It will include a dozen artists from the DC area in all media, from drawing through painting, glass sculpture, and sound. The artists are, in alphabetical order: Sondra Arkin, Scott Brooks, Groover Cleveland, Richard Dana, Anna Davis, Aziza Gibson-Hunter, Rosemary Luckett, Elizabeth Morisette, Ann Stoddard, Tim Tate, Ruth Trevarrow, Ellyn Weiss

Here is the mainfesto for the show: 

For quite some time, we have been observing with concern, anger and even fear the increasingly diminishing zone of personal privacy available to any of us, the freedom to speak, write, believe, read, travel, even think in complete privacy. One need not do research to document this; it is presented every day in the newspapers and popular media, as well as our daily experiences.

We have quickly become accustomed to random pat-down searches and shoe removals at the airport; these seem benign by now, as does as the inability to enter virtually any office building without producing identification and, in many cases, going through a metal-detector. Indeed, we would be surprised to encounter a lobby of any consequence at all without uniformed security and cameras, yet these measures were not so very long ago confined to such institutions as the CIA.

In the past few years we have learned through the media, not the government, about much more sinister, invasive and secret surveillance such as warrantless wiretapping of conversations, surveillance of public library usage and monitoring internet and telephone traffic from homes and workplaces. While the initial outcry was loud when these intrusions into our privacy were first disclosed, they are for the most part continuing and it seems quite possible that we are on the verge of becoming accustomed to and tacitly accepting of these as well. We have already accepted the incredible proliferation of cameras throughout our cities that record our physical presence as it moves through space throughout the day.

Nor is the surveillance by any means limited to the government.  The internet has facilitated an enormous amount of data collection about our purchases, our viewing habits, our homes, our friends and business connections, the groups we belong to and support. Virtually none of this is truly private, nor is the distinction between government and corporate enterprise a clear one in this day when private soldiers fight in Iraq and private contractors run prisons.  Even your own backyard is open for anyone to view using Google Earth. The government’s somewhat more sophisticated satellite imagery can read the license plate number on your car.

Short of disconnecting from the modern world completely, there is not much we can do to find a truly inviolate private space.

This is the theme that we have asked some of our fellow artists to treat. We invited them to participate because their work has shown to us a desire to engage ideas.