Place: Council Room, King’s College London,
Blocking, breaking, masking, uncovering—many ways of resisting surveillance have been documented (Marx 2003). This panel brings together anthropologists and art practitioners to explore these acts, not as confrontation, but as venues for cultural creation.
The value of non-surveillance is often framed with recourse to privacy. But what about those counter-surveillance moves that make no reference to privacy, and are oriented towards different desires and ideals? Turning towards opacity—of rendering things unseeable—obviates privacy’s logics of possession, to consider the transformative space that is opened up by not seeing.
Drawing on ethnographic and artistic work, the panel assembles a variety of arts of opacity, exploring what is generated through each process. In societies increasingly saturated by digital surveillance, it invites deeper questions about the value of non-surveillance as a method of imagining alternative futures.
Chair
Vita Peacock (KCL)
Speakers
Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll (CEU)
Rafael Schachter (UCL)
Francisco Martinez (University of Murcia)
Cecilia Salinas (University of Oslo)
Stephen Wilson (Chelsea College of Art / The Ruskin )
Panel Discussion followed by a drinks reception in the Old Committee Room