towards a tags*onomy of surveillance
addressing classificatory systems in current surveillance practice

www.bowville.net

Working group led by paula roush addressing classificatory systems in current surveillance practice with a special focus on electronic tagging of life (human and animal) and commodities. The working session for the KISSS launch at the Whitechapel Gallery, was preceded by a power point presentation on electronic tagging. during which paula presented images of Marion Manesta Forrester starring in Bowville.

Bowville is a performative documentary fictionalising the bio-political in electronic tagging. The piece documents the networked performance during which Marion Manesta Forrester was electronically tagged and had three days to win her citizenship to Bowville.

For the exhibition at the Conical Gallery, the installation of Bowville's documentation, linking the origins of the State's photographic surveillance of women to current use of geo-tagging, is complemented by projects exploring artists’ subversions and counter practices of surveillance.

Psychological Art Circus'[>] two year conceptual itinerary using Josef B's seminal case history of Fraulein Anna O as a runic guide toward unique live actions is presented in the dvd documentation of their work.

Maria Kheirkhah’s[>] work on bio-data ‘evidence 1' consists of 25 blood samples from individuals with different status and ethnic backgrounds that you need to watch closely through a magnifying glass. Each blood sample is tagged with the owner’s cv but not in the correct order, deliberately confusing the identification process through an arbitrary database. The accompanying skulls of a fictional individual further amplify this process of misidentification.

Suzana Rezende’s[>] project WARCHALKING proposes chalk molded in the shape of warchalk tags. Her silver boxes bring people hunting for open nodes into closer contact with wireless networks. Jewellery facilitating the tagging process…

Eva Rudlinger’s Moving Mirrors are part of POLAR installation reflecting on movement and memory. As they move in circular motion, the mirrors survey the space without leaving a trace. Mimicking surveillance without recording it, they reflect each other from different angles creating a space within a space. Foucault wrote about the mirror as a mixed space between utopia and heterotopia. ” It makes this place that I occupy at the moment when I look at myself in the glass at once absolutely real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to pass through this virtual point which is over there.”
During the romantic period the national survey began to order the land and cartography as well as classification of clouds in meteorology began. Surveyor and the romantic tourist gained an objective representation of space without the interference of engagement with the terrain. The mapping of a perfect spot to view the landscape as an object became value for use.

Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa's [>] 'A Short Video About Tate Modern' (2005) is a response to questions of visibility and voice within a British art museum

Reinhard Krehl, Silke Steets and Jan Wenzel's[>] present Leipzig Protest Atlas (July 2005). Spatially speaking, protest is a form of action that normally does not posses its own space, but temporarily penetrates into the spaces of the other / the powerful. There it abrogates rules, creates conflicts and afterwards disappears again on this location. To put it in different words: protest is something performative. It becomes visible only if it takes place. "Leipzig Protest Atlas" maps spatial and temporal dimensions of local protest.