OVERLOOK
Davies and Bacic
23 November – 10 December 2017
Opening Wednesday 22 NOVEMBER, 6 – 8 pm
Artists Talk Sunday 10 December
In this collaborative exhibition by Anita Bacic and Fiona Davies there are two interrelated elements – an installation by Davies and a number of window mounted static cameras obscuras by Bacic. Here the body of the viewers will become both part of the exhibition and part of the surveillance process.
The theoretical background of their collaboration ranges from texts on surveillance and consent, film and the photographic, and the human perception of both seeing and being seen.
“it’s crucial we grasp the new ways that surveillance is seeping into the bloodstream of contemporary life and that the ways it does so correspond to the currents of liquid modernity”[1]. The metaphor is a complex one, involving the fluidity, mobility and ubiquity of surveillance practices in twenty-first century societies as well as the internalisation of surveillance by twenty-first century subjects and, therefore, the relationships between surveillance and health, identity and the human body. [2]
Davies installation consists of a series of table based plus projection works including Blood on Silk Bleeding Out. This work is a response to the emotional impact of the surreal nature of witnessing a slow but unsuccessful bleed out within the monitoring and surveillance of an ICU. In all of the works the viewer is encouraged to bend forward to look down into the interior and becomes part of the projection surface.
Anita Bacic's work is a participatory moving-image experience. Camera obscura boxes attached to the large front window show moving-images of the exterior street space. Referencing the original peep-shows of the middle ages showing images of the world beyond, this Obscura shows images of what is local and focuses on the here and now. To see these images the viewer must enter the material of the camera and effectively shroud their head.
The process of surveillance and the resulting self conscious awareness is disrupted in the combined works when the installation is viewed by an audience who is in turn then also viewed or subject to the process of surveillance by others. The facelessness of the surveillance is then in turn disrupted when the individual participant unshrouds their head and becomes the observed.
[1] Liquid Surveillance: A Conversation (2013) David Lyon Zygmunt Bauman: p152
[2] Dr M. Jacklin 'Surveillance in the Blood Stream' private correspondence on Davies' installation at Campbelltown Arts Centre in 2013.
The theoretical background of their collaboration ranges from texts on surveillance and consent, film and the photographic, and the human perception of both seeing and being seen.
“it’s crucial we grasp the new ways that surveillance is seeping into the bloodstream of contemporary life and that the ways it does so correspond to the currents of liquid modernity”[1]. The metaphor is a complex one, involving the fluidity, mobility and ubiquity of surveillance practices in twenty-first century societies as well as the internalisation of surveillance by twenty-first century subjects and, therefore, the relationships between surveillance and health, identity and the human body. [2]
Davies installation consists of a series of table based plus projection works including Blood on Silk Bleeding Out. This work is a response to the emotional impact of the surreal nature of witnessing a slow but unsuccessful bleed out within the monitoring and surveillance of an ICU. In all of the works the viewer is encouraged to bend forward to look down into the interior and becomes part of the projection surface.
Anita Bacic's work is a participatory moving-image experience. Camera obscura boxes attached to the large front window show moving-images of the exterior street space. Referencing the original peep-shows of the middle ages showing images of the world beyond, this Obscura shows images of what is local and focuses on the here and now. To see these images the viewer must enter the material of the camera and effectively shroud their head.
The process of surveillance and the resulting self conscious awareness is disrupted in the combined works when the installation is viewed by an audience who is in turn then also viewed or subject to the process of surveillance by others. The facelessness of the surveillance is then in turn disrupted when the individual participant unshrouds their head and becomes the observed.
[1] Liquid Surveillance: A Conversation (2013) David Lyon Zygmunt Bauman: p152
[2] Dr M. Jacklin 'Surveillance in the Blood Stream' private correspondence on Davies' installation at Campbelltown Arts Centre in 2013.
Images by Document Photography