Invisible Surveillance in Visual Art

Abstract

Contemporary art has recently started to engage with surveillance. Before this trend developed art theory had developed a rangeof approaches to understanding identity in art, sometimes borrowing from social, psychoanalytic and political theory. Art work atthe intersection of surveillance and identity tends to focus upon the representation of the human body as subject of surveillanceand bearer of identity. However, contemporary surveillance is data, categorisation and flows of information as much as it isCCTV and images of the person. There are notably fewer works of art that engage with ‘dataveillance’. This paper engages withsuch artwork as a case study for assessing the suitability of contemporary art historical theories of identity to make sense ofidentity in a surveillance society.

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