Art historian Johanna Gosse will present a paper titled “Virtual Panopticons: The Ethics of Observation in the Digital Age” at the College Art Association conference in Los Angeles. The paper is part of the Radical Art Caucus panel, chaired by Alan Wallach. Details below:
Radical Art Caucus
Politics of the Panoramic: Spectacle, Surveillance, Resistance
Friday, February 24, 9:30 AM–12:00 PM
West Hall Meeting Room 502B, Level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center
Chair: Alan Wallach, The College of William and Mary
Virtual Panopticons: The Ethics of Observation in the Digital Age
Johanna Gosse, Bryn Mawr College
Abstract
The techniques and apparatus of surveillance and the panoptic gaze have played a provocative role in art of the last fifty years; from the peephole voyeurism of Marcel Duchamp’s Étant donnés, Bruce Nauman’s video corridor installations, to a more recent wave of new media artists who examine the ever-expanding regimes of digital surveillance in the 21st century. This paper will examine the work of British-born, Seattle-based artist James Coupe, who uses advanced digital technologies to explore the public and private implications of surveillance culture. Coupe’s upcoming project, On the Observing of the Observer of the Observers, is a site-specific installation of CCTV cameras on a small liberal arts college campus, located in a city which is itself monitored by an elaborate municipal CCTV network. Operating at the intersection of the virtual, the cinematic, and the panoptic, On the Observing of the Observer of the Observers will pose a range of ethical and political questions about the encounter between the spectators and subjects of surveillance.