SURVEILLANCE

viegener@calarts.edu

The module on intimacy, technology, and surveillance investigates how new technologies both comfort and control us through entwined offers of friendship and potentials for policing. We are surrounded by layers of surveillance, some visible but most not, which we are told are for our own protection. Many of these same technologies—the internet, our telephones and cameras—also connect us to each other emotionally, and help us transact our intimate lives. In this module, we will probe the uncanny triad between these three things, examining how they structure new relationships between public and private, interior and exterior, and finally, the political and the social.

Surveillance 1

Before lecture watch:

Citizenfour (dir. Laura Poitras, 2014) This documentary of whistleblower Edward Snowden's historic revelations of widespread secret mass surveillance of US citizens by the U.S. government at the same time subtly examines the surveilling gaze of the filmmaker's camera. The readings describe the state of the art in surveillance in the decade since the Snowden revelations.

(Note: you must create a CalArts library account using your CalArts Student ID# to view film)

And read:

1. Thompson, Stuart A. & Warzel, Charlie: "Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy,” The New York Times 8pp. (Note: If NYT paywall prevents viewing, there is a pdf in the folder below.)

2. Zuboff, Shoshana: "You Are Now Remotely Controlled" - The New York Times (6pp.pdf)

3. Welsh, Alex: “Tracking Phones, Google Is a Dragnet for the Police,” The New York Times (6pp.pdf)

Prompt for reading annotation (submit on Canvas site):

As you watch Citizenfour, note how the camera follows Edward Snowden himself, how it depicts him both in camera shots and in edits. How does the camerawork itself treat him differently from the others, and what effect does this have?

Surveillance 2

Sousveillance, "watching the watcher," is one strategy individuals have used to fight surveillance. Please view the Central Park Birdwatching Incident video (2020), a confrontation between a white woman with an unleashed dog and a black male birdwatcher. We will use this as a lens to examine how surveillance may be ubiquitous but also unevenly impacts people of color. The reading supplies some critical concepts to the use and abuse of sousveillance in relation to racism. Trigger alert: this video has been upsetting to some viewers, as it contains an incident of racist harassment that echoes untold other incidents.

Before lecture read/watch:

1. Nir, Sarah Maslin - “How 2 Lives Collided in Central Park, Rattling the Nation,” The New York Times, June 14, 2020. 7pp

2. Stewart, Nikita - "The White Dog Walker and #LivingWhileBlack in New York City,” The New York Times, May 30, 2020. 5pp

3. Mia Fisher and K. Mohrman, "Black Deaths Matter? Sousveillance and the Invisibility of Black Life,” ada: journal of gender, new media, and technology (2016). 12pp.

4. Watch "Theorizing the Web Presents: Surveillance of Black Lives"

Prompt for reading annotation (submit on Canvas site):

Outline the different perspectives that are brought up about sousveillance in the "Black Deaths Matter? Sousveillance and the Invisibility of Black Life" reading.

SURVEILLANCE 3

Traditional notions of intimacy have been upended by new technologies that are changing the way we understand ourselves and each other. Among other elements, we focus on the selfie, a way in which many of us render information about ourselves to the world. Traditional forms people used to do this was sending gifts, photographs, or letters to each other; are selfies simply doing this work or are they doing something more?

Before lecture read and contribute:

Losh, Elizabeth. "Beyond Biometerics: Feminist Theory Looks at Selfiecity"
Rettberg, Jill Walker. "Seeing Ourselves Through Technology"
Rule, James B. "Private Lives and Public Surveillance.
Please contribute two "good" selfies (of yourself, a friend, or a stranger online) and two "bad" selfies to the class archive.

Prompt for reading annotation (submit on Canvas site):

Describe, in your own words, the four concepts of "selfieness" that begin on p. 7 of the reading by Elizabeth Losh, "Beyond Biometerics: Feminist Theory Looks at Selfiecity."

surveillance 4

While examining a difficult, confessional posting by Sinead O'Connor (trigger warning: it discusses suicide and self-harm) we look at how intimacy has transformed today. Is intimacy in crisis? Is the word "intimacy" even sufficient to describe the ways we connect to each other through new technologies? Extimacy is a newish word coined to express an externalized, performative intimacy. Selfies, texting, vlogs, "sexting," and dating apps are just a few examples. Are we being reinvented as humans? Are these "new technologies of intimacy" creating new forms of selfhood or subjectivity? Finally, do new ways of relating to each other change our politics or require us to come up with new political ideas?

Before lecture read/watch:

Babeli, et al - "Extimacy- The Other in Me" 2pp.
Marche, Stephen - "The Crisis of Intimacy in the Age of Digital Connectivity" 12pp. [Optional reading, but very helpful for papers on extimacy]
n.a. - "Extimacy/ When Intimate Information is Made Public" 1p.
O'Connor, Sinead - August 4, 2017 Facebook Livestream

close reading Surveillance essay

Throughout this module, we have closely examined particular visual media texts (ie. Citizenfour, the Cooper birdwatching video, selected selfies)) from our contemporary cultural moment in order to discover how details of the composition, the subject(s) and their presentation, the circulation and/or the reception of the text reveal the interplay between surveillance and intimacy that structures our contemporary digital media landscape, discussed in our course readings. Now it's your turn to choose a visual text (can be a film,a tik tok or other social media posting,an artwork, an advertisement, a meme, etc) and write a close reading essay that does the following:

Describes the chosen object/image/text well enough that reader does not have to be familiar with it to understand your essay
Uses details (no detail is too small!) from the text itself as evidence of how the text explores, reflects, and/or negotiates specific conflicts, concerns, and dynamics of contemporary surveillance culture. One way to think of this is as a detailed accounting of something small enough to unpack.
Makes use of at least two readings from the module to explain and support the specific ideas around surveillance and intimacy you are discussing through your chosen object/image/text.

Your essay should be between 750 and 1,000 words and contain an MLA works cited page with at least two texts we've read in class, as well as proper citation of the visual media text you have chosen.

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