Web: www.291gallery.com Email: admin@291gallery.com Tel: 020 7613 5676 map pictures from february's event Includes: a live remote web performance, rare video screenings, audio cutting, more laptops than you can shake a stick at, live visuals, surveillance projection walls, photography, surveillance objects, DJs and much, much more. "We are living in the pupil of a thousand different eyes at any given moment." (Toffler) ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME? hmmmm?….are-you-looking-at-me? no……… ..oh,….would you mind? what? looking at me. would i mind looking at you? yes. at you? yes. no. no, you wouldn't mind, or no, you wouldn't look? …um. no, i wouldn't mind. looking at me? yes. ready? yes. ready? yes! - LOOK- thanks. no problem. do you....er...? what? do you think you might want to, er, look at me again at some point? i don't see why not. ah. great. thanks very much. no problem. bye, then. bye. (Julius Welby) ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME? (21st February 2003) ....This experimental event brought together artists, musicians and performers who were engaging with this scopic phenomena. Due to the success of the night I am aiming to curate a series of events, which examines contemporary notions of surveillance within an interactive entertainment environment. ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME? (12th September 2003) This event develops the themes (& the v.steep technical learning curve!!!) from the February show, to explore two central themes within the discourse of surveillance: “non-places” and the duality between performativity & paranoia in our relationship to the camera (or microphone) we spend increasing amounts of our daily life in spatially neutral and geographically dislocated non-places; airports, shopping centres, cash machines, theme parks, multi-storey car parks, supermarkets and motorways all construct a uniform and transient environment which lacks history or social markers. “they are not sites of communalism and daily life, but spaces of solitary contractuality. agreements contracted at the point of entry or exit to the non-places turn the subject into a passenger, a user, a customer, or listener, identified by name, address, date of birth, pin number,etc” ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME? 2 attempts to simulate an environment that draws together the opposing spectrums of our relationship to being watched or surveyed; performance (self conscious display) and paranoia. “the telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. any sound that winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. there was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment” (orwell -1984) “it is probably no mere historical accident that the word person, in its first meaning, is a mask. it is rather a recongnition of the fact that everyone is always and everywhere, more or less consciously, playing a role….it is in these roles that we know each other; it is in these roles that we know ourselves.” (robert ezra park - race and culture)