Disrupting surveillance: media arts practice for a reimagined future

The accumulation of black dots printed on a sequence of four aluminium plates documents and draws the line of a satellite orbit in the sky. These images, part of the project titled Tracking SkyNet (2019-2021) by the artist Filipe Vilas-Boas, were captured by the Alcor System 600mm telescope at the astronomical observatory of Mars (Ardèche, France) in July 2019. Instead of gazing at the stars as normally does, the telescope was hijacked to track the movement of a military satellite, SkyNet. The gesture of monitoring a satellite from Earth subverts the logic of surveillance systems that operate a control from above (watching over), reflecting on the term sousveillance (control from below) coined by lifecaster Steve Mann (1998). Tracking SkyNet, featuring four aluminium plates with transfer printing and a 30 sec video loop, was part of the collective exhibition Omniscience: Fracture and Escape Strategies, held at Fórum da Maia (Maia, Portugal) in November 2021. The exhibition was co-curated by the three guest editors of this special issue combining artworks, publications, and everyday objects that could provoke debate on modes of technological surveillance, unveiling strategies for both escape and rupture. Following this perspective, the exhibition also featured two installations by the artist Paula Albuquerque that reference and use technological devices and images of surveillance to explore the complex relationships between technology and human experience within ‘societies of control’ (Deleuze, 2017). In Live Streaming US (2016), Albuquerque uses footage generated by publicly accessible webcams to create a visual essay that foregrounds the media specificity of CCTV cameras. While the imagery, edited to showcase the choices behind the placement and position of cameras, raises awareness to the pervasive mechanisms of control in contemporary society, the absence of verbal discourse allows the viewer to focus on the cinematic potential of seemingly random surveillance visuality, which constructs rather than documents American life as it unravels. In contrast, Wash. Rinse. Repeat. (2020) presents a narrator’s voice reading a letter written by a military man to an MIT Professor while displaying a montage of thermal images, including those generated by armed and surveillance drones. Through this work, Albuquerque explores the impact of technology in warfare, surveillance, and human relationships. The installation also speaks to the potential of faulty equipment and human error in the deployment