Faceless: Re-inventing Privacy Through Subversive Media Strategies 9783110527704, 9783110525137

Table of contents :
Contents
The Beginning
Faceless Book
Archiving faceless
Hi! I’m famous new media artist Jeremy Bailey!
Faceless Praxis in the Age of Zero Trust: Strategies of Disappearance and Distributed Pseudonymity in Art and Research
THE PRIVACY GIFT SHOP
Public Privacy
The Future is Unknown – I am the Future
Behind the White Shadows of Image Processing: Shirley, Lena, Jennifer, and the Angel of History
Here Be Faces
Suppressed Images
Permission is a Material: Jill Magid Faces the Information Sublime
Selected Excerpts from the WE MARGIELA Inter views
Masking the Body as a Trope of Japanese Reflections on Reality
Exhibitionism as the New Normal: From Presenting to Performing
The Museum
under new moons we stand strong
IMAGE CREDITS
PUBLISHER’S NOTE

Citation preview

F ACELESS

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Edition Angewandte Book Series of the University of Applied Arts Vienna Edited by Gerald Bast, Rector

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FACELESS

RE-INVENTING PRIVACY THROUGH SUBVERSIVE MEDIA STRATEGIES

BOGOMIR DORINGER BRIGITTE FELDERER (EDS.)

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Contents BOGOMIR DORINGER

The Beginning 6 THOMAS MACHO

Faceless Book

17

BOGOMIR DORINGER

Archiving faceless 33   

JEREMY BAILEY



H i ! I ’m fa m o us n ew m ed i a a r t i s t Jeremy Ba i l ey !



84

MATTHIAS TARASIEWICZ

Faceless Praxis in the Age of Zero Trust: Strategies of Disappearance and Distributed Pseudonymity in Art and Research

107



A D A M H A RV E Y



THE PRIVACY GIFT SHOP

123

BRIGITTE FELDERER

Public Privacy

139

JOSEPHINE BOSMA

The Future is Unknown – I am the Future

147

ROSA MENKMAN

Behind the White Shadows of Image Processing: Shirley, Lena, Jennifer, and the Angel of History

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159

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SIMONE C. NIQUILLE



H E A T H E R D E W E Y- H A G B O R G



H ere B e Faces

Sup p res s ed I m ages

180

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JOE MUGGS

Permission is a Material: Jill Magid Faces the Information Sublime

199

  

mint film office



Sel ected Excerpts f ro m t h e W E M A R G I E LA I nter vi ew s



209

WALTER SEIDL

Masking the Body as a Trope of Japanese Reflections on Reality

235

HILLE KOSKELA

Exhibitionism as the New Normal: From Presenting to Performing

249

N I K O L A K N E Ž E V I C´ / B RU N O L I S T O PA D T h e Mus eum

267

TERESA DILLON

under new moons we stand strong

287



IMAGE CREDITS

302



PUBLISHER’S NOTE

304

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BOGOMIR DORINGER

The Beginning

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OF COURSE IT’S PERSONAL

1  B O G O M I R DOR IN GE R , inititally as a ­Serbian im­ migrant and then an art student in The ­Netherlands, (mis)used the ­opportunity while working in the ­Amsterdam ­Stedelijk ­Museum to collect (con­ serve?) thrown away chairs designed by Studio Acconci for a retrospective exhibi­ tion of Vito Acconci’s work, which ended in January 2006. Chairs were taken from a container belonging to the Museum with the intention of restoring and presenting them in The Mobile Studios in Belgrade, Serbia.

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My personal biography and experience of migration from Serbia to The Netherlands at the age of 21 definitely contributed to the notion of the phenomenon that I named FACELESS a few years later. In order to enter the EU study system and participate in Western European life, I had to give up most of my privacy and be as transparent as possible to receive a student visa for the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (2004). For those who are not aware of the procedure for visa applications or come from the so-called “privileged” part of the world, the process included transparency with my bank account, family members, medical check-ups, plus limited, actually no, possibilities to work legally in the country at that time. When the whole discussion on privacy started, I was confused by the term—and asked myself whose privacy we were fighting for now? What I naively thought would be the start of a new phase in my life, the start of art studies, mainly revolved around my being an immigrant with limited possibilities but honored by art student status. At that age, in times of restlessness and insecurity, with little possibility of finding the financial means to live, it was very easy to think of illegal activity as the only way to survive. The thin line between impossibility and anger drives one to act in unexpected ways. At the same time, this is precisely what it is often presumed an immigrant with a background such as mine would go in for at that time. The system makes you insecure and makes you act out clichés and prejudices on yourself. In this state one can easily identify with marginalized groups or those who undergo similar processes. I decided to employ this notion as a performative part of my work already in the project Illegal Chair 1 that I did in 2006. In this project I defaced myself publicly and used gossip and media to destroy my reputation and career as a fashion designer in Serbia. To manage immigration and guide myself to what is today called “integration,” I decided to turn all those annoying drives into the creative process and develop through the education offered. I did not admit to many that I was actually under considerable stress in an unfamiliar environment, “faceless,” and I was not sure if I

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would ever fit in or achieve this “integration” that everybody talks about. Feeling faceless made me aware of other forms of social frustration and facelessness around me. Throughout my art studies and practice, I have striven to bind together fashion and art—inspired by sociopolitical investigations. Working with covered faces was one of many techniques that I employed. After noticing like-minded interest in the subject matter, I began to collect a variety of faceless works to try and understand why they exist and what they are trying to communicate. I started organizing and categorizing them. Why were so many creatives around me covering faces in the art works that they were produ­ cing? Why did these images become signatures of that time? DOCUMENTING EXHIBITED

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BOGOMIR DORINGER

The premise of the project FACELESS was/is to explore the common occurrence of images of hidden faces in the creative arts from the beginning of the 21st century, more precisely 9/11. In 2012, at the invitation of Elisabeth Hajek, the artistic director of the frei_raum Q21 exhibtion space and Q21 Artist-in-­Residence program on the grounds of the Museums­ Quartier Vienna, I was asked to propose a topic that addressed a ­relevant and urgent sociopolitical subject through the creative arts—a topic that also united my approach with my experience in fashion and art. A few days later, I delivered pre-­research on the topic of facelessness in the form of a stack of bound papers, prints of images, and projects that I had been collecting since my student years. For somebody who had never curated before, some of the proposed participants seemed impossible, and too ambitious to reach, but this motivated me even more, particularly since I knew that this would be the first project to stress the impact of 9/11 on global culture and the media-constructed reality in which we have existed before and since the events on that tragic day in 2001. But also because I could not believe that no other cultural workers or institutions were asking, “Where did all faces go?” A few weeks

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later, Brigitte Felderer from the Social Design department of the University of Applied Arts Vienna joined in consulting and guiding the project. As a number of works were too big to fit in the freiraum Q21_exhibition space, as a film lover I came up with a concept based on the idea that every popular horror movie always has a sequel. This subject, vanishing faces in contemporary society, definitely deserved a sequel too. And so we agreed to organize the works in a two-part exhibition.

2  [Alone Against America, Edward Snowden: Hero and Traitor]. http://www. spiegel.de/spiegel/print/ index-2013-27.html.

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Both parts premiered in 2013, the first in June, just around the time when American president Barack Obama and whistle­blower Edward Joseph Snowden were on the cover of the German magazine Der Spiegel with the title “Allein gegen Amerika. Edward Snowden: Held und Verräter.” 2  This scandal created grounds for discussion on issues of privacy and surveillance. After receiving many great reviews for the exhibition it was clear that the press had been waiting for the right moment to write about issues relating to privacy, the burka, data-collection, terrorism etc. that bothered us as citizens of the 21st century. The exhibition drew attention to many issues that had remained unspoken about for decades and are the result of war and armed conflicts that were now returning like a boomerang in grotesque and unexpected forms. The second part premiered in October. Straight after Vienna, the two-part exhibition traveled in its entirety to Amsterdam, where it was presented in 2014 at Mediamatic. Once again, the exhibition received positive reviews. The exhibition included more than 100 contemporary artists and fashion designers who all shared a common relationship with the face but had different motives and reasons for engaging with it. All those who engaged with hiding or using various techniques to hide their face, professionals and amateurs alike, were also invited to use the website www.facelessexhibition.com to contribute their own “faceless” images and feed the rapidly growing archive of facelessness. The amount of images and the crowd that they created fascinates me; massed together they create the impression of a protest, a signal that there is a “face crisis.”

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BOGOMIR DORINGER

FACELESS Exhibition Part I, frei_raum Q21 Wien, 2013

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The works in the exhibition were in themed blocks. Each of these blocks would merge into one another as visitors walked through the exhibition space as if  “surfing” the internet. I requested Thilo Ullrich and Martin Hickmann, at the time students of Stage and Costume Design, Film, and Exhibition Architecture at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, under the guidance of Professor Henrik Ahr, to develop an exhibition design concept that could embed all the works in an elaborate setting according to topics like the burka, the balaclava, sex, fetish, mutants, idols, self-portraits, invisible people, digital masks etc. The same narrative is pursued in the book. The way the works were displayed draws a timeline from 9/11 to today. The exhibition demonstrates the transformative and circulative power of images. NOW_WHILE WRITING

3 www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ohmajJTcpNk 4 http://niessnerlab.org/ projects/thies2016face.html

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While finalizing the book, my iPhone is blinking on the table next to my computer. It is an iPhone X. To review the blinking msg I just need to bring it closer my face and activate the so-called Face ID which is biometric authentication technology. My face is my password to unlocking this glossy, new, double-glass-layered gadget. Every time I wanna use the phone, my face is “scanned.” Behind different windows, which I keep open to remind myself what I should mention in the book, is the YouTube link to the research Face2Face: Real-time Face Capture and Reenactment of RGB Videos (CVPR 2016 Oral).3 “The goal of this project is to animate the facial expressions of the target video by a source actor and re-render the manipulated output video in a photorealistic fashion. The mouth interior that best matches the re-targeted expression is retrieved from the target sequence and warped to produce an accurate fit. Finally, we convincingly re-render the synthesized target face on top of the corresponding video stream so that it seamlessly blends with the real-world illumination. We demonstrate our method in a live setup, where Youtube videos are reenacted in real time.” 4

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5  A Virtual Private Net­ work is an inexpensive way to build a Local Area Network over an existing connection, a Wide Area Network such as the Internet, while maintaining anonymity.

BOGOMIR DORINGER

This research shows how “fake” is real. Faces that perform on our screen can be manipulated, fabricated and used as distributors of designed narratives. It is no longer a big deal to access an archive of faces of famous or not famous people and apply it to the body of another actor, performer, or porn model. This has been the case with a few pop stars whose faces have been applied and shared on a porn channel known as “deepfakes.” Users could download the “FakeApp” that was created to give everyday people access to realistic faceswapping technology for creative and exploratory use. Special effects in older movies look silly to us today. Over time, our eyes will probably become trained to differentiate the material but, at the moment, as viewers we are confused by these kinds of special effects. The Google Arts & Culture app that allows you to compare your face with faces in paintings throughout history does not currently work in Europe.You need to install a VPN5 to be able to use it. Almost all of my friends and Instagram followers who live in Europe shared their results from this search, which means they must have gone to the trouble of using a VPN just to see who their doppelganger might be in a famous historical painting. This shows how much we appreciate our own faces and being recognized, or how much our ego is boosted through face recognizing. For this reason in particular, almost all popular apps use “face strategy.” My favorite app is Myidol, which can turn a selfie into a 3D avatar. It was launched in China by ­Huanshi Ltd. and then translated to other languages for other users. The amount of face scans that this app collected for the company is huge. Playful, voluntary contributions of faces is definitely a more intelligent and innovative way of creating face databases than illegal face scanning by the American military in the Middle East or at airports. “The system snaps a picture of a passenger leaving the United States and checks the person’s face with a gallery of photos maintained by Customs and Border Protection or the State Department. It also checks the person’s citizenship or immigration status against various homeland security and intelligence databases. For American citizens, the facial scans are checked against photos from State Department data-

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6 www.nytimes. com/2017/12/21/us/politics/ facial-scans-airports-secu­ rity-privacy.html 7 www.dazeddigital. com/artsandculture/arti­ cle/36295/1/inside-the-par­ is-raves-teaching-you-digi­ tal-security

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bases.” 6 Face collecting, for whatever reasons, pushed demand for masks and countersurveillance to the fore. In the article “Inside the Paris raves teaching you digital security,” 7 we are introduced to TransCyberian, the Parisian hacker-run noise party that is training artists on online safety—and also teaches nerds how to dance. Visitors to this event are inspired by CV Dazzle, a project by American-born artist Adam Harvey, a participating artist in the exhibition FACELESS and contributor to the book: they dance wearing make-up developed by Harvey that tricks facial recognition software. It is powerful to see how an art project influenced these young ­people and how they embraced the idea of countersurveillance. As the phenomenon of facelessness kept growing and has been of interest to many young and upcoming creative minds, we decided—with the support of the University of Applied Arts Vienna—to print this book in the University’s book series Edition Angewandte. The book consists of essays and artistic interventions relevant to the concept of facelessness. It is comprised of contributions from many creative individuals without whom the project would never have come to fruition. The contributions to this book explore a phenomenon that appears to be a contradiction in itself—we, the users of computers, can be tracked in digital space for all eternity. However, although one wants to be noticed and noticeable, one does not necessarily want to be instantly recognizable, to fall prey to an unfathomable public, or—even less so—to lose face. The book documents artistic and other strategies that demonstrate options for appearing in the infinite book of faces while avoiding inclusion in any records. The desire not to become a mere object of facial sell-out is not solely an aesthetic endeavor; the contributions also contain combative and sarcastic statements against a digital dynamic that has already deeply penetrated our everyday lives. I am aware that the pheno­menon will develop in coming years and that as an artist and researcher working on new projects there is a moment to let go, but I hope that this book provides documentation of a pheno­menon and its roots, naming, collecting and exploring, even challenging, the

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BOGOMIR DORINGER

phenomenon with contributions from others. I regard it as a tribute to my research and work that this topic has united so many individuals and continued to attract attention for so many years. At the very end of the introduction, I would like to thank: Brigitte Felderer, University of Applied Arts Vienna, who recognized the potential of my work and who made me fall in love with Vienna; Gerald Bast, Rector of the University of Applied Arts Vienna, for facilitating the project in the form of a publication, and extending it further; Christian Strasser, Director of MuseumsQuartier Wien, along with the powerful and hard working team at Q21, Elisabeth Hajek, Artistic Director, frei_raum Q21 exhibition space, Nina Wenko, Margit Mössmer & Esther Brandl, without whom this project could never have happened; Matthias Tarasiewicz, RIAT—Research Institute for Future Cryptoeconomics (Artistic Bokeh, Coded Cultures), whose expertise contributed to all five editions of the exhibition and the creation of the book before you; Henrik Ahr’s students Thilo Ullrich and Martin Hickmann of the Department for Stage and Costume Design, Film and Exhibition Architecture at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, for whom the idea of a “display cabinet” to hold all the works together sounded inspiring and for finding the solution and its realization; Mieke Bernink, Netherlands Film Academy, for her passion, kindness and sharing and her dedication during an educational process that is still ongoing; Jans Possel and Willem Welthoven from Mediamatic in Amsterdam, who were close to me while growing up; The Brown Family Collection, for being true art lovers, for putting artists in first place and opening their collection for the sake of the project; Rosamunde Van Brakel and Irina Baraliuc from Privacysalon, who followed and allowed the project to develop; Slatka Mala, my dear friend Aleksandra Pejovic, for her deep understanding and invariably sound advice; Julia Assl who strained her eyes watching over mails and communication with artists late into the night; Alessia Scuderi, who started assisting the project as a Social Design Student and finished it as a professional; My Mum Slavica, nana Kristina (Seka), and Lazar, known as Debeljko, for

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remaining optimistic and laughing throughout my childhood, and, not least, for allowing me to aim for what seemed impossible to others; Mr. Dave Captain, the only “turtle” that I love and Aad Stierum, both of whom helped me attain personal independence. I would contort my face to form a smiley to see my adored Rumi Lou adding this book to her shelf of favorites. I aim to be inspiring to her and help her go wherever she would like to be. Finally, big love to Masa Mandzuka, mother to our best artwork ever, Rumi Lou. FACELESS introduced me to the new and unique faces of many wonderful artists, but only one of these evokes such complex emotions as the face of Ren Hang. During his time as Artist-inResidence at q21 in the summer of 2013 (after a conversation in bad English about love that always sounded like funny poetry), I took Hang for his first swim. He remained in the water for hours, learning how to balance, and was then motivated to bring this new experience back to Beijing to share with his boyfriend and friends. From the outset I admired his collective awareness, the importance he set on sharing, and the brave work he was doing in China. Indeed, his photographs express his spirit well. During my visit to Beijing, to my big surprise he awarded me the unique experience of something that I have been missing for years: honest hospitality, emotionality and collective joy. He brought my childhood memories from Yugoslavia back to life and connected with me forever. I regret that I was not able to meet him on the dance floor of the Berlin Berghain Club in February 2017. Perhaps if we had danced together something would have been different, maybe we could have danced away his troubles. Perhaps he would not have made that horrific jump from everything and ended his life. It is hard for me to let it go. The restless feeling of not having showed up on his invitation to Berlin turns my stomach. But I always overcome this feeling with the memory of how he taught his boyfriend to swim in the pool of the Swedish Embassy in Beijing. I devote this book with love to Ren Hang.

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BOGOMIR DORINGER

Ren Hang and Huang Jiaqi by Mårten Westin

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Faceless Book THOMAS MACHO

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1

1  Raulff, Ulrich. 1984. “Image oder das öffentli­ che Gesicht.” In: Kamper, Dietmar/Wulf, Christoph (eds.): Das Schwinden der Sinne. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 46–58; here 53.

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About a hundred and thirty years ago, the age of photography began, involving the mass dissemination of various techniques, devices and machines for the serial reproduction of images. Starting in 1880, the first printed photographs appeared in newspapers; in 1888 the first celluloid roll film camera, George ­Eastman’s Kodak, came onto the market with the result that people no longer had to go to an atelier to have a portrait made; they could take photographs themselves, and that included photographs of their own faces. Before the beginning of this new age, portraits were as rare as good mirrors, and—with the exception of the stylized portraits of rulers to be seen on coins—they rarely circulated in public. Who could have a picture of themselves before the fin de siècle?  That was the privilege of artists and cultural elites. Today we can show our faces almost everywhere: on our IDs, websites, and mobile phones. In the modern period, as Ulrich Raulff, Director of the German Literature Archive in Marbach, put it, “No-one is unpictured or faceless: the period between 1870 and 1890 saw something like the birth of homo photographicus, of modern picture people. In these two decades a veritable revolution in western culture occurred insofar as pictures or rather people’s picturedness are concerned.”1 In February 2004—almost eighty years after the Leica camera went into series production—Facebook was launched as a social network on the Internet. Today about two billion people visit the website at least once a month. By the end of 2011, just under eight hundred million people had created an account, at least temporarily, and about 11.7 percent of the world’s population were registered users of Facebook. In the meantime, the figures have reached dimensions that make it extremely difficult to maintain an overview, as the debates on hate speech, pornographic images, and scenes of violence show. At the same time, the huge number of profiles of dead users increases daily and is now thought to have passed the thirty million mark. Equally interesting is the question of how many Facebook users post a portrait photograph of themselves to personalize their account. Increasingly frequently—in my limited circle at least—I notice strategies designed to avoid

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2  Deleuze, Gilles. 2003. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. Translated by Smith, Daniel W. London/ New York: Continuum, 20. 3  Deleuze, Gilles/Guattari, Félix. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus. Translated by Massumi, Brian. Minnea­ polis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 188f.

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using a picture of one’s own face. Instead, use is made of historical portraits, masks, images of objects, caricatures, fingerprints, symbols, logos, buildings, town plans, landscapes and even faces deliberately concealed. Only a tiny minority choose the option of not posting an image at all and making do with the symbolic silhouette that is the default setting on the network. Is Facebook in the process of being transformed into a Faceless Book? This development follows a simple logic: As soon as faces offer no benefits of individualization, original forms of facelessness and portrait criticism become attractive. The new facelessness in the Web can be seen as a political protest against surveillance and control, or as an attempt to apply aesthetic strategies of differentiation in a society with an increasing focus on faces. Did the visual arts not give up the realistic portrait at the same time as the triumph of photography and film began? In Cubism, established by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque around 1907, the faces are often distorted with displaced eyes, noses, and mouths. In Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) the faces are already slightly “peculiar,” as they are in his famous later portraits of Dora Maar. Other examples—for example, from the Dadaists or Surrealists—are not hard to find. René Magritte, for example, painted Le Double secret in 1927 with an opened head revealing tubes and balls and a detached face resembling the missing part of a jigsaw puzzle. The fact that faces need not necessarily belong to heads was shown by Gilles Deleuze with reference to the portraits painted by Francis Bacon: “As a portraitist, Bacon is a painter of heads, not faces, and there is a great difference between the two. For the face is a structured, spatial organization that conceals the head, whereas the head is dependent upon the body, even if it is the point of the body, its culmination.” 2 In his Mille Plateaux (written in 1980) he had already defined the face as a semiotic structure that is inaccessible to proprioception. The face is the body of the signifier, a “white wall/black hole system. A broad face with white cheeks, a chalk face with eyes cut in for a black hole. Clown head, white clown, moon-white mime, angel of death, Holy Shroud…A horror story, the face is a horror story.” 3

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PA B L O PI C A S SO: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), oil on canvas, 243.9 × 233.7 cm (Museum of Modern Art, New York)

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THOMAS MACHO

R E NÉ M A G R I TTE : Le Double secret (1927), oil on canvas, 114 × 162 cm (Centre Pompidou, Paris)

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2

4  Turrini, Peter. 2006. “Endlich Schluss.” In: Die Eröffnung. Endlich Schluss. Kindsmord: Monologe. Edit­ ed by Silke Hassler. Frank­ furt am Main: Suhrkamp, 51–88; here 81.

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Criticism of the “horror story” of the face can take the form of disguise and a renunciation of pictures. In league with felt pen and pencil, the public eyes “watching you” from advertising and election posters, as if they were “on the look-out for someone else,”4 are modified and obliterated. The techniques of facial criticism in the public space are well known: A few days before an election, few posters still show the uncommented and unmodified faces of power. A few deft strokes usually suffice: Horns add a diabolic touch to even the most civil physiognomy; a stuck-out tongue gives the face an infantile look; a Hitler moustache signalizes tyrannical tendencies, and a pair of glasses indicates impaired cognition and a disturbed sense of reality. Front teeth with gaps, the canines of a vampire, or a beard or long hair are quickly drawn. Text can also be added to express a variety of responses—from anger and irony to racist or sexist aversion. And if all else fails, a part of the poster portrait can simply be torn away. Defacement of public faces can be interpreted as criticism of the image of the person portrayed but also as criticism of digital image enhancement software, which has long been used to conceal and falsify with results that people then try to rework with their more trad­ itional tools: paint sprays and brushes, and crayons and scissors. In November 2001, a few weeks before the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, Will Becton and Stephen Hoban from Williamsburg made numerous trips on the New York subway. On the subway platforms they noticed several Britney Spears posters that had been defaced with great diversity and vehemence. They posted their discoveries on the Internet under the title Defacing Britney and invited discussion as follows: “In their first five outings, Stephen and Will collected numerous examples of defaced posters. The project started when Stephen and Will were struck by the diversity and vehemence of a seemingly spontaneous campaign against the country’s ‘virgin’ queen of pop music. Subway posters have always been defaced, but while some of the graffiti was your garden-variety, juvenile bathroom scrawl, much of it seemed to tap into a deeper level of frustration and confusion. Britney's iconic status attracted a number of angry, scrawled

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W I L L B E CT O N/STE PH E N H OB A N : Defacing Britney (2001), {http://mrbellersneighborhood.com/2001/11/defacing-britney}; last accessed on 31 July 2017.

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J O H N GO T O : Loss of Face (2002), {http://www.johngoto.org.uk/LossFace/index.htm}; last accessed on 31 July 2017.

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5  Cf. {http://mrbellers­ neighborhood.com/2001/11/ defacing-britney}; last accessed on 31 July 2017. 6  Groebner, Valentin. 2003. Ungestalten. Die visuelle Kultur der Gewalt im Mittelalter. Munich/Vienna: Carl Hanser, 71.

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rants—against her status as a sex symbol, against America’s status as a global power, against the current state of the music and culture industry, against the growing power of multinational conglomerates like AOL and Viacom, and thanks to the poster’s unique iconography, against the pop star's attempt to look like Elvis.” 5 One case was particularly striking: Britney Spears’ face had been torn away revealing another face underneath, while a speech bubble on her breast reads: “Liberate me!” What was done to the public face of Britney Spears on the New York subway could be interpreted as a campaign based on the magic of images, as a case of humiliation, rape or murder in effigie. In this context it should be remembered that physical mutilation as a form of punishment—creating scars and other stigmata, through blinding or amputation of the nose, ears and lips—was practised for many centuries. In 1938, the Swiss physician and racial anthropologist George Montandon published an article in France in which he called for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine as “a solution to the Jewish problem.” He wanted Jews to be deprived of any other nationality and above all intermarriage and sexual contact between Jews and non-Jews to be forbidden. To ensure implementation of this “preventive policy,” Montandon proposed draconian punishments: Male offenders were to be castrated, while women under the age of forty were to have their noses cut off because he thought that nothing made people uglier than an amputated nose. As Valentin Groebner puts it, “Some threats not only have a face; they occur explicitly in the human face.” 6 The traces of literal losses of face have a symbolic equivalent in the iconoclasms of the 16th century, as documented in the photographs taken by British artist John Goto for an exhibition entitled Loss of Face (2002). “The Loss of Face series comprises over one hundred photographs taken from church rood screens in Norfolk, Suffolk and Devon. The rood screen traditionally separated the nave, which was occupied by the congregation, from the chancel, which was the domain of the clergy. Painted images of saints, prophets, kings, archbishops, Apostles and angels, sometimes rustic in appearance,

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7  Quoted from the project presentation on the artist’s website: {http://www.john­ goto.org.uk/LossFace/index. htm}; last accessed on 31 July 2017.

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populated the lower part of these ornate and colorful screens. The rood itself was a carving of the crucified Christ that appeared suspended between the screen and the chancel arch above. My images can be viewed as forensic photographs showing evidence of the often vicious methods used by the iconoclasts, or more precisely ambonoclasts (breakers of screens). The eyes were gouged, the faces slashed and the mouths sometimes bunged. One might speculate on the instruments used—knives, daggers, swords, pikes and chisels. By exposing the materiality of the painting, by hacking back to the wooded substrata, they aimed to reveal the illusion of the painting to gullible believers who might otherwise worship the image itself. ‘See, it’s only a painting,’ said the iconoclasts.” 7 The public faces of the saints were robbed of their status and also of their view of the faithful; scratching out the face—and especially the eyes—had the effect of censoring pious devotion, but at the same time it was a symbolic blinding of the watching eyes. To that extent the defacement of the saints offered protection to the depicted figures against public appearance and importunate attention. Censorship is ambiguous; it has both a protection and a punishment aspect in a strategic alternation of seeing and being seen. We still cannot decide, for example, whether the thick black line above the eyes of one of the faces is the “speck in the eye” of the brother or the “beam” in our own (Mt. 7:3). Such paradoxes were also involved in a number of drawings in the emotionally debated controversy surrounding caricatures of the face of Muhammad following the publication in the Danish Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005 of twelve cartoons, which dealt—some better than others—with the Prophet. The title page shows a drawing by Rasmus Sand Høyer in which the shape of the black censorship bar across the eyes of a bearded Muslim complete with turban and sword is reflected in the wide open eyes of two black-veiled women on either side of him.

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3

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8  Aragon, Louis. 2007. Aurélien. Novel. Trans­ lated into German by Lydia ­Babilas. Berlin: List, 81f. 9  Rainer, Arnulf. 1985. Geschwollenes — Verronnenes. In: Arnulf Rainer: Totenmasken. Salzburg/ Vienna: Residenz, 23–31; here 27f. 10  Cf. “Enquête: Le suicide est-il une solution?” In: La Révolution Surréaliste. No 2. Première année (15 Janvier 1925). Paris: Librai­ rie Gallimard. 1925, 8–15; here 11.

THOMAS MACHO

During the Second World War, a quite different experimental approach was adopted by the surrealist photographer Man Ray with photographic mirror and double images and black censor­ ship bars for his treatment of the famous death mask of the Inconnue de la Seine. The photographs were intended as illustrations for Louis Aragon’s novel Aurélien (1944), in which he makes reference to the mask of the Inconnue, “this white thing with its eyes shut” and her “smile beyond pain.” 8 In his work, Man Ray shares a fascination that had gripped Rilke, Alfred Döblin, and Ödön von Horváth before him: an enthusiasm, not for the morbid but for artistic creativity as a strategy for reanimation. To this fascinating story should perhaps be added that the mask of the Inconnue was in all probability not taken from a young suicide but from a living woman and that, for several decades now, the Norwegian Asmund S. Laerdal, originally a toy manufacturer, has been selling a technically advanced first-aid training dummy (for ambulance crews and fire brigades), which—in a strange moment of sentimentality—he designed with the features of the Inconnue. An ostensible death mask as a symbol of resurrection? That is how Arnulf Rainer saw his painted-over death masks: as almost shamanistic acts of transformation. “I am an ‘energetician.’ My works develop from a principle of ‘energetic transformation,’ conversion, the release of stored forces into new and present people or present radiation, energy…Extracted and individually impaled, many of the faces spoke to me of redemption. I gave it to them through facial surgery, with excrescences and furrows, overgrowth or transposition into energy bundles.” 9 Rainer’s fascination with the shamanistic “resurrection” of overworked faces is rooted not only in a playful use of the differences between photography and painting but also in an enthusiasm for techniques of the self, mirror images and performative self-portraits. After Oskar Kokoschka, who had responded to a questionnaire on suicide in the magazine Révolution Surréaliste (on 15 January 1925) by submitting a self-portrait entitled Moi-même mort,10 Rainer experimented at an early age with depictions of himself as a dead man. The impossible picture functioned as it

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were as an anticipation of his own resurrection. The overpaintings of his own face impart fresh motion to the mortification of the mirror image, the death photo. In poses and grimaces a new vitality is revealed, which Rainer—quoting from Max Picard’s The Human Face (1929)—described as a “guiding face for a new living.” 11 Rainer’s facial overpainting strategy (including its eschatological focus) was radicalized by action artist Günter Brus, who transferred it from the media of photo­graphy and castings to his own body. In his performative Body Analyses the head itself is transformed, painted over, and put up against the wall, against a projection surface par excellence, i.e. the “white wall/black hole system.” In these actions, the differences between portrait and loss of face become as apparent as they are in the face overpainting executed by Arnulf Rainer.

11  Arnulf Rainer: Geschwollenes — ­Verronnenes. Ibid., 25. 12  Cf. Helnwein, Gottfried. 2006. Face It. Catalog of the exhibition held at the Lentos Art Museum in Linz (10 March – 5 June 2006). Vienna: Christian Brand­ stätter. 13  “Malerei muss sein wie Rockmusik.” Gottfried Helnwein talking to Andreas Mäckler. Munich: Beck 1992, 53.

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No less disturbing are the works of Gottfried Helnwein, cycles of haunting portraits combining the media of painting, photo­ graphy, and performance, as shown for example in a retrospective entitled Face It, held in the Lentos Art Museum in Linz in 2006.12 Helnwein’s works alternate with disturbing ­intensity between a fetishist fascination with dressings and medical instruments and a horror of facial injury, whether resulting from accident or war. In an interview with Andreas Mäckler, he speaks of self-mutilation while at school and a traumatizing childhood, which recur constantly in the motif of the injured and abused child: “I didn’t find the self-harm actions unpleasant; on the contrary, they were rays of light at a sad time…I was like a child who likes wearing a plaster or bandage.” 13 Through his own experiences with marginalization and abuse, Helnwein was motivated in his early years in Vienna to protest strongly against the Austrian forensic psychiatrist Heinrich Gross, who had worked for many years at the Spiegelgrund Children’s Clinic, a notorious Nazi euthanasia center. In addition to injured faces, Helnwein also worked—in both photography and painting—with the staging of the face. His photographs of prominent stars (Faces, 1992) were reprinted just as often as the pop art paintings of Marilyn Monroe and

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THOMAS MACHO

A R NU L F R A I N E R : Face Farces: Color Stripes (1972) (Albertina Wien)

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GÜ NT E R B R U S: Self-Painting, Self-Mutilation (1965)

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James Dean. Nor should it be forgotten how considered and consistently the actress Marilyn Monroe herself tried to manage her image, a mirror identity, to which her second name corresponded. Traces of this endeavor are to be found not only in sensitive novels like Michel Schneider’s Marilyn, dernières séances (2006) but also in the painted-over faces that Marilyn Monroe produced herself after the last photo sessions with Bert Stern for Vogue in June 196214—using an orange nail varnish that seems to imitate the color of the scarf in which she wrapped her naked body for Stern and the camera. The streaks with which she rejected or scratched the contact prints—drafts for a new image for the actress—can definitely be seen as elements of the composition, as comments and forms of expression, which both reject and emphasize the public face. Bert Stern derived his later fame from the few hours he spent with Marilyn Monroe at the time, just a few weeks before her suicide on 5 August 1962.

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THOMAS MACHO

14  Cf. Stern, Bert. 2002. Marilyn Monroe: The Last Sitting. Munich: Schirmer & Mosel.

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Archiving FACELESS BOGOMIR DORINGER

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J Ü R GE N K L A UK E : Antlitze (1972/2001), installation, in: CTRL-SPACE, ZKM Karlsruhe

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DRESSED TO KILL1 (OUTFITS FOR POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHANGE) German born artist JÜRGEN KLAUKE is known for working mainly with photography. From today's point of view, his artistic practice has fashion quality because he uses various folded and manipulated fabrics and attachments to his own body for his research on gender and identity, sometimes creating surreal “garments” reminding us of runway collections from the Japanese fashion label Comme des Garçons (see pages 58 and 244). Klauke’s work can be connected with the FACELESS phenomenon in many ways, but one work in particular stands out. This is the project Antlitze 2 that started with the terrorist attack at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972, when 8 terrorists were shown in the newspapers behind masks. “In the Morning of Sept. 5, the 11th day of the Games, five Arab terrorists burst into the Israeli team quarters.They shot wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg and weightlifterYossef Romano and took nine Israeli sportspeople hostage.They then demanded the release of Arabs detained by the Israelis. The negotiations took place live in front of the TV cameras.That evening, the terrorists and hostages were taken to the airport, ostensibly to fly them out.The attempt to free the hostages on the apron by force went disastrously wrong and things took a bloody end. All nine Israeli hostages, the five Arabs and one German policeman were killed.The pictures went round the world. One image that was particularly lasting was that of a masked man who had pulled a stocking, knotted at the top, over his head, and the foot of the stocking hung down on one side.” 3

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1  Dressed to Kill is a 1980 American erotic thriller written and directed by Brian De Palma. 2 [Faces] 3 http://hosting.zkm.de/ ctrlspace/d/texts/25?

BOGOMIR DORINGER

Seeing a person’s face is a way of distinguishing one person from another. Some would argue that the face is what makes an individual stand out too—what immediately makes us different from each other. In 2000, Jürgen Klauke exhibited his collection of terrorists’ masked faces publicly. It consisted of 96 “portraits” that he had collected over the years. The exhibition was held at The Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, Germany. The enlarged images hung on two floors of the exhibition space, creating a dominant presence confronting visitors.

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“Faces masked in a wide variety of ways thus made visitors feel they should engage in dialogue, but yet the masks refused to speak. Since all of these masked faces had received sad fame in the press, some visitors might remember the one or other incident. However, as Klauke had taken the heads out of context, hardly anyone will now be able to assign all the faces to a specific event.They can thus only be recognized to a limited extent, and by contrast the encounter with the aesthetic stimuli of all manner of disguising masks is a new sensation.The beauty of these pictures, a product among other things of the cropping, tends to prevent us from recollecting the terror that was associated with the originals. After all, Klauke’s series is a ‘typology of horror’, as he himself says.” 4

4 http://hosting.zkm.de/ ctrlspace/d/texts/25? 5 French: Les yeux sans visage is a 1960 horror film adaptation of Jean Redon’s novel of the same title, directed by Georges Franju.

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This exhibition remains significant because it announced the growth of terrorism in the media and the “fashion” for hiding faces on ideological grounds, or to promote an idea that one, or a group, wants to communicate and fight for. The exhibition that took place just one year before 9/11 also demonstrated how what used to be eight masked faces is now a crowd. With this project, Klauke makes us aware of the seductive quality of images of masked faces and the tension of not knowing who is behind the masks. An uncanny presence that arises fear sometimes tinged with sexual tension is often a powerful element in horror movies, like in the slasher movie Halloween from 1978, directed by John ­Carpenter. Famous fictional film character Michael Myers is a serial killer who wears a neutral white mask (inspired by the movie Eyes W   ithout a Face 5). We can’t see his eyes due to the depth of the holes in his mask. His gaze is a dark empty space that portrays his madness and danger. His white plastic face waits in the dark, disturbing the joy of a Halloween holiday replete with American family values in Haddonfield, Illinois (US). The victims in the Halloween movie sequels try to take off the white mask and face Myers, as if face-to-face contact would diminish his drive to kill and change his mindset. As if face-to-face communication could make us more kind, more humane, vulnerable in both directions. The victims are trying to face the killer as a way to avoid death. On the other hand, as the audience we want to know

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6  The Night Porter (Italian: Il portiere di notte) is a 1974 Italian erotic psycho­ drama film, directed and co-written by Liliana Cavani.

BOGOMIR DORINGER

who is behind the mask, what this tall maniac looks like, whether his face reflects the terror he creates or the murders have reshaped his face, like the sins Dorian Gray committed did to his portrait in the novel by Oscar Wilde from 1890. Or perhaps, on the contrary, he looks just like us and this shows us that evil does not have a face, which is precisely how fear is being spread in contemporary media and recent popular TV shows, where bad and good are hard to tell apart. Horror cinema plays with the death drive and the sex drive. In these narratives Eros and Thanatos dance together, creating a tension that sometimes grows into sexual worship for a character that is an enemy/stranger/alien/monster. Could this be a ­survival strategy? To transform fear into a pleasure? For ­example, let’s take Stockholm syndrome. This syndrome was the subject of the movie Night Porter,6 starring an astonishingly cold-looking Charlotte Rampling, who plays a holocaust survivor who meets an ex-Nazi SS officer played by Dirk Bogarde with whom she has been, and still wants to be, in a sadomasochistic relationship. They meet after many years, at the reception desk of a hotel where most of the rooms are let to “lost souls” from WWII. Bogarde now works as a receptionist. The story takes place in Freudian Vienna. Critics were quite divided about the movie. Many thought it promoted sadomasochistic relationships while fetishizing the Nazis. I would argue that the aestheticization of the Holocaust and the beauty of the images in this movie left behind a seductive and influentially fashionable trace that is strongly embedded in the SM scene, for example, the suspenders that topless Charlotte Rampling wears while performing Marlene Dietrich’s “Wenn ich mir was wünschen dürfte” for NAZI officers. One cannot mention the Stockholm syndrome and Vienna without also referring to Natascha Kampusch, the ten-year-old Austrian girl who was abducted in 1998 and raised in a Vienna basement by her kidnapper, Wolfgang Prˇiklopil. After she escaped in 2006, Wolfgang killed himself and Natascha gave public appearances where she shared her story and unusual sympathy for her kidnapper, who had apparently had a very harsh childhood

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at the hands of his Nazi mother. In a way similar to the movies, an unspoken and unresolved hidden past transforms itself into perversion and a desire to abuse because this is a way of showing love. On the contrary, an abused victim translates the experience into a kind of appreciation, even into a romantic attachment, as a survival mechanism. In the project Phobiarama, Dutch theater maker and visual artist DR IE S VE R H OE VE N creates an “amusement park” ride through our media-constructed fears. While being driven through the designed space/stage/installation for the performance in small railway cars, the audience is exposed to sounds from various political speeches creating noise on TVs suspended in corners of the space. We hear them fragmented, just as the mass media content that reaches us often is, except that the tone of these speeches creates a restlessness (right). So, we are in a political horror movie like a labyrinth ride. We are riding on a loop. Masks are needed to fulfill the cliché of a horrorshow atmosphere. First, huge bears enter the space. They watch us. They spread through the labyrinth and confuse our perception of the space. Standing in corners, we sometimes wonder whether we might just be passive observers of some strange gathering. After a while these bears change into clowns. They move closer and closer to the moving vehicles, sometimes breathing behind us, sometimes even sitting on the moving car, almost, but never actually, touching us. The closer they are, the louder the noise of the TVs that now deliver the distorted audio. These masked bodies suddenly appear masculine. Costumes are taken off. We can smell men’s perfumes in the air, there is too much of it and it’s uncomfortable. We are now watching well-shaped, handsome men of mixed, Arab, or black descent, stripping. We had been warned about them in media, their physical features belong to the media descriptions of marginalized groups that we are supposed to fear and that many, if not most, of us do fear. We might admire their physicality and presence because we define them as “exotic” although feeling intimidated by the sudden presence of nudity and high levels of testosterone in the air of this

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DR I E S V E R H O E VE N : Phobiarama © Willem Popelier

“Come over here, boom! Come over here, boom! It’s gonna get worse and worse. It’s gonna get worse and worse. It’s gonna get worse and worse folks. The situation is worse than it has ever been before.” (Donald Trump, President of the USA)

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“My friends, we are living in hard and difficult times. Europe is becoming a continent of headscarves and mosques. In Europe, we have foolishly allowed millions, millions of immigrants from Muslim coun­ tries to settle within our borders. In the Netherlands ­Mohammed is already the second most popular name among new born boys. And it gets even worse: last summer, in my hometown The Hague sympa­ thizers with the Islamic State paraded openly in the streets. They openly carried swastikas, they carried the black flags of the Islamic State.” (Geert Wilders, PVV Party Leader, populist party)

BOGOMIR DORINGER

“You are living in a land of war, you either come to the Islamic State and live under the law of Allah, or you prepare your explosive devices. You either pur­ chase your airline ticket or you sharpen your knife. Do not be deceived by Western leaders telling you that they have nothing against Islam and Muslims and that they are only fighting terrorism. They are attacking the Muslim people as a whole.” (John Maguire, Canadian IS terrorist)

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claustrophobic labyrinth in the “well behaved” Netherlands. The amusement park ride turned into cruising. The fear stripped itself into masculine, pornographic tension. The experience of sexuality and tension generates a slight sense of unease and discomfort. Some of us feel ashamed, some of us excited, some disgusted by the process that the artist involved us in and that just took place. When the lights are turned on in the designed stage box, we try to avoid the gazes of the gang that is looking at us, we are looking for a way out. Dries Verhoeven demonstrates the fetishization of an enemy, perhaps a terrorist. Could it be that some of us encounter popular media fabrications with hidden desire? Do media fabrications have a perverted influence on us? That the relationship with a so-called “enemy,” a “terrorist,” is sometimes sadomasochistic is also evidenced in the humiliation of those in Guantanamo Bay, accused of terrorism by the American military. This is a documented example where men were stripped and piled as body sculptures, coerced into homosexual inter­ action. Sometimes they were used as live sculptures with masked faces or bags over their heads. Sexual humiliation was used, among many other techniques that were developed as a way to break an interrogated person with a Muslim background, in order to elicit confessions under feelings of shame. In a demand to close Guantanamo Bay, Amnesty International organized a series of public protests where groups of people walked down the streets in orange suits and with their heads covered in black bags. This presence has been also translated into street art, possibly by Banksy (see image on the left). In recent years there have been many public protests where faces are behind masks to avoid high-end face recognition Banksy graffiti, photo Eadmundo, Wikimedia Commons

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7  The Guy Fawkes mask is a stylized depiction of Guy Fawkes, the best-known member of the Gunpowder Plot, who attempted to blow up the House of Lords in London in 1605. It will be mentioned again later (see page 81). 8  Also known as a balaclava helmet or ski mask, a form of cloth headgear designed to expose only part of the face.

BOGOMIR DORINGER

technology, but also to promote the power of a collective body and sense of togetherness. The use of Guy Fawkes7 masks at public protests, such as by the Occupy Movement or Anonymous, resulted in anti-mask laws in Canada, Spain etc. although many countries already had such a law in place, for example in the USA, against the Ku Klux Klan in the 20th century. ­Russian punk, protest, female group Pussy Riot is known for their colorful balaclavas.8 In an interview in The Guardian they stated that wearing masks gives them power, transforms them, and they compared themselves to superheroes who stand up against the Orthodox church and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Any person wearing a similar mask anywhere in the world embodies the protest and extends her/himself through this act. This is how Pussy Riots and other protests spread worldwide through Internet action and public gatherings. I should also mention the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, which appears behind black balaclavas, or protesters in the Cibitoke neighborhood of Bujumbura, Burundi in 2015. When protesters in Burundi contested a constitutional court ruling that cleared President Pierre ­Nkurunziza to run for a controversial third term, they wore self-made masks to avoid being recognized by their faces. Clothes, fashion, dress codes or masks play an important part in how we perceive or read somebody. We can decide, based on their dress, whether somebody is powerful, weak, rich, poor, interesting or relevant, or what religion the person is, and also whether he or she is a terrorist or “dressed to kill.” Anybody who fashionably accessorizes with items used by so-called terrorists becomes a terrorist in the media. Terrorism is a tendency. Are all the portraits in Jürgen Klauke’s artwork Antlitze really of terrorists? This brings us back to an understanding of masks as ritualistic objects that were also used in wars to unite all warriors’ bodies into one. It appears that a mask allows performing the impossible, something one alone could not do that easily or, in some cases, allows truth to be spoken. “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” (Oscar Wilde)

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BURKAS AND BALACLAVAS Following the events of 9/11, images of terrorists’ masked faces became dominant in the media; repeated as ghostly, unknown presences that remind us of the unsafe times we live in. At the same time, throughout Europe people have begun to pursue a ban on burkas that is already legally binding in many countries today. In Italy it was banned back in 1975. Events like the murders of politician Pim Fortuyn (19 February 1948 – 6 May 2002) and film director Theo van Gogh (23 July 1957 – 2 November 2004) in The Netherlands led to public discussions on the impact of Muslim culture, through Muslim minorities, on so-called “Western values.” On my arrival in the Netherlands in 2004, many art students at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy were working directly with the subject of the burka. The topic was even explored metaphorically in my interactive video graduation work, the installation Deranged (2008), where the artwork and the viewer are simultaneously “deranged” by each other’s presence (left). Despite my endeavors to create something more abstract, viewers saw a burka in the work. It was hard for them to disassociate from the media imagery of the time and perceive the video work differently. Since 2001, S HAHRAM ­E NT EKHABI has been covering ­female heads and bodies in order to sensitize Western viewers to the chador as an omnipresent element of everyday life in his home country of Iran. Ironically, at the same time he refers to the common practice during the time of the Islamic revolution in Iran, when religious leaders censored books and magazines, covering im­ ages of female bodies. By covering the naked bodies of female models on sex workers’ cards collected from phone booths in heavily tour­ isty areas of London, Entekhabi combines different understandings of the female body.

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In the performance This is not me, this is also me (2010), ­V A NE S S A L O D IGIA N I dressed in six different identities and sat with Marina Abramovic´ in the course of six different days during The Artist is Present at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The piece culminated with the artist’s appearance in a full-length burka with only

her eyes revealed, annulling her identity as an artist and as an individual. Lodigiani instead becomes the embodiment of a collective identity, as the ques­ tion of what it means to be “the other” comes into focus, forcing the viewers, who are unaware of the performance, to wrestle with their own prejudices set within the sociopolitical context.

the traditional to the theatrical and combines draped and folds fabrics in a rich array of tex­ tures and colors. He poses and

obsessive photographs keep the identity of the artist concealed. By photographing himself in these costumes, he adopts multiple personas. He explores different approaches to self-con­ cealment: he adapts and re-ap­ propriates clothing ranging from

NE Z A K E T E K I CI’s Gravity (2007) primarily addresses the headscarf debates taking place worldwide, and the contempo­ rary complexities of political and social identity. The burka debate that started at the latter part of the twentieth century, and then in particular after 9/11, raised numerous polarizing political disputes and issues of religious

tolerance. In this video, the technique of head­ scarf binding is closely monitored, and as the repetition of Ekici’s actions continues she eventually disappears under her garment.

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BOGOMIR DORINGER

2041 is an artist project by ­L E W I S CH A PLIN made in collaboration with an anonymous 89-year-old British concealment fetishist. The eponymous book, published by Here Press in 2014, is a collection of self-portraits by 2041, in which his meticulous,

performs in front of his camera and around his home. 2041’s first memories of the pleasure of be­ ing enveloped in swathes of cloth are from his days as a choirboy seven decades ago. As an adult, he developed an interest in more complete coverings and began to document what he was doing. But it is only in the last ten years, since he bought a computer and found a community of fellow enthusiasts online, that he has been able to share his passion. The book 2041 selects from thousands of images that he has made, and Lewis continues to collaborate with 2041 on collab­ orative photographs, videos and private performances.

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ARCHIVING FACELESS For C A R O N G EA R Y, the mask permits the creation of “Feral,” a covert persona encompassing qualities that are tribal, religious,

This is a still from the video WOE ONTO THOSE WHO SPIT ON THE FEAR GENERATION THE WIND WILL BLOW IT BACK, produced for Raf Simon’s “Fear Generation” menswear collection from the 2000s. It was conceived before 9/11 and predated by the days of the G8 Summit in July 2001 that saw a 23-year-old Italian protester, Carlo Giuliani, shot

and political rather than mythical or surreal, and barring immediate recognition on the basis of race, sexuality, class, or gender. This harsher aesthetic challenges mainstream concepts of beauty and confronts social conform­ ism, placing the conventional viewer in a state of confusion. Despite the fact that the mask leaves the mouth and eyes ex­ posed, it does not permit a clear

degree even sexually. Prohibiting immediate recognition hinders two-way communication. It makes it difficult to abuse or attack a potential target if we cannot quantify it. The mask also affords the wearer a distance, reducing the audiences’ level of comfort and increasing their feeling of intimidation. You can question “it,” possibly fear “it,” but “its” power stems from a

identification of gender, and as such goes beyond the realms of androgyny. Regardless of an obvious resistance to ­distorted notions of femininity, Feral somehow remains attractive to a variety of social groups, to a

lack of understanding as to what “it” actually is. “It” commands fear and admiration simultane­ ously, a combination of qualities that has proven historically to be at once lethal and seductive.

dead. The video was filmed in a schoolyard by Willy Vanderperre. The look for Spring/Summer was a defense against the crushing authoritar­ ianism of globalization. It reflects social tension and the times of change.

DA VID H A IN ES is neither traditional nor experimental. He draws on imagery and fashion from the mainstream, 1990s-look street culture of northern England, using logos and brand names such as Osiris Shoes, Reebok, Adidas and Nike Air, often literally applying them to faces. His work refers at times to both ancient myths and present day culture, for example by layering images, meanings, and associations. Images found online form the basis of his com­ positions, which depict young men as hooligans absorbed in mysterious, cruel, and fetishistic

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situations. ­Employing references to medieval and Early Renais­ sance illusionism, the drawings are intended to defy their orig­ inal digital, throwaway nature. Haines often leaves remnants of chewing gum, blood, saliva, and squashed mosquitoes on the surface of the drawings. Mass media, adolescence, cruelty, and gay erotica are the core themes in Haines’s work. Experiment With Flowers And Burgers (2011) is included in the exhibition series.

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Departing from the belief that any person, regardless of gen­ der, ethnic, religious or other social affiliation, can opt for a radical act in public, in the video installation Handicraft I (2011) � E N K O, the pro­ by S A S A ­T K A C cess preceding this decision is analyzed through the simulation of its infinite delay. The constant repetition of the object's crea­ tion and destruction, which sum­ marizes the historical, social and media-constructed perception of terrorism, indicates the impact of the symbolic on the individual. The process of patiently knitting and persistently tearing the mask is, therefore, nothing but a

constant interweav­ ing of acceptance and rejection of both the roles and beliefs that are socially and polit­ ically imposed on the individual when deal­ ing with the ­decision to radically act in public. Playing with the expectations and meanings associated with the figure of a well-known terrorist with the balaclava over the face, the Handicraft video installation transfers the uncertainty and doubt in relation to the decision process to the observer as well. Much as the young woman in

As REBEL Y UT HS, Damier Johnson, who received no formal education in fashion, creates colorful masks and garments inspired by anthropol­ ogy. The masks have horrific ­expressions

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“perverse.” Xevi Triptych (2007) combines all of these elements, while the posture of the body re­

that vacillate between the comical and violent, often with ­sexual tension. From an African background, they engage with ­Johnson’s rage against colonial­ ism and his feeling of displace­ ment as an immigrant in the EU.

minds the viewer of images from Guantanamo Bay (see page 40).

BOGOMIR DORINGER

S L A V A M O G U T IN wrote a statement about his art: “Com­ ing from a conservative and oppressive Soviet background, I examine the very concept of shame by being completely shameless.” He continues by saying that he is a voyeur who likes to document people in intimate, vulnerable settings. Looking for primal beauty and innocence in unconventional and often explicit scenes might be consid­ ered “obscene,” “shocking,” or

the video is unable to perform her work to the end, so the spectator cannot entirely justify the semantics behind the image representing him/her. * From the text “Behind the Iconography of Terrorism and Violence in Video Works by Saša Tkac �enko” by Ana Bogdanovic´

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9/11

1  In Greek mythology, Icarus succeeded in flying with wings made by his father Daedalus, using feathers secured with beeswax. Ignoring his father’s warnings, Icarus chose to fly too close to the sun, melting the wax, and he fell into the sea and drowned.

The collapse of the World Trade Center, also known as the Twin Towers, in New York on September 11th in 2001, was broadcast worldwide. We all indirectly witnessed this event, or came across this tragedy, in the form of still or moving images. In the painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus1 by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the focus is on the daily routine of a farmer who is working the land. Everything seems in order and fine, but in the bottom right corner of painting, between the ship and the land, we can see two legs sticking out of the water. This is Icarus. His famous fall takes very little space in the painting, although it does share the same frame. In a similar way, to some of us, 9/11 or any contemporary armed conflict seems like a tragedy at a distance, far removed. However we are part of the same painting, the same composition. We might feel the wave that these events produce as subtle or extreme, either way they do impact our existence. These events influence our daily life and routines.

PI E T E R B R U E GE L: Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (1558), Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels

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M A R K B R O W N contributed to the exhibition with an inter­ vention on an old postcard of the WTC. The pair of images, a

“before” and an “after,” suggests a time of change.

The Two Towers (2010) epitomizes the missing link between spiritual minimal­ ism, radical art, and MARC B IJ L’S personal interest in goth music, politics, and graffiti art. The black paint dripping from the top of two full-length mirrors suggests the crashing of the towers,

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lyn, listening to the project as the WTC towers collapsed. In 2011, Basinski corrected earlier reports where he described recording the last hour of daylight on 9/11 in NYC with a video camera focused on the smoke where the towers were, from a neighbor’s

roof. Then he set the first loop as the soundtrack to that footage. Stills from the video were used as the covers for the set of four CDs. This was the soundtrack to the exhibition and could be heard throughout the ­gallery space.

BOGOMIR DORINGER

W I L L I A M B A SIN SK I’S Disintegration Loop 1.1 (2001) consists of one static shot of Lower ­Manhattan billowing smoke during the last hour of daylight on 11 September 2001. The work is based on ­Basinski’s attempts to salvage earlier recordings made on magnetic tape by transferring them to a digital format; however, the tape had deteriorated to the point that the ferrite detached from the plastic backing and fell off as it passed by the tape head. Basinski said that he finished the project on the morning of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and was sitting with friends on the roof of his apartment building in Brook­

literally defacing viewers’ reflec­ tions in the process. Taking as its starting point the 9/11 WTC attacks and the endless debates and conspiracy theories they triggered, this piece is emblem­ atic of the human ability to turn every disastrous event into an abstract idea of good and evil.

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SURVEILLANCE The consequences of September 11, the fear of terrorist attacks, led to a change in security concepts and the installment of surveillance systems in public space—presented to us as for our own safety. As a result, we feel that our faces are becoming “compressed” and exposed. It is no longer that cameras are only mounted in public space, they are also present on our phones and home computers. In discussions about surveillance I would often hear arguments such as “I don’t have anything to hide.”  They would sometimes come from gay friends. I guess, nobody has to hide anything until their lifestyle or actions, skin color or DNA, religion etc., are deemed illegal. Recent political changes in Europe and the USA are great example of the temporality of ideas and law. In the popular  TV show The Handmaid’s Tale, based on the novel from 1985 by Canadian-born writer Margaret Atwood, female freedom is taken away after human infertility has taken over the world. Those women who are able to have children are given to the elite, to serve and produce children. They belong to the government. It is no coincidence that this topic has been presented in the form of a TV show during the presidency of Donald Trump. In the exhibition FACELESS, I have selected art projects that present different types of surveillance––from corporate, computer, hand-held devices, social networks, biometrics, human operatives, self-­surveillance etc.

With a Delay Room (2001) for the viewer, BERND O PPL has created a phobia space observed by a small camera. Two sets of film-model hallways spin in a loop, creating a feeling of cinematic suspense. We are not sure if somebody will appear, or whether we are the main character, trapped in this surreal scenery.

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While standing in the installation Feedback (2012) by artist B O B M I L O S H EVIC � , we are compressed and observed from different sides. It almost feels as if it is impossible to ­escape this technological set-up ­capturing our presence. Various old technologies have been used to create the installation. At the exhibition, many visitors tried to catch themselves on one

of the screens or projections using their phones in order to document a glimpse of technologically projected presence using another technology—to regain oneself through this process of fabrication.

The 360 degree surveillance “chandelier” (Asymmetric Love) by ­A DDIE WAGENKNECHT and STEFAN HECHENBERGER was

produced specially for the exhibition. It explores the relationship between failure and empowerment. With Asymmetric Love (2013), as in Wagen­knecht’s and Hechenberger’s other pieces, they cleverly conceive a narrative that becomes a commentary on the masses. This familiar object, known to us from the public realm, has been fabricated and therefore becomes an

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and identifies further issues for filmmakers using pre-existing CCTV (surveillance) systems as a medium in the UK. The manifesto is constructed with reference to the Data Protection Act 1998 and related privacy legislation that gives the subjects of data records (including CCTV footage) access to copies of the data. The filmmaker’s standard equipment is thus redundant; indeed, its use is prohibited. The manifesto can easily be adapted for different jurisdictions.

object which interferes and disturbs our personal space. During the exhibition it was interesting to observe how this sculpture, consisting of fake cameras, makes those who pass close to it alter their behavior. It becomes an object of self-surveillance. The discussion of surveillance was very present in the media around the first F ACELES S exhibition, and this work could be regarded as a monument devoted to this issue. The work has been in the collection of the Whitney Museum since 2017.

BOGOMIR DORINGER

Since every street corner is under constant surveillance, using closed-circuit TV (CCTV) cameras, filmmakers and in particular

documentarists of all flavors should reflect on this constant gaze. Why bring in additional cameras when much private and public urban space is already covered from numerous angles? This is how MANU LUKSCH wrote MANIFESTO FOR CCTV FILMMAKERS, which declares a set of rules, establishes effective procedures,

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The art project © Google Privacy (2011) by SO F IE GR OOT D ENG ERINK, shows a number of in­ teriors visible in ­Google Maps. By strolling through Google Street View in The Nether­ lands, where windows are always wide open and without curtains

as a protestant statement that there is nothing to hide (or simply to allow daylight in to their homes), one can almost read documents lying on kitchen ­tables or see private family photos on the walls of people’s homes. We get a peek in to the lives of the people who live there. Digital invasion of privacy is the subject of this project.

their needs. The relationship that emerges falls into the ambig­ uous space between human-­ machine and human-human. LAUREN (2017) is a meditation on

the smart home, the tensions between intimacy vs privacy and convenience vs agency they present, and the role of human labor in the future of automation.

The social media Facebook was born on 4 February 2004 in a post-9/11 society. Many of us joined it and today it is considered the social norm to have one’s profile on it. For artist E VA -MA RIA RAAB , the translation of this into a physical object is a way to represent what an individual represents to the social network, and how they are handled. The book consists of profile images (like cut profile

silhouettes) of different people. While holding the blue book, the Facebook, we manhandle these images, while some hold our attention longer than others though they are just numbers. When printed out they document you as a private personality and now as public persona too. To whom does this document be­ long? On whose shelf does this blue book stand?

L A U R E N Mc C AR TH Y attempts to become a human version of Amazon Alexa, a smart home intelligence for people in their own homes. The performance lasts several days. It begins with the installation of a series of custom-designed, networked smart devices (including cameras, microphones, switches, door locks, faucets, and other electronic devices). She then remotely watch­ es over the person 24/7 and controls all aspects of their home. She aims to be better than AI because she can understand users as a person and anticipate

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INVISIBLE PEOPLE Being undetectable by technology or the naked eye is a capacity that some characters possess in science fiction. In real life it can be an advantage of privilege, or of low social status and the subject of exploitation. There are many tools employed in tracing or concealing invisible identities. This part of the exhibition had a focus on works by artists who engage with invisible people. In 2014, after the exhibition FACELESS was presented in Amsterdam, I was invited to be part of the Artist on Artist program at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven (The Netherlands) to give a guided tour of Hito Steyerl’s first mid-career retrospective exhibition. At that time, her new video work, How Not to Be Seen. A ­Fucking Didactic Educational.Mov File, was premiered. In her interview for TateShots, Steyerl explained that the idea was to do homage to the How Not to be Seen military camouflage parody by Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969–1974). Steyerl asked herself how to be invisible for surveillance, how to disappear. The instructional video has five acts in which it proposes pretending not to be there, the employment of technological tools, post-­production, green/blue screen solutions, fabrics/cloak/burka, or moving to gated and cooperative structures. It playfully and humorously combines “real world” footage with digital environments that have remained in her work since. Steyerl shares the idea that keeping up with available consumer technology/electronics is a way to understand sociopolitical conditions, “the contraction of desires and misunderstandings.”

BOGOMIR DORINGER

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ANDREW NORMAN WILSON’s viral video piece Workers Leaving the Googleplex (2012/13) contains footage of two Google locations in Mountain View, California, with a voiceover narration spoken by Wilson. The content for this video came from Wilson’s experience of working at Google in 2007. The piece presents the class struc­ ture of Google shown through Wilson’s encounter with the yel­ low badge workers, a top ­secret group of workers who scan

books for Google Book Search. The artist’s attempts to film and interview the yellow badge workers were stopped quickly by Google security, and resulted in the termination of his employment at Google. This project is a photographic series made of Google Books images with visible errors in the scanning process, gleaned from scouring hundreds of books online.

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In The Old in out in out (2013), ­ N DR E W N E W MAN performs A the role of one who is faceless. He applies value to blank sheets of paper, stamping them and shuffling them between inboxes and outboxes. It is evident from this action that Newman is doing nothing useful: a toxic asset, worthy of liquidation.

J A N S T R A DT MA N N takes a subtle approach to depicting the onset of the global economic crisis by choosing almost arcane imagery for his series Garden of Eden (2008). Shot secretly on Canary Wharf (in London’s finan­ cial district) in September and ­October 2008, the photos manage to reflect the tense atmosphere of that particular time in what appear to be everyday situations, such as having a cigarette break,

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phone conversa­ tion, or intimate talk in the park. Even though none of these scenes provide a direct link to the crash, a kind of clandestine ac­ tion is suggested by their staging.

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ticipating AIVD agents but never discloses their identities entirely. “To burn a face” is a phrase used at the AIVD to describe the capacity to expose an asset's identity. Magid kept notebooks containing descriptions of each agent she interviewed, 18 in total. Their words were lifted directly from the notebooks and repro­ duced in neon—effectively “burn­ ing” the operatives concerned. In

man face.” From 2005 to 2008 JILL MA GID conducted numer­ ous interviews with employees of the AIVD. These conversations were held in bars and nonde­ script public places. The purpose of the meetings was to collect the personal data of the agents and use this information to find the organization’s face. Each work in the series reveals spe­ cific ­characteristics of the par­

The project ASYMPTOTE (2016) is a collaboration between two young creatives, E VE LYN B E NCˇ I Cˇ O V Á and A DA M C SOK A K E L L E R , whose popular, fash­ ionable and unique imagery ap­ peals to different audiences. In this project, they work with live models whose bodies merge into powerful architecture from the

socialist period of Slovakia. This theatrical approach suggests that bodies function as invisible pillars for failed institutional con­ structions and a failed ideology. Aesthetics and a fashionable touch to the images, combined

with temporal distance, shows that the authors idealize a questionable past. In times when individualism is celebrated, a feeling of collective participation is very seductive to the younger generation.

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BOGOMIR DORINGER

In 2005, the offices of the AIVD (the General Intelligence and Security Services of the Nether­ lands) were to be relocated. Under Dutch law, a percentage of the project’s total budget had to be used to commission a new artwork for the building. The organization used this as an ­opportunity to improve their pub­ lic image or in their own words, “to provide the AIVD with a hu­

2009, to reflect the subsequent confiscation of 7 of the 18 prints, seven of the neons were perma­ nently switched off. Jill Magid fulfilled her commission for the Dutch Secret Service, although they have since censored and confiscated some of the works displayed at Stroom, Den Haag, as well as presented in the book Becoming Tarden (Tate Modern, 2009), where she wrote about the experience. This censorship has subsequently been incorporated in, and provides material for, her works (see page 199).

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subsequent years he regular­ ly received video messages from the Colombian. When De Michele was offered an oppor­ tunity to go to Colombia for an ­artist-in-residence program, the

We are in the middle of a forest during wintertime. From the depths of the picture, a restless figure appears, clearly inappro­ priately dressed for the season. It is a woman of uncertain age in an old violet sweater and blue jeans. Her old-fashioned black boots almost tripping her on the heavily snow-cov­ ered path, she approaches the camera in ­silence until her face fills most of the picture. It is filmed with unsteady, subjective, Dogma-style camerawork. The desperate expression on her face suggests that somebody has sent her in this direction and that she is not going willingly. The manipulative voice behind the camera confirms this suggestion with harsh instructions directed at the woman: “Show me your cunt! Eat it! Turn around! Get

out, slowly!” The woman, actress or prostitute (the artist states, “it doesn’t ­matter”), rolls up her ­sweater almost childishly before taking off her panties so that she finally receives her reward, a piece of a chocolate cookie. Then, chewing the cookie, she leaves slowly the same way she came. How many times has this scene already been repeated? There are several footsteps and just a small piece of the choco­ late cookie left over… ­O ND REJ ­B R ODY & K R I ST O F ER PAE­ TA U' S work Miss Krimi (2005) presents a very cruel but also very convincing image. It evokes a mix of disgust and absurd humor, which tests our cynical nature as well as our ethical

and moral instincts. With the use of a subjective camera, the artists place us in the voyeuris­ tic position of both witness and abuser of a Western woman. We are passive, but attached to deci­ sions that are made for us by the artist. We are not sure if what we see is real or acted, but the feeling that remains with us is disturbing—in Michael Haneke’s idiom. Oscillating between use and abuse, advanced manipula­ tion and the cold registration of absurd reality, the work is truly critical and sincere in its desire to uncover the pathologies and hidden normalities underlying interhuman relations.

ARCHIVING FACELESS The work Live it to Enjoy it—The Mask of Evil (2012–2013) features a former assassin from Colombia whom A L B E R T O DE MIC H E LE met in Aruba. De Michele gave him a camera as a gift and in

ex-criminal let him know that he had just decided to return to his hometown near Cali, where De Michele would be staying. The safest place for them to meet and talk was a museum. Against this background, the former assassin talks about his fears and memories. He evokes mixed feelings in the viewer. He appears to be haunted by his actions in the past, although he does not show any remorse. Incidentally, he looks for consolation and distraction by visiting museums and making drawings; he creates a confusing link between being an artist and being a criminal.

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In Nr. 124 Invisible Men from the series Exactitudes (2009), ­V ERSLUIS AND UYTTENBROEK document their subjects in an identical framework, with similar poses and a strictly observed dress code providing an almost scientific, anthropological record of people’s attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity.

The Serbian newspaper Politika archived stills from another video work in the exhibition, 6=36 (2000) by MIO D RAG ­K R K OBABIC´, which were then published in Le Monde, without permission, in an article implying a suspicious relationship between the United States and the

The apparent contradiction between individuality and uniformity is, however, taken to such extremes in the arresting objective-looking photographic viewpoint and stylistic analysis that the artistic aspect ­clearly dominates the purely documentary element. We always belong to some sort of group.

age where artists are continually encouraged to think big. This creation of an object from the artist's memory is placed in an ever-growing city in order to impose herself on that city. In fact, this is a way of interfering with the city’s identity, as well as of demanding a place in this rapidly changing environment. The re-establishment, re-creation and interrelation (exchange) of identities is the main focus of this work.

BOGOMIR DORINGER

SKILIFT (2010–13) is a ready-made installation proposed for Amsterdam or any other city by J E LENA MIS KO VIC´. This project involves research into the strongest sculptural object and memory of monuments from Miskovic´’s childhood. It openly deals with an idea of the important, the huge, and the ­expensive in an

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Taliban. The video actually shows the artist’s childhood friends and himself in a documentary style. The friends talk about one another, isolated before the camera. They show their vulnerability as they tell of their mutual relationships and relate their life stories to the camera in the form of a confessional monologue that could imply many things—but most definitely not terrorism.

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FETISH

Luxury items, such as sneakers, can be trans­ formed by cutting to make a mask. An Instagram profile image www.instagram.com/ sneaker_mask

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Previous chapters already include examples of projects where the balaclava or burka are treated as fetishistic. It is fascinating that something that has been so widely negatively discussed turns out to arouse sexual desire and curiosity. In-line with what I propose in the “Dressed to Kill” chapter (page 35) it could be explained as a mechanism of translation/survival/adaptation, or maybe even a kind of autassassinophilia, meaning that person becomes sexually excited by running the risk of being killed. This could be on the level of fantasy rather than in a real-life situation. Balaclavas or hoodies, for example, are used by football hooligans, who present themselves as homophobes in most countries. If a gay man encounters a hooligan he thinks or feels, or would be in, “potential danger.” But very often precisely this look is sexually attractive to some gay men. Could fear of being beaten-up be exchanged for the sexual act of penetration?  This look has been also widely accepted as “str8 acting,” which provides a form of camouflage to those who live double lives or need to hide in a crowd. In a work by David Haines (page 44), youths are shown, often with faces concealed, playing at different locations wearing instantly recognizable big-brand logos (NIKE, McDonalds, etc.) that stand out powerfully in the drawn images. The resulting horrific, bullying imagery exudes an aura of sexual foreplay. In this case, one fetish is being translated into another fetish, almost as an upgrade. In the text by Nikola Kneževic´ and Bruno Listopad (page 267) they refer to the YouTube online community for new generation fetish practices. A different engagement with consumerism is described in their text: a whole bunch of people destroying the latest iPhones by melting them, or recording videos where the newest shoes are cut up. This could be regarded as the mocking of luxury, or proving one is able to afford such wanton destruction. Furthermore, in this chapter there are examples of fetish objects becoming luxuries, a stylised, designed fashion item whose source aludes to a fetish. This has also been addressed in the book Fetishism in Fashion by Lidewij Edelkoort, wherein she investigates

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the evolution of taste from birth to adulthood, the psychology of branding, effects of infantilism, power of black, and fetishising of objects. In the group of selected works there are also examples of more poetic, stylised collage, where faces hide in glows and sparks. M U S T A F A S A BBA GH uses ­fashion in his photography to play with the SM aesthetic. He uses lighting and materials to merge the body and layers,

translating the imagery in to a luxuriousness reminiscent of fashion campaigns. The glossy black adds a fetishistic “glow” to the image.

VIK TOR  &  R OLF are the duo behind the most famous Netherlands fashion house. For the Spring 2005 Ready-to-Wear Collection, they styled the models with black, glossy helmets. On the runway, these helmets reflected the lights, creating a powerful chic.

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represented in gay porn or male bodies performing exercises, are sometimes combined with tribal elements. There are the presence of fetish objects in a drawing, too. Faces are masked using ink or acrylic.

BOGOMIR DORINGER

In quite a large portfolio by artist B R I A N K E NNY , a special place is given to mixed media interventions applied to vintage American shooting targets. One of them is titled Run (2010). Drawings of muscular male bodies, as

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K A TSUYA KAMO is a leading hair stylist and makeup artist in the fashion world. For J UN YA WAT ANABE’s COMME des GARÇONS collection AW 2008-2009, presented at ­Paris Fashion Week, he created headpieces that extended the models’ silhouettes.

The fashion house MA ISON ­M A R GI E L A is still widely studied as exem­plary for their branding and marketing, critique of the fashion industry, and views on anonymity in a world where privacy seems obsolete. Models’ faces have very often been covered or masked, creating an uncanny presence on runaways and an almost political attitude: opposition to a fashion world

where faces are ­celebrated. The Maison has also chal­ lenged the notion of the individual designer. Martin Margiela’s face stayed invis­ ible as part of the concept. The company has been sold to OTB Group. Maison Margiela resigned as creative director in 2009. John Galliano became the new creative director in 2014 (see page 209).

Since his youth, VIKT O R H E R A K has been curating the blog Vomiting Greed, which caught the attention of many high profile design­ ers. It was a passion-driven project that showed his unique vision and led to un­ expected opportunities. He was soon approached to do mood boards, creative direc­ tion, and photo concepts for contemporary brands. This

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brought him to London in 2014, where he started to work as an in-house photographer for the cult label KTZ. Viktor then moved on to develop the brand identity for House of Malakai—directing and shooting all campaigns and look books since the brand’s inception in 2014. His works for both companies, and individually, have been featured in Vogue, Elle, Harpers Bazaar etc.

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French artist MARC T URLAN works with fashion magazine imagery. Tearing, cutting, and de-contextualizing, or adding extra layers, he creates new collaged images with a weighty, sculptural quality.

The Ukrainian-Danish artist SE R GE I ­S VIAT CHENKO cuts through the bound­ aries of traditional and contemporary visuals to merge pop culture with politics, personal memory

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BOGOMIR DORINGER

U R S U L A H Ü B NE R ’s practice combines painting and photogra­ phy. The composition of sliced ​​ photographs, supplemented with brushstrokes, creates mythical creatures—hybrids of humans and animals, plants or objects. It is this alchemical combi­ nation of different ingredients that allows images to express more than pure painting or mere photography. In Afterglow (2010) the space is the psyche of the figures, referring to the interior in the figurative sense.

with collective histories, and architecture with science. The collage work from the series Less (2004) simply binds both paint and image to create a cloudy, poetic, vanishing face.

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F R A NK S C H A L LMA IE R focuses on the straightforward commu­ nication of amateur photogra­ phers who don’t seem to care about technique or composition. However, many of the faces on online profiles are obscured by a flash, by the camera or the phone itself (mirror selfies), or are “de-faced” in other ways. His new compositions, which appear to have no artistic merit,

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become a signature of the times. The technological development of cameras, phone cameras in particular, is documented in these images of naked male bodies. The camera’s flash, which once functioned as a mask for the face, is now altered by iPads or iPhones themselves. The brand logo of the gadget concerned is superimposed on the faces. It is hard to avoid wondering whether

these individuals elected to use these photographs or whether online platforms dictate the be­ havior of individuals and crowds in collaboration with techno­ logical tools. Exhibitionism is a new social norm, as Hille Koskela pronounced in her essay of 2002, which she elaborates on now, 16 years later, in this book (see page 249).

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SEX

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BOGOMIR DORINGER

Today, in addition to the loss of privacy, rules of modern technology demand that we are constantly visible. Social networks initially developed as platforms for communication and came to define everyday activities and lifestyles. They approach us with the promise of serving as tools for self-promotion, offering 15 minutes of fame to each of us, then increasingly invading our privacy with our express consent. The development of the Internet as the most active public space and the distribution of images through different online platforms is often done without the context or sources originally attached to images. This helped “facelessness” to spread faster, reaching and inspiring many through brightly lit screens. The Internet has helped this phenomenon grow into a tendency to avoid any contextual information. The explosion of images from low to high resolution attached itself in a grotesque manner to public or private space—if the latter still exists. While selfies have become normative as the almost daily documentation of oneself, faceless images are being shared on social networks in the search for partners or dates. What started as gay online behaviors became a norm for communication through images. Written language is being reduced and in some cases the same phraseology has even become universal. Most of us tend to use a similar mode of chatting on these platforms. Phrases like: “looking for,”  “pics,” “nudes,”  “xxx,”  “top” or  “bottom” are annoying, but they are also the fastest way to provide customized sex partners in times when everything should be tailored for us just as we imagine. In some cases, hiding the face is a stance against the demand to show faces. In different countries, the images used on a person’s online profile tend to reflect a regional predominance of homophobia or sexual taboos. The more faceless images are present online, the more we understand that we are no longer in Western capitals. In the last century the presence of a camera was valued, now this technology is perceived as more sinister. Some of the projects in this section show how body poses avoid any facial confrontation with the camera lens.

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In the poetic photo­ graphy of UT E KLEIN, natural lighting shows two bodies cocooning themselves in a private setting, however their faces are turned away from the lens. Safety and comfort is achieved

interaction and touch, the trust between two people who are in a relationship. They could be lovers, family, friends. These beautiful human sculptures, created for just a few seconds, glow in the protected private sphere in which they are photographed.

while moving and look­ ing for that one perfect moment of synchronic­ ity. These images show the tenderness of human

A scene from Alfred ­Hitchcock's movie The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) has been analyzed by artist DA PH N E R OSE N TH A L. She selected the particular scene in which a husband medicates his wife at the same moment as he is about to tell her that their son has been kidnapped. She doesn’t get space to feel, neither is she given the adult responsibility to decide what to do. When she is quiet again, she can only grieve for

the loss of their son briefly, before falling asleep. (Freud would have called this a cas­ tration.) ­­Him and Her (2008) is an animation that highlights the iso­ lation of both the man and woman in the scene.

H E STE R SC H EURWAT ER’ s ­photographs, short films, and video performances explore her own desires, obsessions, and fears. As the model in her often sexually explicit photographs, she almost obsessively portrays herself in a vulgar and explicit manner, where her face is al­ most always deliberately hidden

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by the flash or camera. This challenges our perception of fe­ male nude images, but for her it becomes a curious investigation of herself. The mirrored self-im­ ages are her way of reacting to the imitated and faked media images that constantly tease our imagination.

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PH I L I PPE V O G E LE N Z A N G (photographer) & MA J ID ­K A R R O U CH (stylist/art director) are artists who work together on a project by project basis. IN & OUT, Prostitutes on Polaroids (2010) is a project about the women working in Amsterdam’s red light district, comprising anonymous portraits of 29 wom­ an. In this context, the camera was intrusive. Strict rules were imposed regarding how these women could be photographed and how long the artist duo could stay in the women’s working space. It is interesting to compare these images with 20th-century documentation of the red-light district in Amster­ dam, when prostitutes were more open to face the camera and share their stories.

R E N H A NG (March 30, 1987 to February 24, 2017) was a dear friend, and celebrated photogra­ pher and poet, influenced by Shu�ji Terayama. Hang gave a different face to the youth of China who wanted to express their sexuality. Hang promoted Asian beauty. He once said:

“I don’t want others having the impres­ sion that Chinese people are robots... Or they have sexual genitals but always keep them as some secret treasure.”

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BOGOMIR DORINGER

The series of photographs Big Rock Candy Mountains (2009) by NIENKE KLUND ER explores standards of beauty promoted by media and embraced by viewers. The work is titled in homage to the natural beauty of the great American landscape; the perfect plastic surgery blonde is presented as a classical odal­ isque. In contrast to traditional pin-ups, neither skin nor any individual character­ istics are shown; personality is marked by platinum blonde hair, synthetic fabrics in sweet pastel colors and large, poignant breasts. She has become an object, a sculpture, a landscape, a mountain.

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A SGE R CARLS EN creates bizarre, headless muta­ tions of bodies in the series HESTER (19) (2012). Carlsen started his career as a crime scene pho­ tographer before finding his niche in creating subtly ­hilarious and transform­ ative pieces of art that make us question what is human. These images are strongly influenced by Surrealism and the faceless nature of Francis

For more than 20 years, ­O LIVIE R D E S A G A Z A N has been develo­ ping a hybrid practice that incorporates painting, photogra­ phy, sculpture, and performance. In his existential performative series Transfiguration, which he began in 2001, De Sagazan builds layers of clay and paint onto his own face and body to trans­ form, disfigure and deconstruct his own figure, revealing an animalistic human being who is seeking to break away from the physical world. At once disqui­ eting and deeply moving, this new body of work collapses the boundaries between the phys­

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ical, ­intellectual, spiritual and animalistic sensibilities. In the artist’s words: “I am interested in seeing to what degree people think its normal, or even trite, to be alive.” It is no wonder that Olivier de Sagazan’s remarkable “body art” work is featured in

Bacon’s work. In his small studio on Hester street in New York, ­Asger invites models to partic­ ipate in a transformative game. These images, most of which are in black and white, have a morbid presence. The bodies often seem frozen or look as if they have been beaten up. To me his work has always seemed markedly sculptural, as if he was experi­ menting for the actual production of sculptures, using photography as a way to study the body and prepare for a career as a sculptor.

the ­non-verbal film Samsara, the sequel to Baraka, directed by Ron Fricke, and been exhibited widely in art galleries, museums, and film festivals. He enjoys an almost cult following online and rave reviews about his expres­ sive and inimitable style.

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MUTANTS In this collection of artworks, I would also like to include faces that are supported by animalistic attributes applied to mask-like, designed objects or through performative actions. In some cases, 3D scans of a face and body allow the translation of muscles and skin into digital clay that can be reshaped and manipulated with software. What emerges as a result could be seen as a mutant, an organism, or a new genetic character. Mutants are to fear but they also challenge us. They are often the product of human error, politics, chemical wars, or our fear that as humans we might not last long. Sometimes they bridge external and internal relationships to oneself. They are definitely a challenge to standards of beauty. Sometimes, like in the movie The Shape of Water, they serve as a metaphor for the issue of racism. They also investigate directions in which human bodies could develop or merge.

Through her sculptures and videos, I V A NA BA S � IC � asserts the body as a dense and finite space of confinement, and examines the conditions and ­consequences of that space, its boundaries, its matter, its dura­ bility and its weight. Fusing syn­ thetic materials such as silicone, and living materials such as wax and oil paint, Bas �ic´ creates flesh out of hollow and bruised forms that are at once bodies and habitats. Residing in the liminal space between life and death,

these sculptural forms test the boundaries of “human minimality” while examining what constitutes the notion of “wholeness.” For the viewer, Bas �ic´ ’s work evokes both the repulsion and the beauty inherent to the pain and fragility of corporeality. Through the duality of her practice, Bas �ic´ negotiates the complex conditions of mortality and speculates on scenarios beyond death and singularity.

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BOGOMIR DORINGER

IVA N A B A S � IC �: Stay Inside or Perish (2016)

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66 T ARRO N RUIZ -AVILA’s work consists mainly of small scale collages, dioramas, and kinetic displays. The images are carefully constructed out of images sourced from used and discarded print media publica­ tions. Here, human relationships and existence are set in tragic or comic narrative situations. The cinematic storytelling quality and the narrative unravel each time the work is re-visited.

J UN TA K A H A SHI’s avant-garde clothes and surprising runway shows have been the subject of many conversations. In the GURUGURU, UNDERCOVER AW 2006/2007 collection, models’ faces have been covered, creat­ ing a post-apocalyptic atmos­ phere. The folds and production of these masks are reminiscent of the scarfs on page 43.

Dolorosa (2013) is the creation of CARMEN SCHABRACQ . It is a wool costume/sculpture that has a powerful and disturbing presence. It has a cross-dress­ ing quality and could be under­ stood as female or male drag.

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67 A NA R A J CE V I C works in the crossover between sculpture and fashion design. A specialist in synthetic polymers, metal and leather, she handcrafts unique, wearable objects that challenge the traditional context of both disciplines as well as estab­ lished notions of beauty and ­“normality.” ANIMAL: The Other Side of Evolution (fiberglass, polyester resin) is grounded in a unique visual interpretation of animal anatomy, building upon existing skeletal structures to create a series of sculptural pieces that appear to have the

natural character­ istics of the human body, sug­ gesting strength, power, and sen­ suality. Concepts of mutation and evolution are ex­ plored in order to develop a contem­ porary cross-im­ age of human and animal, an atemporal, supreme creature with neither a past nor future. The pieces perform a double function: they exist as fashion

accessories when attached to the wearer, and individual art­ works when exhibited in gallery spaces, blurring the boundaries between fashion and fine art.

Sculptures of babies with animal attributes or as superheros are the work of artist SABI VAN HEMERT . The Rabbit (2005) appears horrific and comic at the same time.

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BOGOMIR DORINGER

For G U I L L A U ME A IR IA UD, the specificity of the pieces comes from observing animals’ or insects’ anatomies in order to combine them with human fea­ tures. The characteristics of the final objects and the intention to embody expressions with an­ imalistic features suggest ritual purposes.

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This artwork and campaign was created to mark the release of the David Bowie album The Next Day (2013). Unlike most record covers, it was conceived as an idea in all media, from posters to guerrilla advertising. The album cover features a controversial and much-discussed reappropri­ ation and defacing of the cover art from Bowie’s 1977 album Heroes. Barnbrook confronts the viewer’s expectation of a “new image” each time a pop star releases a new album. It also refers to the endless comparison of each new Bowie release to his 1970s work. Finally, the design highlights that we fill in the blank square.

When put together, all of TH E O­ M A S S L E X I L E IC TOUS’ objects presented in the FACELESS ex­ hibition create a timeline of the invented character/alter ego’s most important moments. From his creative attacks to the Dazed & Confused collaboration, up to his solo show under the title POSTDIGITALISM.

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D ANIEL SANNWALD is wellknown for his surrealistic image­ ry as a photographer and fashion designer and for his art projects. He has established a strong and recognizable signature and gained the attention of some of the most influential trendsetters in the fashion and photography industries. He created the cover and video work for WOODKID’s album The Golden Age (2013).

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IDOL noun 1  an idol in a shrine: icon, god, image, likeness, fetish, totem, statue, figure, figurine, doll, carving; graven image, false god, effigy, golden calf 2  the pop world’s latest idol: hero, heroine, star, superstar, icon, celebrity, ­celebutante; favourite, darling, beloved, pet, apple of one’s eye; informal pin-up, heart throb, blue-eyed boy/girl, golden boy/girl; North American informal fair-haired boy/girl

While you were reading the definition of word “idol,” you felt the power that the word exudes, if not on you then on others. You might also have felt repulsed, or at least thought about the media-constructed society in which we live and how this term has served in positive and negative ways to guide or manipulate us as a society. Selected works in this chapter play with this notion. The defacing of idols is used as a mechanism for putting an end to, or challenging, the roles they play, from hand gestures moving from the light to the dark side of a face in the work of Marina ­Abramovic´ to interventions in public space, or the manipulation of youths through education to the defacing of George W. Bush in the work by Ondrej Brody & Kristofer Paetau.

MARINA ABRAMO VIC �: Light/Dark (2006)

Pop culture icons are what we follow, sometimes blindly and obsessively, as with love. Musicians and bands, such as Daft Punk, Sia, Gorillaz, Fever Ray, Magic Sword, Gwar, and many more fleeting or long-running performers, have been hiding their faces as a media strategy, but also so as not be recognized. David Bowie and Woodkid have pursued similar ideas.

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HRAF NHILD UR ­G IS SURARD Ó T T IR uses images in her work that portray singer Amy Wine­ house, and her infamous collapse just before her death in 2011. Because of the way they are printed, they can only be seen from a particular angle in the exhibition space.

BOGOMIR DORINGER

To describe the strange relationship that we have with idols, I would like to call to mind the last days before the tragic death of English singer and songwriter Amy Winehouse. On 18 June 2011 she held her last concert, in Belgrade. She appeared after long isolation due to problems with drugs and alcohol. The concert was a failure. She was clearly under the influence of drugs, embracing herself and refusing to sing in front of thousands of people. For some reason, she did not leave the stage and kept on struggling in front of the audience and the media,

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who ­documented the fragile Amy. She was clearly not ready for exposure of this magnitude, far from home. What struck me most was the relationship with her so-called “fans,” who were divided by this tragic moment. Seeing an idol crashing provided pleasure to some, an opportunity for a moment of power: to scream and demand to know what their money was for, demanding to hear the music they had paid for. They screamed “Sing bitch sing,” while others tried to empower the singer with words like “Come on baby, you can do it!” The rise and fall of an idol serves as a discharge for the collective and the individual; public victimization serves to help the collective appreciate being alive.

Punishment (2005) is a contemporary art pro­ ject involving preteen children from Soldiner Kiez in Berlin, Germany. During a summer workshop, artists ON DREJ ­B RO D Y , IVA RS ­G RAVLEIS , K R IS T O F ER ­P A E T AU, and AVD EY ­T E R-­ O G ANIAN introduced a group

of children to the practice of contemporary art, thereby referring to the long-time School of Contemporary Art project, initiated by Avdey Ter-Oganian with teenagers in Moscow in the 1990s. This project demonstrates how easily people can be manip­ ulated to follow an idea and how the power of a group can deface a public figure.

Using cut-out and collage in an approach similar to Bowie’s The Next Day cover, KARIN FISSLTH A LTE R deals with the iconic face of singer Elvis Presley in Closer C (2015). What merely remains, the hair style, is enough to recognize Presley. His face, body, dancing, and music is deeply embedded in collective memory.

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As a reaction to “photoshopping” the human body to “perfection,” which has become the norm in advertising, Berlin-based activist and artist VE R MIBUS

developed a practice where he removes official poster ads from the streets and alters them in his studio by applying chem­ ical solvents to the images. He dissolves the face and flesh of the models appearing in the posters, smudges and erases brand logos, and then returns the ads to their original location in public space.

In Beat and the Pulse (2013), J A K O B L E NA K N E B L & ­T H O M A S H Ö R L merge familiar Hollywood icons, such as Frankenstein’s Monster, with aesthetics from expressionist silent movies, and alpine folkloric figures and their deconstruction. This work aims to construct

alternative beauty, monstrous fetishism and inverse roles, extending queer praxis into het­ erosexual desire. Furthermore, Frankenstein’s Monster is seen as one of the first popular icons dealing with the construction of identities, but also the fear of “the other” (monsterization).

The Invalid Icon #4 (2007) by A N N E WE N Z E L looks like a melting Madonna sculpture, but could also be seen as a girl’s ghost from a Japanese horror film. The faces of these girls are always covered by long black hair. Hair is traditionally let down

are ghosts of people who died with strong passions, jealousy, rage, or hatred. Their soul is una­ ble to pass on, and instead trans­ forms into a powerful, wrathful spirit that seeks vengeance on any and everything it encounters. This Japanese folklore has been

in Japan at funerals and burials. This kind of ghost is known as yu�rei, or actually as onryo� (fig­ ures in Japanese folklore), if they

absorbed by popular American remakes of Asian horror films since the beginning of the 21st century.

BOGOMIR DORINGER

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Vermibus further dehumanizes figures that were already deper­ sonalized, as a means of launch­ ing a sharp social critique of the advertising industry. The street is essential to the message of Ver­ mibus’ work and it is where his art begins and ends. He has also made interventions in the NY subway and Paris, reaching high volumes of viewers. For example, the Parisian subway system, where he has posted his work, has around 1.5 billion passen­ gers per year. This explains why this space is not an art space but used for the promotion of ­commercial interests.

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For years, T H O RSTE N ­B R I NK M A NN has been using his body to examine the rela­ tionship between himself and collected objects. He completes self-portraits with the use of a timer. He effectively turns himself in to a sculpture, but also makes himself invisible and hides as an artist. His focus is on spotlighting his work, and not himself as a person or with a face. This practice manifests ­itself in video, sculpture, photo­ graphy, and installations.

tive element. In communicating the significance of identity as a social construct, Logan is inter­ ested in creating self-referential

Canadian artist Z A C H A R I ­L O GA N draws in a number of different media; mainly pastel or graphite on paper and colored pencil on mylar. Predominantly large-scale, Logan’s drawings feature his body as a focal narra­

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counter-narra­ tives and criti­ quing universal/ historical male identities through a queer lens. Recently, Logan’s work has shifted to examine art-historical motifs with an emergent focus on the natural processes of both plants and animals in relation to the human

form and landscape. In Burkah (2010) Logan examines ideas of concealment in self-portraiture, using his hair as a prop. Logan covers his face, mimicking the Muslim item of clothing meant to cover the face, invoking ideas of privacy, religious ideology, and inverted gender roles. Vanitas 1 (2013) again blends self-por­ traiture and self-obscuring, this time through the subversion of an art-historical motif, that of the “Vanitas.” Through the use of plant and animal life, ­Logan literally transforms his face into a labyrinthine mask, a sort of breathing gargoyle.

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SELF-PORTRAIT

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* A flashcard is a card bearing information, such as words or numbers, on either or both sides, used in classroom exercises or as a learning aid for private study.

BOGOMIR DORINGER

What does a self-portrait in post-9/11 society look like, or what does a self-portrait look like in the time of massive production of selfies? What used to be the privilege of royalty and high society figures, a portrait on view, personal propaganda, is now an addiction among all social strata. It is a desperate chance for the elusive 15 minutes of fame on social media. But we have been waiting for this for centuries, so let us enjoy it. Let us snap! Let us flash! Let us be liked! Let us learn how to swim through vanity images. Witnessing the lives of many through social media challenges one’s sense of individuality as we soon realize that many of us look and behave just like somebody else. Social media multiplies the normative beauty for faces and bodies proposed by the entertainment industry, which is dominated by superficial, American mainstream pop culture. Over-exposure and a recognizable face sometimes creates victims to the accessibility of the media, as was the case for teenager Amanda Todd. She holds flashcards* in her self-portrait video, using them in silence to tell us a story that troubles her: Her engagement with the online world, exhibitionistic display and fun with strangers, led to cyber-bullying, sexual abuse, bullying, depression, self-destruction/harming, alcohol and substance abuse, and ultimately suicide. In times when technology with integrated cameras is handed to everybody to collect our faces, it feels more and more as if our faces did not belong to us anymore. Artists are looking for ways to transform their own faces with the use of materials, plastic surgery or medical interventions, drugs or technology. Disturbing imagery might sometimes suggest that reality is not as pretty as it appears on images, but it also shows that a face that has the potential to transform, and challenge perception. Disturbing imagery might sometimes suggest that reality is not as pretty as it appears on images, but it also shows that a face that has the potential to transform can challenge the viewer's perception. The celebration of personal vanity will hopefully drown itself in a lake, like Narcissus.

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ARCHIVING FACELESS “After experiencing drastic changes in my environment, I looked for other experiences that might profoundly affect my per­ ception of the self. So I devised another experiment where every­

In Your Face (2007) is an instal­ lation about M A R TIN C DE W A A L ’s facial plastic surgery. The installation consists of a TV screen at eye level framed by mirror tiles. The positioning of the mirrors confronts you with your own reaction to the images shown on the screen. This work tracks artist’s facial adaptations, using the body as a means of expression. The operation was

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day I took a different drug and drew me under the influence.” (BR YA N LE WIS S AUND ERS) Project Under the Influence (2001) consists of 48 paintings and drawings.

From left to right: Morphine, Computer Duster, Psilocybin Mushrooms

The anonymous bricoleur of the objet trouvé has copied the cov­ er of an Elvis Presley album. It shows the famous persona, and overall it represents an icon: the face of the world-famous voice.

HEIKO BRES SNIK rebuilds the musician’s face with his own ex­ pressive nose, that can be seen as a totem. Thus, he hybridizes the well-known media surface with the reality of a nature study.

not the product of an artistic need to create, but a purely personal desire coupled with a great fascination for continual transformation. A mission was undertaken to find out what constitutes a human identity. His activities have often been associated with the concept of the cyborg, the constructible man.

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75 In the Material Transfer (2008) series, L E V I V AN VE LUW utiliz­ es commonplace materials such as strips of carpet, pebble stones and sterling wood chips. Applying these materials to his head and face highlights their aesthetic and formal qualities. This turns on its head the metaphoric meaning we usually assign them in daily life. In this way, Van Veluw shines a light on how we perceive and experience the ob­ jects and materials around us.

This photo is a documentation of an interactive installation created by M I R K O LA Z OVIC � . It is inspired by the Greek myth of Narcissus, who gazed at his own reflection and fell in love with himself. In this script, ­Lazovic´ adds a twist by employing technology. Sensors detect our

presence and send an electronic im­ pulse that disturbs water. This blurs our reflection. We are unable to enjoy our vanity.

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BOGOMIR DORINGER

MARCO PEZZO T T A’s ­Significant Others (2013) consists of four pictures within four equal frames, taken in the same space they are installed. Every frame shows the installation with the other three elements, but miss­ ing the frame we are looking at. Every object is narrated in the other components but is not able to tell anything about itself.

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This self-portrait sculpture by artist TIM SILVER shows him with a hoodie over his head, clearly not holding up well. “Time is the concep­ tual and material kernel of his prac­ tice. Made from en­ tropic materials these sculptures usually begin dying the moment

For artist JWAN Y O SEF , who became well-known for his paintings, creating an ­object where the canvas is slipping down is a brave step as it is trying something

To print a series of portraits, BE N D e H A A N decided to use printers without UV light, which is a necessary element for fixing ink. As result, he produced a series of dripping portraits, titled Uncured. By disabling the printer’s UV

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they are born. They denounce the striving towards permanence that sculpture has historically embodied and echo the human condition. By photographically ar­ ticulating the passage of decay, each stage of decomposition is rendered permanent.” (Natasha Bullock and Alexie Glass-Kantor)

new, but also as a way of chal­ lenging and possibly doubting painting itself as a medium. Since then, he has mainly been working on objects of a similar kind organized in the space.

drying function and photograph­ ing each print as it slowly drips and blends into nothingness, the viewers become witnesses to the deterioration of an artwork.

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DEATH OF MEDIUM

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Possibly the font used for the opening title of the video work Strike (2010) by HIT O ST EY ERL. A phone app was used to recognize the font style.

1 www.e-flux.com/jour­ nal/49/60004/too-muchworld-is-the-internet-dead/ 2  The Buggles, single released in 1979. 3  The unexpected result of a malfunction, especially occurring in software, video games, images, videos, audio, and other digital artefacts.

BOGOMIR DORINGER

Announcements of death are an interesting dramaturgy. Shock! They make you panic/worry/wonder/focus; they create tension as breath is held. 1, 2, 3… Peter Greenaway pronounced cinema dead on 31 September 1983, “when the remote-control zapper was introduced to the living room, because now cinema has to be interactive, multimedia art.” Hito Steyerl wonders if the Internet is also dead and buried.1 Maybe the most interesting “act of killing” as a way to announce the death of a medium is in two videos produced by Steyerl titled STRIKE I and II. The first part is only 28 seconds long. After six seconds of watching the title written in big letters, we are ready for some action. A tense look on the artist’s face suggests a dramatic narrative is to follow. Carrying traditional tools for stone carving, she rapidly approaches a flat screen standing on the kind of pedestal used for artworks. She strikes the lower center of the screen frame with a hammer and flat chisels, which creates a colorful structure on the screen. “Video Killed the Radio Star” 2 but Steyerl killed the TV screen and by murdering it she manually produced a mesmerizing glitch-like sculpture.3 In the sequel to this work, there is again a bombastic title. There is a buzz in the air, the noise of devices as a background sound. The powerful ­“character” created in the first part is now back. This time she stands with a little girl who, if I am not mistaken, is the artist’s daughter. We are watching them through a webcam. Just a moment later, they step towards us and start smashing the camera. Now we see white noise and hear the beating of the object. There is a last stream of light feeding the vandalized visual device. Again, the death of technology, the crash of a medium, creates a poetic and hypnotic artefact. Some of us spend hours at the Sonic Acts Festival in Amsterdam watching this kind of stuff. This time, the whole act takes just thirty-five seconds. An invitation to destroy or transform consumer technology is communicated. We are empowered and reminded that we have the tools we need to go to the next level and we do not need long to do so.

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DIGITAL MASKS The only way for us to regain lost privacy—deeply missed by some—is through subversive media strategies or by reinventing privacy. To this end, interdisciplinary collaborations and skills have offered fruitful solutions. Through collaboration, we share objects and solutions designed in a digital world and an understanding of new technology, protest strategies, performance art, law, and the human body––working with software rather than fearing it. Digital processing is imitated in the production of new, material art. In works by Maiko Takeda, Gerda Postma, Lisette Appeldorn or Martin Backes, digital filters are translated into objects. Once applied to a body or face, they communicate tension between the body and technology. They bridge beauty and invasion.

In her collection Atmospheric Reentry (2013), MAIKO T AKED A used an experimental process to develop a technique for creating a visual effect of intangible aura by layering printed clear film, sandwiched with acrylic discs and linked by silver jump rings. This creates a digital-style filter over the face of the person wearing the mask. Icelandic

This is an image from a series of ten dresses with a digital print on their front by studio IKKAI (G E R DA POSTMA ). Each of the prints shows the same objects and motifs, but in a slightly altered position or state. An animation, which is part of the installation, shows a model wearing one dress after another

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singer Björk wore one during a live performance. This image was used as the main image for the FACELESS exhibition at Media­ matic in Amsterdam.

in stop motion. Hanging on a rail in the exhibition, the ten pieces look like mere copies of one and the same dress. In the animation, however, the slight alterations of the prints give the illusion that the objects printed on the dress are in continuous motion. The product, in this case a dress, extends into the digital realm.

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Realface Glamouflage (2013) is a collection of T-shirts by SIMON E C . NI Q U I L L E / ­T E C H N OFLE SH, designed to dazzle facial recog­ nition technology. The patterns on the Realface Glamouflage shirts are collages of celebri­ ty impersonators and pirated faces used for fake social media accounts and romantic spam. Both of these faces exist in multiples, raising questions of identity, privacy, and verifica­ tion. Is that Michael Jackson? Realface Glamouflage offers privacy the way it should be, as

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was developed as a masters’ thesis for the Interactive Telecommuni­ cations Program at NYU. The goal of this ongoing research project is to create a growing catalog of designs that can be employed as camouflage from face detection, both physically and digitally. The CV Dazzle project is a collaboration between hair stylists, makeup artists, and fashion ­designers. It aims to break apart the gestalt of a face or object, rendering it undetectable to computer vision algorithms, in particular face detection—in the artist's words, “becoming the antiphase, or inverse.” The Privacy Gift Shop is the

­result of an inquiry from the intelligence agency to publish Harvey’s work in a classified document. The idea was to make the work as accessible and unclassified as possible, therefore bringing privacy and countersurveillance ideas to a wider audience and engage in discussions about how art, design, and creativity can play a role in protecting privacy. Several new and existing security related art projects are offered for sale at the New Museum Store. These items will be available to anyone, from security spooks to privacy punks. The Privacy Gift Shop (2013) is a collaboration with fashion designer Johanna Bloomfield and is made possible with support from the New ­Museum Store.

BOGOMIR DORINGER

The idea of counter-surveillance in the artistic practice of A DA M H A R V E Y has been accepted by many in the creative arts, but also by their audiences, as mentioned in connection with the Trans­Cyberian party. Adam Harvey’s CV Dazzle (2011)

a mundane commodity in the form of a T-shirt. The shirts are inspired by dazzle camouflage, a strategy of camouflage developed during WWI for large ships. Attempt­ ing to hide these large objects on the open sea was impossible. So dazzle camouflage was ­designed to confuse their appearance rather than hide them.

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The project Stranger Visions (2011), by artist and researcher H E A T H E R DE W E Y -­H A GB OR G, is based on traces left in the public space: hairs, chewed gum, and cigarette butts found on the streets, in public bathrooms and the waiting rooms of New York City. DNA was extracted from these remnants and analyzed to computationally generate life-size, 3d printed, full color portraits representing what the individuals might look like, based on genomic ­research. Working with the traces strangers have unwittingly left behind, the pro­ ject was intended to call atten­

Z A CH B L A S ’ Facial Weaponiza­ tion Suite develops “collective masks” in community-based workshops as forms of aesthetic resistance against biomet­ ric facial recognition and the inequalities these technologies propagate. One mask in the suite, Fag Face Mask (2012), is a response to scientific studies that link determining sexual orientation to rapid facial rec­ ognition techniques. This mask is generated from the biometric facial data of many queer men’s faces, resulting in an amorphous

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tion to the developing technology of forensic DNA phenotyping, the potential for a culture of biolog­

ical surveillance, and the trend towards genetic determinism.

MA R TIN BACKES ’ fullface mask Pixelhead (2012) acts as media camouflage, completely shielding the

between the real and virtual world. This simple piece of fabric masks an individuals’ identity and renders them anonymous in the

head to ensure that your face is not recognizable on photographs taken without permission in public ­places. This piece is inspired by Google Street View, bridging the gap

Internet age. In 2014, the mask was used by music performer M.I.A for the music clip Double Bubble Trouble. It is an example of the “faceless” phenomenon’s encroachment on pop culture.

mask that cannot be detected by biometric technology. In his practice, Zach Blas has produced a few works that directly deal with the freedom of the face. He also created Face Cages, objects that uses physical manifesta­ tions of biometric diagrams that do not fit the human face. The cage becomes a punitive meas­ ure, or strange uncomfortable jewelry for the face. This way an individual can directly ­experience the problematic issues that arise around biometrics and face detection.

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A R A M B A R T H OLL shows the principles for making a ­vacuum-formed Guy Fawkes mask in an instructional video. The video takes us to 28C3 and other public venues where visitors customize their masks while learning the process. The video instructs viewers on how to make their own very popular, poetic riot mask. Aram’s machine uses a bicycle pump to suck the air from the mould. Visitors to the show can make a free copy of a Guy Fawkes mask, which they can customize with color pens. The mask is a stylized depiction of Guy Fawkes, the most notorious participant in the Gunpowder Plot, an attempt to blow up the House of Lords in London in 1605. The stylized

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Vendetta. The mask has become so widely used, that it has been labeled by some countries as “the symbol of rebels and revenge.” For fear of the masks being used to incite youths to destabilize security and spread chaos, the mask has been banned in places including Gaza, Egypt, Brazil, Sydney, Thailand, and New York. After its appearance on Internet forums, the mask became a well-known symbol for the online hacktivist group Anonymous and became a top-selling mask on

Amazon.com. Time Warner, one of the largest media companies in the world, is paid royalties on the sale of each mask as it owns the rights to the image. Copyright regulations are challenged—iron­ ically, the subversive purchase of such a mask is counterproduc­ tive to the extent that it adds to Warner’s profits.

Artificial Facial Expression is an art and research pro­ ject by A R TH UR ELSENAAR where he investigates the ­computer-controlled human face as a medium for kinetic art and develops algorithms for facial choreography. Small, precisely controlled, electrical impulses are employed to trigger the facial muscles of a live human being to make involuntary expres­ sions. As the ­human face is controlled by a digital computer instead of a neural brain, it can be made to perform in unex­ pected ways, bringing together

dance and technology in the most direct way imaginable. In this algorithmic facial choreog­ raphy piece, both sides of the face are controlled by identical algorithms, but one is slightly faster, over time creating visual shifting patterns from symmetry to asymmetry (and back again). The execution of the algorithms accelerates over the duration of the facial dance piece. Two DEC­ talk voice synthesis machines are deployed on each side of the face, calling out the identifica­ tion numbers of the activated muscles.

BOGOMIR DORINGER

A R T H U R E L S EN A A R : Face Shift (2005)

portrayal was designed by illustrator David Lloyd and came to represent broader protest after it was used as a major element in the plot of the graphic novel ­V for

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“Contemporary debates around patent law sparked by lawsuits among major consumer tech­ nology companies, like Apple, Google, and Samsung, bring to light crucial issues affect­ ing artists, entrepreneurs, and consumers alike. One such issue, arguably the most pressing, is whether the patent industry inhibits, rather than nurtures, innovation; another relates to the new models of physical behavior, related to touch and interaction, those corporations

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For the S/S 2013 Women’s Collection, fashion designer BE R N H A RD WILLHELM collaborated with artist GE OFFR E Y LILLEMO N. The idea was to use face­ shift and 3d Studio Max to express human realness with the benefits of tech­ nology. The heads were custom designed for each

outfit to capture the essence of the ensemble and make it come alive. This amusing and visually compelling experience showed a new way of looking at ­collections and what the models of the future could look like.

seek to own. JEREMY BAILEY ’ s patents satirize these complex issues by creating patents for the artist’s performance works— each one a genuine innovation of augmented reality that is, simultaneously, too idiosyncratic and abstract to actually require protection.” ­Lauren Cornell (The New ­Museum, New York)

Bailey’s work inspired and preempted the face-swapping application Snap Chat, as well as all the other masks/filters that we can attach to our faces with the aid of our handheld devices. He elaborates on his work in the next chapter.

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From top left to bottom right: Snowden, Ate, Chronos, Kodama, Obama, Zuck Blister

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human identity and this makes aspects of these invisible power structures visible. Data-Masks are animistic deities brought out of the algorithmic-spirit-world of the machine and into our mate­ rial world, ready to tell us their secrets, or warn us of what's to come. “Theoretically, I am concerned with the aggressive overdevelop­ ment of surveillance technology and how this is changing human identity and how humanity inter­ acts with technology. By technol­

ogy I mean individual instances of technological devices and networked systems like cameras and software, but also what I identify as the ‘Technological Other’, a global living super-or­ ganism of all machines and software. Technically, my specific focus has been in reverse engi­ neering facial recognition, facial detection, and image correlation techniques in order to reveal how they represent human identity.” Sterling Crispin

BOGOMIR DORINGER

Data-Masks (2013–2015) by ­S T E R L I NG CR ISPIN are face masks which were created by reverse engineering facial recognition and detection algorithms. These algorithms were used to guide an evolving system toward the production of human-like faces. These evolved faces were then 3D printed as masks, shadows of human beings as seen by the minds-eye of the machine-organism. This exposes the way the machine, and the surveillance state, view

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Hi! I’m famous new media artist JEREMY BAILEY!

 

What makes me famous? One: everyone is famous on the Internet, and two: I’ve solved some of the world’s ­biggest ­problems by expressing myself using technology and ­creativity. Really, when you think about it, artists like me are a lot like inventors; we bring new ideas to life that change the world. But world-changing inventors, both good and evil, are currently at war. Big, mean tech companies like Google, Apple and Samsung are being granted hundreds of patents that ­encroach upon the free spirit of the altruistic artist. At risk: the future of self expression. My great-grandfather was an actual inventor. He invented a world-changing bottle

pouring device. → 

It prevents sticky

sauce from dripping down the sides of a bottle. Clean bottles, Clean hands! Nice work, Grandpa! Brilliant people, like my great-grandfather, who pour their valu­ able time and money into their inventions need to protect their

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United States Patent and Trademark Office, United States Patent 1,949,400, Steam-Carriage, Ernest Frederick Bailey, 1933.

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Taken from Recreation magazine, by George O. Shields, American Canoe Association, League of American Sportsmen, volume 4, published 1896.

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investment from people who might want to steal their ideas for personal gain. To do this, they typically apply for a patent. To patent something, the law requires that it be useful and non-obvious—at which point, the inventor is granted exclusive economic rights to their invention for twenty years. One of the first inventions available on record to follow these patent guidelines is the Puckle

Gun ←, the world’s first

mach­ine gun, whose useful non-obvious function was to “­con­vince the Turks of the benefits of Christian civilization.” Scary! Patents in one form or another actually go back to Ancient Greece, where they protected culinary recipes—ap­ parently, cooking was a big deal back then. Patent law has survived by evolving. One of the bigger changes to patent law made it possible to build on the inventions of others. This sin­ gle change actually lead to the invention of steam power and its inclusion in countless other inventions, which spurred the Industrial Revolution eventually leading to inventions like the

A­ fropomorphic steam-powered man ↓.

Revolutionary!

­persisted. Specifically, limits prevent people from receiving patents that are too broad; you can’t patent abstract ideas or laws of nature. A famous and oft-cited example of this is

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Despite these changes, certain practical limitations have

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Morse’s invention of the telegraph, ↓

the patent for which

was rejected on the grounds that you cannot invent electro­ magnetic force—a natural phenomenon. Morse discovered electromagnetic force, as Newton discovered gravity, but nei­ ther has an economic right to something that always existed. This case has often been cited historically in relation to soft­ ware patents. That’s because software was previously consid­ ered too abstract to be patented. Software was traditionally protected by copyright, just like a film or a book. That is until 1994, when Bruce Lehman, a software lobbyist, was appointed commissioner of the U.S. Patent and Trade­ mark Office by President Bill Clinton. Overnight, Bruce Lehman changed the law to make almost any software eligible to be patented. Today, most patents filed in the United States are for software. Yeehaw! Early on, some very abstract thinkers patented some very abstract software ideas that they like to use to sue others for a lot of money. You’ve probably heard these people being referred to as “patent trolls.” Patent trolls rarely make any­ thing of use; they exist as soulless shell companies that sue other software makers of all sizes. They have become such a

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JEREMY BAILEY

United States Patent and Trademark Office, United States Patent 75874, Steam-Carriage, Drederick & Grass, 1868.

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United States Patent and Trademark Office, United States Patent US1647 A, Improvement in the mode of communicating llilfchlm/tin by signals by the application l0i' electr-magn etism (sic), Samuel E. B. Morse, 1840.

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United States Patent and Trademark Office, United States Patent US7334720 B2, Data storage and access systems, Smart-Flash Limited, 1999.

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United States Patent and Trademark Office, United States Patent 7877707, Detecting and interpreting real-world and security gestures on touch and hover sensitive devices, Apple Inc., 2011.

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big problem that large tech companies have started amass­ ing enormous portfolios of patents to protect themselves via countersuits. So what is software in 2016? Most software is now made for phones. Typically, phone software requires your finger

for input. ←

gestures

Unsurprisingly, these gestures are now also

­being patented—the first was Apple’s “pinch to zoom” gesture in 2010, but there have been many, many more patent appli­ cations for gestures since. Let me quickly spell out the difference between a patent and copyright to help illustrate why patenting a gesture might be a big deal. Copyright protects the expression of an idea, whereas patents protect the idea itself. Copyright is actually pretty power­ ful; it can even protect gestures in the form of choreography. In 2004, Ric Silver received a copyright for a dance called “The Elec­ tric Slide.” Though he received this copyright thirty years after the dance first appeared, he wasted no time in filing takedown notices for every video of The Electric Slide on the Internet. He comprise The Electric Slide, but if there were a patent for ­dancing like you’re going somewhere, Michael Jackson might never have created the “Moonwalk,” nor MC Hammer “The Running Man.”

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had rights over the expression of the specific series of steps that

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United States Patent and Trademark Office, United States Patent WO2013176472 A1, Device, Method, and Graphical User Interface Using Mid-Drag Gestures, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., 2013.

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United States Patent and Trademark Office, United States Patent US20110074830 A1, Device, Method, and Graphical User Interface Using Mid-Drag Gestures, Apple Inc., 2009.

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United States Patent and Trademark Office, United States Patent 7877707, Detecting and interpreting real-world and security gestures on touch and hover sensitive devices, Apple Inc., 2011.

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All of this is important because of where software’s going next. By looking at upcoming patent applications, we can see what has already become clear: the phone will soon be worn on your face. Virtual reality and augmented reality will remove the windowed screen from our software experiences and transform our entire bodies into input devices for software that surrounds everything in our field of view. When combined with an internet of things connecting every object to increas­ ingly abstract software, our bodies and the entire world around us are now patentable. Because software patents can be much more abstract than those for physical inventions, current patents, both pending and received, for augmented and virtual reality software input are absurdly broad and forecast a future where culture itself belongs to the world’s largest tech com­ panies, especially given the exponential rate at which these patents are being applied for. For these reasons, I’m patenting everything I do as an artist— no matter how crazy—to protect myself and others from future infringements. To clarify, I’m not interested in licensing my intellectual property for profit, by patenting I’m simply making them unavailable to others to do so. Is anything crazier than some of the patents I’ve included here? If Apple can patent

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“The Electric” a.k.a “The Electric Slide”, Choreographer: Ric Silver, Notated from word notes supplied by Ric Silver, Notation by Ilene Fox, Oct. 10, 2005.

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United States Patent and Trademark Office, United States Patent USD749580 S1, Head-mounted display device, Samsung Inc., 2016.

United States Patent and Trademark Office, United States Patent 20100079356 A1, Head-mounted display apparatus for retaining a portable electronic device with display, Apple Inc., 2012.

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United States Patent and Trademark Office, United States Patent 20100079356 A1, Head-mounted display apparatus for retaining a portable electronic device with display, Apple Inc., 2012.

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JEREMY BAILEY

United States Patent and Trademark Office, United States Patent D659,741, Wearable display device, Google Inc., 2012.

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HI, I’M FAMOUS NEW MEDIA ARTIST United States Patent and Trademark Office, United States Patent 20130196757, Multiplayer Gaming With Head-mounted Display, Microsoft, 2013.

the peace sign and Google can patent forming a heart with two hands to like something, then all of us have a responsi­ bility to patent our ­individual quirks of self-expression. Could an administrative process inspire a new era of innovative self-expression? I think so. Our collective creative potential to invent new symbols, gestures and modes of communication is limitless. I believe it is in our power to develop and patent new languages for the public domain at a speed and frequency that will embarrass the big technology companies.

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United States Patent and Trademark Office, United States Patent 20130196757, Multiplayer Gaming With Head-mounted Display, Microsoft, 2013.

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United States Patent and Trademark Office, United States Patent 8,558,759, Hand gestures to signify what is important, Google Inc., 2013.

United States Patent and Trademark Office, United States Patent 9,002,099, Learning-based estimation of hand and finger pose, Apple, 2015.

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JEREMY BAILEY

Paek Timothy S., Bahl Paramvir, Foehr Oliver H, U.S. Patent 20130155237, 2011.

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Patent Drawing #8, Apparatus for the Electronic Consumption of Nicotine from a Dolphin-Shaped Flute Synthesizer, Jeremy Bailey, 2014.

Patent Drawing #9, Apparatus for Remote Invigilation Over the Internet Using a Female Human Slave to Traverse Diverse Terrain, Jeremy Bailey, 2014.

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Patent Drawing #12, Apparatus for the Display and Control of Software Utilities as a Chest Fashion on the Internet, Jeremy Bailey, 2015.

JEREMY BAILEY

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Faceless Praxis in the Age of Zero Trust: Strategies of Disappearance and Distributed Pseudonymity in Art and Research

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MATTHIAS TARASIEWICZ nomics, [email protected]

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A D DI E W A G E N K N E C H T & S T E F A N H E C HE N BE R GE R : Asymmetric Love, Number 02 (2013) Installation view, photo: Heinz Holzmann

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We live in times of  “zero trust” (Western, 2013), a term stemming from computer security research that is “applied to all sectors and businesses.” Most prominently, zero trust is used in cryptoeconomic systems, such as Bitcoin and other Blockchain-based technologies—to describe the practice of  “never trust, always verify” (idem). This “computational trust” applies the human notion of trust to the digital world, which is seen as malicious rather than cooperative. The term faceless describes different forms of praxes, which can be read in relationship to accelerated technological changes affecting authorship, agency and production in the 21st century. While the concept of anonymity (namelessness) refers to an unknown identity, “facelessness” also includes pseudonymity, a disguised or obfuscated entity which also points to leaderless organization and non-human (AI) or distributed collective agency between humans and machines based on the example of distributed autonomous organizations.1 Technology-based and formerly called “new media arts” can act as a shield and encrypted (obfuscated) basis to test and deploy subversive or sub-versioned (critical) research and practice. THE MICRO-COMPUTING R E V O ­L U T I O N A N D T H E CRYPTO-DREAM

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The micro-computing revolution of the 1970s introduced the ciphers DES and RSA and the Diffie-Hellman key exchange— making encryption publicly accessible. Computers were gradually “coming to be seen as tools of empowerment and autonomy rather than instruments of the state” (Narayanan, 2013). This empowering idea of the “crypto dream” even spawned new ideas of societal transformation based on secure, encrypted and unmonitored communication. Public-key encryption has been the operational basis for cypherpunks (Hughes, 1993), and crypto-anarchists (May, 1988, May 1994), and still is essential for whistleblowers (Assange, 2012). Strong cryptography was illegal and formally recognized

1  A Distributed Autono­ mous Organisation (DAO) is a self-organizing group of people, companies, and computers, coordinated by economic incentives and self-executing code. DAOs are possible through implementations of “smart contracts,” a “computerized transaction protocol that executes the terms of a contract” (Szabo, 1997), for example on the Ethereum blockchain.

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as a weapon until 1996. Encryption technologies, subject to arms trafficking controls, led to the investigation of members of the cypherpunks during the “Crypto Wars” (EFF, 2014) of the early 1990s. Phil Zimmerman, for example, creator of  “Pretty Good Privacy” (PGP) (Zimmerman, 1995) was targeted by the United States Customs Service for allegedly violating the Arms Export Control Act (Adams, 1998) and, more prominently, the NSA’s idea to install the backdoor “Clipper Chip” was successfully prevented (Antonopoulos, 2010). Although the Crypto Wars were considered over by 2005/6—due to the end of governmental control of encryption and the public’s access to strong encryption technology (FIPR, 2005)—the 2013 “BULLRUN” leak by Edward Snowden (Perlroth, Larson & Shane, 2013) disproved this idea. According to these documents, the U.S. and British intelligence agencies had successfully compromised both the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) as well as virtual private network (VPN) technologies. By collaborating with technology companies and internet providers, and by utilizing supercomputers to crack and decipher encryption, government agencies had “inserted secret vulnerabilities—known as backdoors or trapdoors—into commercial encryption software” (Ball, Borger and Greenwald, 2013). As revealed by the information disclosed in these leaked documents, the threat of governmental control infiltrating private communication was, and continues to be, a harsh reality. One year after this publication, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden publicly presented evidence of the dystopian “surveillance state” infiltrating private communication irrespective of civil rights of privacy—a development early cypherpunks had frequently warned about (Hughes, 1993; May, 1988; May, 1994). Encrypted communication as a necessity to protect privacy is no longer exclusive to the tech-avant-garde, counter-movements and technological subcultures, and has evolved into a necessary everyday practice.

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UBERMO RG EN.CO M: Do you think that’s funny (The Snowden Files) (2013) Courtesy of UBERMORGEN and Carroll Fletcher, London

PRIVACY AS COMMODITY Information-leaking scandals of the 21st century (Chelsea Manning, Wikileaks, Edward Snowden, etc.) established a popular desire to become “anonymous” and disappear from third-party interference through the encryption of electronic communications. The daily creation of unique encryption keys with the software OpenPGP tripled, and the number of global Tor users doubled, after Snowden’s leaks first became public (O'Neill, 2013; Sampson, 2013).

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Unlike anonymity, the defense of privacy can be considered a relatively new pursuit, partially tracing back to the development of privacy law in the US in 1890 that was “justified largely on moral grounds” (DeCew, 2015). The “right to be forgotten” has been put into practice in the European Union since 2006 (Mantelero, 2013) and, in theory, those with either strong technological literacy or the willingness to pay for specific services can enjoy a certain degree of privacy today. The option to “remove yourself from a situation or a set of circumstances that you personally deem unhealthy, unreasonable, or unacceptable” is not yet considered a fundamental right (Trapp, 2013). Privacy can then be seen as something closer to a commodity—an inessential luxury or even a privilege, rather than a human necessity (Gryz, 2013; Walsh et al. 2017). In more recent suggestions, privacy should be accepted as intellectual property and therefore “should receive commensurate legal protection” (Gryz, 2017).

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THE ART AND POLITICS OF DISAPPEARANCE “Many of the disappearances that look on the surface like whimsical undertakings are actually the result of years of detailed and methodical planning even though the person doing the planning may not actually realize it at the time.” (Richmond, D., 1985) The art of disappearance requires exact and systematic knowledge of the system to disappear from and the creation of an alternative identity (or several) can help one in “staying gone” (Richmond, 1985). In his book How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found, Richmond also suggests millions of people in the US are “inadvertently phantoms”—they already “inhabit” alternative identities, distinct from their original one as creating a second identity is as simple as understanding the system and manipulating its blind spots. In the 21st century, where data is the driving force of the global economy, digital disappearance becomes a complicated and time-consuming task that includes the precondition of  “media literacy” as well as a healthy form of paranoia. As Nissenbaum and Brunton suggest, strategies of “obfuscation” (Nissenbaum and Brunton, 2015) can be a political act to reveal and critique what they call “information asymmetries.” Obfuscation, the “deliberate addition of ambiguous, confusing, or misleading information to interfere with surveillance and data collection” (idem) is presented by the authors as counter-tactics to global information gathering, by understanding the algorithms and deliberately working against them. Artist and activist Heath Bunting started the project Identity Bureau to offer users the construction of a “custom-made physical person...that would function freely in society” (Mancuso, 2012). The project depicts the potential of cross-referencing online data to alter or create an identity, based on the Common Law in the UK, where it is legal to own any number of aliases (as long as they are not used to commit fraud or any other illegal activity).

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Artistic Bokeh (2016), ‘­Coded Cultures: Openism’ [CC BY 2.0]

P S E U D O N Y M O U S C O L L E C T I V E S, FROM NICOLAS BOURBAKI TO SATOSHI NAKAMOTO > ! want to touch with my fingers inside screen. > ! want to foundle retina of overburned. > … to dance a bach prelude d’azur > by the train under (Netochka Nezvanova)

“Luther Blissett,” often dubbed an “open pop-star,” is a pseudonym used and shared by a multitude of artists and activists since 1994, that even committed public (symbolic) suicide in 1999 (Deseriis, 2010). Another example is the art persona “Netochka Nezvanova,” who was named after the first and unfinished novel by Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky and translates as “nameless nobody.” She gained popularity following an interview by Salon in 2002

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Collective pseudonyms have a long and vivid history, especially in the context of art and research. Besides offering a safe zone for collective communications, pseudonymity also offers a kind of limited liability as well as potential for the accumulation of reputational capital (Post, 1996). Such practices have a long background, dating back to ancient history (see Hughes, 2010), and more recent examples can be read in the context of the internet and its evolving communication channels.

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that depicted her as “the most feared woman on the Internet” (Mieszkowski, 2002). Besides being the voice of the authors of nato.0+55+3d (from the 1990s until the early 2000s, a popular video and multimedia processing engine based on the software max/msp), she also performed “amazing ascii graphics code-poetry performance art trolling” (Hopkins, 2014) which, in the eyes of some, “terrorized many online communities” (Valdez, 2011) on mailing lists such as NetBehaviour, Syndicate, Nettime, and others.

2 http://www.bourbaki. ens.fr/ 3  Bitcoin’s “Genesis Block” references a newspaper “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of sec­ ond bailout for banks.”

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The famous collective pseudonym “Nicolas Bourbaki” (Association of Collaborators of Nicolas Bourbaki), founded in the 1930s, produced joint textbooks for teaching mathematics. Besides actively and strongly influencing mathematics, the group also criticized the way mathematics is taught and reformed and changed its teaching.2 A more recent example is the (collective) pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto” which in 2008 introduced Bitcoin in a self-published paper (Nakamoto, 2008) that described the blockchain ledger and invented the first “crypto-currency.”  This inaugural cryptographically, and hence deflationary, secure currency was not only a statement on the financial crisis3 but also stimulated a multitude of other experiments exploring decentralization. Communities around alternative cryptocurrencies (“altcoins”) are re-enacting and experimenting with various different social and economic aspects of value and organizational structures. In doing this, such communities establish clear parallels to artistic collectives and experiments. These alternative cryptocurrencies (“altcoins”) are often introduced through self-published white papers or online announcements, and represent hypotheses by the respective creators until they can show a significant user base and ultimately are accepted in online cryptocurrency exchanges (see Tarasiewicz, 2015). The general approach of these new use cases is based on the replacement of existing, centralised sources of trust (e.g. notaries, banks, law, and even governments) by offering decentralized “cryptographically verified peer-to-peer procedures, without the intermediation of a third party” (Atzori, 2015). In the crypto-landscape, pseudonyms are often used to

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introduce groundbreaking inventions as well as critical content. Sunny King, the author of the famous “white papers” about Peercoin (Nadal & King, 2012) as well as Primecoin (King, 2013), introduced novel technological critique and a change to the “proof-of-work” protocol—an economic measure to deter denial-of-service attacks most famously used in cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum. Another nebulous identity underlying such innovations is the mythic “Nicolas van Saberhagen” who introduced the CryptoNote protocol (Saberhagen, 2012), a new approach to make Bitcoin anonymous, which today is the basis of  “Ring Signatures” of privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies such as Monero.4 Herein the necessity of collective pseudonyms becomes evident: as they are facilitating “collective action and creating reputational capital” (Post, 1996) they are also necessary as agents for invention—to introduce and disrupt and facilitate unconditional progress. Additionally in the context of surveillance and censorship, pseudonymous collectives play the important role of shielding individual agents from harm, deployed as a method to securely voice critique. HACKTIVIST PRACTICES, CRITICAL NEW MEDIA ARTS

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4 http://getmonero.org

MATTHIAS TARASIEWICZ

The subjects of net-neutrality and surveillance society have been addressed by various art groups and net avant-gardes in the late 20th century—depicting clear parallels to the cypher-activist (hacktivist) and media-hacking practices, their activism signified as ‘tactical media’ or ‘media hacking’ (Lovink and Garcia, 1997; Wark, 2000; Raley, 2009; Ludovico, 2009). Groups such as ubermorgen, etoy, or the Electronic Disturbance Theater have been actively protesting against the commercialization of the Internet, and “internet vigilantism or simply ‘digilantism’ has been thriving” (Arns and Kabisch, 2016). The effects of 9/11, Wikileaks, Snowden and conjoined socio-­

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political conceptions of cypherpunk are reflected in the development of artistic practices. As Jill Bennett points out, art after 9/11 works with “practical aesthetics,” which are “informed by and derived from practical, real-world encounters.” In what Bennett describes as “a tension in art’s orientation toward the world of practical action” (Bennett, 2012), a revival of critical media art can be identified manifesting a global trend, not only in the new media arts, but more as a general artistic practice. However, art does not “[collapse] into the world of  ‘practice’”—these contemporary practices encounter problems and re-imagine social relationships as they generate “new spaces and terms of operation beyond the social identities already in place” (Bennett, 2012:6). Critical media arts work as a counter-narrative, demonstrating a possible escape from the “postmodern surveillance ­dystopia.” Reflecting on this, US-based artist and researcher Adam ­Harvey’s StealthWear developed new designs for disappearance, with Anti-Drone Burqas. In other projects, he created a Faraday Cage Phone Case: a privacy accessory for mobile phones for journalists and concerned consumers (Harvey, 2013). In this regard, (new media) arts have transformed into what has been described as “useful art”—or “Arte Útil” (Costa, 1969), where art’s function is “no longer to be a space for ‘signaling’ problems, but…from which to create the proposal and implementation of possible solutions” (Bruguera, 2011). Bruguera describes the transformation of art from “the state of proposal to that of application in reality…to be part of what exists, of the real and functional sphere: to be a feasible utopia” (Bruguera, 2012). THE CRYPTO CONDITION AND ALIENATION A possible counter-narrative is the design and facilitation of faceless agents, of humans and machines in new constellations. Described in the Xenofeminist Manifesto, whose authors use the

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Nicolas Bourbaki cipher as an anagram for their own collective, the “real emancipatory potential of technology remains unrealized” (Laboria Cuboniks, 2015), as rapid market growth results in “elegant innovation…[S]urrendered to the buyer, whose stagnant world it decorates” (idem). As “old power rules can be deeply embedded in culture and institutions” (Bernstein et. al, 2016) we have to foster the creation of new (pata-)institutions and experimental cultures—cultures where new forms of governance are tested and experimented with. Such new systems in distributed, collective agency between humans and machines can pave the way for another future where “Extended Intelligence” (Ito, 2016) can produce “collective agents capable of transitioning between multiple levels of political, material and conceptual organization” (Laboria Cuboniks, 2015). Contemporary post-artistic output is developed from collective inquiries, and research is a collaborative process—a cybernetic fusion of distributed agencies, part human, part machine, part program. We must embrace this disorientated agency to find “new forms of subversive subjectivity” (Konior, 2016). Through praxis which is faceless, obfuscation can be extended to non-human actors to form a masked community, swarming with human and non-human actors.

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REFERENCES Antonopoulos, A. 2010. “Waging crypto wars 2.0” [online]. https://www.networkworld.com/article/2191198/malware-cybercrime/wag­ ing-crypto-wars-2-0.html. Arns, I., and Kabisch, J. 2016. “Whistleblowers & Vigilantes. Figures of Digital Resistance.” Exhibition text. https://www.hmkv.de/_en/programm/pro­ grammpunkte/2016/Ausstellungen/2016_VIGI_Vigilanten.php. Assange, J. 2012. Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet. London: OR Books. Ball, Borger and Greenwald. “Revealed: how US and UK spy agencies defeat internet privacy and security” [online]. 2013. https://www.theguardian. com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security. Bennet, J. 2012. “Practical Aesthetics: Events, Affects and Art After 9/11.” I.B. Tauris. Bernstein, E., Bunch, J., Canner, N., and Lee, M. 2016. “Beyond the ­Holacracy Hype.” In: Harvard Business Review, July-August 2016 issue. Bruguera, T. 2011. “Introduction on Useful Art.” http://www.taniabruguera. com/cms/files/2011-_tania_useful_art_presentation.pdf. Bruguera, T. 2012. “Reflexions on Arte Útil (Useful Art).” In: Yayo Aznar & Pablo Martinez: ARTE ACTUAL: Lecturas para un espectador inquieto. http://arts.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Hibbert-Jones_Reflec­ tions_around_arts_utility.pdf.. Costa, E. 1969. Manifesto on Useful Art. DeCew, J. 2015. “Privacy.” In: Edward N. Zalta (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/ privacy. Deseriis, M. 2010. “Lots of Money Because I am Many: The Luther Blissett Project and the Multiple-Use Name Strategy.” In: Firat, Begum and Kuryel, Aylin. Cultural Activism: Practices, Dilemmas and Possibilities. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 65-94. EFF Electronic Frontier Foundation. 2014. “The Crypto Wars.” https://www. eff.org/files/2014/01/03/cryptowarsonepagers-1_cac.pdf. FIPR Foundation for Information Policy Research. 2005. “The Crypto Wars Are Over!” [online]. http://www.fipr.org/press/050525crypto.html. Gryz, J. 2013. “Privacy as Informational Commodity.” In: Proceedings of IACAP Conference. Gryz, J. 2017. “Privacy as an Asset.” In Marcellus Mindel, Kelly Lyons & Joe Wigglesworth (eds.). Proceedings of the 27th CASCON Conference. Markham, Canada: IBM/ACM, 266-271. Harvey, A. 2013. “OFF Pocket and Stealth Wear” [online]. https://ahprojects. com/projects/. Hopkins, D. 2014. Comment. In: Hacker News, Ycombinator. https://news. ycombinator.com/item?id=8418703. Hughes, E. 1993. “A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto” [online]. http://www.activism. net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html.

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Hughes, Frank W. 2010. “Pseudonymity as Rhetoric.” In: Hester, J., and Hester, J. Rhetorics in the New Millennium: Promise and Fulfillment: t&t clark International. Ito, J. 2016. “Extended Intelligence.” http://v2.pubpub.org/pub/extend­ ed-intelligence. King, S. 2013. “Primecoin: Cryptocurrency with Prime Number Proof-ofWork.” http://primecoin.io/bin/primecoin-paper.pdf. King, S., and Nadal, S. 2012. “PPCoin: Peer-to-Peer Crypto-Currency with Proof-of-Stake.” https://peercoin.net/assets/paper/peercoin-paper.pdf. Konior, B. 2016. “Alien Aesthetics: Xenofeminism and Nonhuman Animals.” https://www.academia.edu/25380032/Alien_aesthetics_xenofeminism_and_ nonhuman_animals_2016_?auto=download. Laboria Cuboniks. 2015. “Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation.” http://www.laboriacuboniks.net/qx8bq.txt. Lovink, G., and Garcia, D. 1997. “The ABC of Tactical Media.” http://www. ljudmila.org/nettime/zkp4/74.htm. Ludovico, A. 2009. Ubermorgen.com—Media Hacking vs. Conceptual Art. Basel: Christoph Merian Verlag. http://ubermorgen.com/books/UBERMORGEN_lores.pdf. Mancuso, M. 2012. “Heath Bunting: Identity Bureau. Against Resid­ ual Self-Image.” In: Digicult. http://www.digicult.it/digimag/issue-072/ heath-bunting-identity-bureau-against-residual-self-image/. Mantelero, A. 2013. “The EU Proposal for a General Data Protection Regu­ lation and the Roots of the ‘Right to be Forgotten’.” Computer Law & Security Review, volume 29, issue 3, June 2013, 229–235. http://www.sciencedirect. com/science/article/pii/S0267364913000654. May, Timothy C. 1988. The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto. http://www.activ­ ism.net/cypherpunk/crypto-anarchy.html. May, Timothy C. 1994. Cyphernomicon [online]. https://www.cypherpunks. to/faq/cyphernomicron/cyphernomicon.html. Mieszkowski, K. 2002. “Salon.com Technology: The Most Feared Woman on the Internet.” http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/03/01/netochka/ index.html. Narayanan, A. 2013. “What Happened to the Crypto Dream?, Part 1.” In: IEEE Security & Privacy, vol. 11, 75-76. Nissenbaum, H., and Brunton, F. 2015. Obfuscation: A User’s Guide for Privacy and Protest: MIT Press. O’Neill, P. 2013. “After Snowden Leaks, Daily Adoption Rate of PGP Encryp­ tion Triples.” The Daily Dot, July 31, 2013. http://www.dailydot.com/news/pgpencryption-snowden-prism-nsa/. Perlroth, Larson & Shane. 2013. “N.S.A. Able to Foil Basic Safeguards of Privacy on Web.” In: New York Times [online]. http://www.nytimes. com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html. Post, David G. 1996. Pooling Intellectual Capital: Thoughts on Anonymity, Pseudonymity, and Limited Liability in Cyberspace. Article 5: University of Chicago Legal Forum.

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Raley, R. 2009. Tactical Media. University of Minnesota Press. Richmond, D. (1985). How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found. Loompanics Unlimited. Saberhagen, N. 2012. “Cryptonote v 1.0.” https://cryptonote.org/white­ paper_v1.pdf. Sampson, T. 2013. “Tor usage doubles after Snowden’s Surveillance Reve­ lations.” In: The Daily Dot, August 28, 2013. http://www.dailydot.com/politics/ tor-usage-doubles-snowden-nsa-prism/. Szabo, N. 1997. Formalizing and Securing Relationships on Public Net­ works: First Monday, 2(9). Trapp, M. 2013. “You have the right to disappear.” https://marktrapp.com/ blog/2013/01/21/you-have-right-disappear/. Valdez, A. 2011. http://furtherfield.org/netbehaviour/netochka-nezvanova-0. Walsh, D., Parisi, J., and Passerini, K. 2017. “Privacy as a Right or as a Commodity in the Online World: the Limits of Regulatory Reform and Self-Regulation.” In: Electronic Commerce Research 17, 185. Wark, McKenzie. 2002. “Strategies for Tactical Media.” In: Proceedings from the South Asian Tactical Media Lab. Nov. 14-16. Delhi. Western, M. 2013. Developing a Framework to Improve Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity: The National Institute of Standards and Technolo­ gy. http://csrc.nist.gov/cyberframework/rfi_comments/040813_forrester_re­ search.pdf.

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THE PRIVACY GIFT SHOP CAMOUFL AGE AND COMMERCE

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1  Johnson, Bobbie. ­“Privacy… no longer a social norm, says Facebook ­founder.” The Guardian. www.theguardian.com/ technology/2010/jan/11/face­ book-privacy

Cultural validity through economic normalization: this is the concept behind the Privacy Gift Shop, an e-commerce plat­ form for countersurveillance technologies and privacy prop­ aganda. The Privacy Gift Shop functions as a counterweight to the otherwise dominant anti-privacy narrative put forth by private industry and government agencies claiming that privacy is no longer a social norm.1 In the Privacy Gift Shop, the pendulum swings back towards a more affirmative view of privacy, asserting that countersurveillance is a practical response to the uncontrolled proliferation of surveillance. The most recent project featured on the Privacy Gift Shop is Think Privacy, a collection of promotional products with critical slogans. The products critique the ­easygoing men­ tality of companies like Google, Facebook, and Insta­gram that encourages data sharing without a clear explanation of its cost to privacy. The growing collection of slogans re­ morsefully critique the Facebook “like” as an action whose eventual outcome is an acute informational ­asymmetry

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‘Anti-Drone’ Hoodie Photo: ADAM HARVEY, 2013 Materials: Hijab with silverplated rip-stop nylon exterior and digitally printed silk Credits: Designed by JOHANNA BLOOMFIELD. Engineered by ADAM HARVEY. Model: Tate (female)

ADAM HARVEY

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‘Anti-Drone’ Burqa Photo: ADAM HARVEY, 2013 applications of hair and Materials: Hijab with silvermakeup styling. final plated rip-stop nylon The exterior lookdigitally is highly visible and printed silk to Credits: Designed by JOHANNA humans yet invisible to a BLOOMFIELD. Engineered by face detection algorithm. ADAM HARVEY. The proof Model: Tate of concept for

CV Dazzle, first developed at New York University in

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2010, targets a specific face detection algorithm known as the Viola-Jones detector.8 By reverse-en­ gineering the face detec­ tion profile, vulnerabilities were discovered and then exploited using low-cost

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between the offline self and the highly analyzed Face­ book equivalent. Another Think Privacy product reveals the harsh reality that the freedom of expression afforded by the Internet often feeds directly into behavioral analysis algorithms that drive statistically validated psychological taunts, otherwise known as “targeted advertisements.” Other slogans frame the fragility of the human lifespan against the immortality of data storage and the unfor­ tunate truth that “Today’s selfie is tomorrow’s biometric profile”. Collectively, the items in Think Privacy provide a graphic template for nudging social norms against the urge to engage with surveillance capitalism. Think Privacy launched in October 2016 as a popup store and window display at the New Museum Store in New York City. Three years earlier, the New Museum Store also show­ cased the first public Privacy Gift Shop project, Stealth Wear, a collection of Islam-inspired garments to evade thermal imaging from military drones. The New Museum

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2  Priest, Dana. “Govern­ ment surveillance spurs Americans to fight back.” Washington Post. www. washingtonpost.com/life­ style/style/governmentsurveillance-spursamericans-to-fightback/2013/08/14/ edea430a-0522-11e3-a07f49ddc7417125_story.html. August 8, 2013.

played an important role in providing an institutionally backed retail space to mitigate the potential risks of sub­ verting national security technology. This helped consum­ ers and museumgoers to engage with countersurveillance ideas through the normality of consumerism. Perhaps this strategy might also dampen the perceived threat of countersurveillance to government agencies. Asked by the Washington Post in 2013 for their comment on Stealth Wear, both the NSA and the Office of the Director of Na­ tional Intelligence “declined to comment.” 2 However the

3  Air Force General Counsel at the Pentagon. https:// twitter.com/AirForceGC/ status/351715936815939584. July 1, 2013.

United States Air Force General Counsel at the Pentagon decided it was at least worth a Tweet.3 The Stealth Wear collection is more of a provocation than a mass-produced product line. The items are hand-fabri­ cated from silver-plated textiles in small editions and are too costly to manufacture in large quantities. The material was chosen based on its effectiveness in reflecting heat, as well as its flexibility. A more functionally effective approach would be to use an aluminized mylar (space) blanket, which reflects more heat and costs less than $1 per item. However, aluminized mylar is not wearable; it’s an engineering-cen­ tric solution that fails the most important challenge for any camouflage technology. Is anyone willing to wear it? Today, camouflage enjoys positive mainstream recogni­ tion across both military and nonmilitary applications and its effectiveness can be scientifically proven. But prior to WWI, camouflage was a negative term used to describe hiding from the police.4 It was considered socially unac­ ceptable to be deceitful and defensive. Theodore Roosevelt considered camouflage a “form of effeminate cowardice, a mere defensive strategy [that] all but announced an unmanly desire to hide instead of fight.” 5 Throughout the early 20th century, camouflage quickly proved useful and towards the end of WWII had finally “evolved into a sign of humanity’s increasing intelligence.” 6

4  Kahn, E.L. 2014. The Neglected Majority: 'Les Camoufleurs,' Art History and World War I. 5  Nemerov, Alexander. 1987. Vanishing Americans: Abbott Thayer, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Attraction of Camouflage. American Art, 11 (2), 50-81. 6  Elias, Ann. 2016. “Cam­ ouflage and its Impact on Australia in WWII: An Art Historian’s Perspective.” Salus Journal. Vol 4, No. 1.

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1  Johnson, Bobbie. “Privacy no longer a social norm, says Facebook founder.” The Guardian. www.theguardian.com/technolo­ gy/2010/jan/11/facebook-privacy 2  Priest, Dana. “Government surveillance spurs Americans to fight back.” Washington Post. www.washingtonpost. com/lifestyle/style/govern­ ment-surveillance-spurs-amer­ icans-to-fight-back/2013/08/14/ edea430a-0522-11e3-a07f49ddc7417125_story.html. August 8, 2013.

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7  Behrens, Roy R. 2015. “Khaki to Khaki (Dust to Dust): The Ubiquity of Camouflage in Human Experience.” In: Camouflage Cultures.

Among all forms of camouflage, one of the most popu­ lar and celebrated tactics originated during WWI. It was called “Dazzle” and used cubist-like shapes to distort the contours of a warship. Accepting the reality that military camoufleurs were not able to make a ship disappear, Dazzle’s strategy was to confuse the human ­observer’s perception of the ship’s orientation and speed. The effect­ iveness of Dazzle is often debated, but according to ­camouflage historian Roy Behrens, it was qualitatively measured at MIT in 1919 and showed that the most suc­ cessful patterns were capable of deceiving the observer’s estimation of the ship’s direction by up to 58 degrees.7 Dazzle camouflage is a good example of a camouflage strategy that works within the limits of appearance to minimize or degrade the useful information received by the observer. If there is no means to disappear, the next best strategy is to appear less vulnerable. The concept behind the original Dazzle served as inspira­ tion when developing an earlier experimental type of cam­ ouflage called CV Dazzle in 2010. Like the original Dazzle camouflage, CV Dazzle aimed to confuse the observer by breaking apart the gestalt of the wearer’s face using bold

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Look 5 Photo: ADAM HARVEY Model: Bre Hair: Pia Vivas Makeup: Giana DeYoung

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applications of hair and makeup styling. The final look is highly visible to humans yet invisible to a face detection algorithm. The proof of concept for CV Dazzle, first devel­ oped at New York University in 2010, targets a specific face detection algorithm known as the Viola-Jones detector.8

8  Viola–Jones object detection framework. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Viola%E2%80%93Jones_ob­ ject_detection_framework

By reverse-engineering the face detection profile, vulnera­ bilities were discovered and then exploited using low-cost applications of hair and makeup. The bold and eccentric looks at first seem like an implausible solution. But they point to the possibility of a new, functional aesthetic capable of thwarting sophisticated and expensive security systems. As with Stealth Wear, one of the main challenges for CV Dazzle was designing a solution that was functional and, with a little imagination, expressively wearable. Critics have pointed out the impracticalities of Stealth Wear and CV Dazzle as being too fanciful, expensive, and eccentric. In some circumstances this critique is valid. These are not everyday solutions. Wearing CV Dazzle or Stealth Wear everyday is impractical, but so is wearing a tuxedo or Sunday dress. In certain situations, such as a protest or in militarized urban areas, these tactics can become more appropriate. As computer vision systems become more ubiquitous and powerful, old ideas about fashion must adapt to the new privacy demands of the surveillance environment that we’ve unwittingly stepped into. Surveillance technologies have already become a real threat to privacy and liberty, but their vulnerabilities and imperfections also present a largely unexplored array of opportunities to reimagine appearance in the age of computer vision. ADAM HARVEY

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Public Privacy BRIGITTE FELDERER

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This publication is partly a product of cooperation with the ­Master’s program Social Design—Art as Urban Innovation, which was established at the Vienna University of Applied Arts in 2012. Since then, the project goals of this program have repeatedly addressed questions and strategies that can help identify social needs and desires, take unease as a point of departure, and formulate criticism. It is about building targeted networks in order to overcome cold, distance, differences, and isolation where they intensify or trigger social deficits and aggressive incomprehension. The aim of this course is to build awareness for responsibility and increase the sensitivity for inequality that has become all too normal as well as develop methods, strategies, and possible actions designed to bring about change. The related artistic strategies are applied, not necessarily to attract a new audience, but to develop formats that are outside both the communicative and constructed mainstream. The aim is to learn to read public space and its continual transformation as well as develop critical ideas and a creative response to understand, and operate within, this public—but by no means open—space. The intensively project-based freedoms offered by this curriculum lead to alliances that go beyond the protective walls of the university and advance and constantly challenge the findings of canonized methodologies. The generation difference between students and teachers becomes a productive element thanks to an ongoing transfer of knowledge and experience that, on a non-hierarchical basis, repeatedly takes new turns and generates fresh interactions. Those who, on the basis of such an approach, enter the public spaces of a city also seek to trigger, stimulate, and perhaps effect, necessary changes through direct communication in a specific location—conflict is given a voice, interests are given a face, a personage embodies a concern, a group or collective articulates desires for change, steps forward and makes itself seen. The streets and squares of a city are treated as a forum in which wishes can be produced and disagreements expressed. The real urban space still appears to be a democratic place of longing in which everyone can personally and truly account for their own

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attitudes. It is about commitment and triggering, inducing or demanding changes in real life. In such processes it sometimes seems essential to instrumentalize one’s physicality, emergent feelings, and motivating concerns in order to become an authentic advocate of an issue. Such ­projects require the actors devote themselves with full intensity and embody wishes and expectations, visions and actions. Body, above all face and voice, are inevitably perceived as the criteria for quality, i.e. for the credibility of a project. The face stands for authenticity and is compared with previous images, i.e. models, because only endless comparison gives promise of confirmation. But the face also elicits hasty judgments that are made in advance— or simply the absence—of factual information. Against a backdrop of obvious demographic changes and their right-wing, populist instrumentalization, faces have become media and the triggers of a feverish world order that no longer perceives difference as something productive but rather entrenches itself behind incomprehension, fear, rejection and exclusion. Faces are not seen—cool and distant, indifferent and polite—as sur­faces. Faces are mediatized and perceived as tokens of belonging, foreignness, or success, or they are not perceived at all. It is no longer and only a matter of a physiognomic code system that can be cruelly instrumentalised aiming to deduce origin, character or traits, fine and coarse. Faces and their socialization are now oriented towards attributions that render faces as goods, as products of (fashionable) consumption, as investments. Beauty has been transformed into achievement and an expression of constant self-optimization. The natural face, meanwhile, has lost out in the face of such competition. The point of departure for the Faceless project is the manifest significance of faces in our media-defined culture. Many faces are familiar or well known; we recognize them, associate biographies, scandals and stories with them. Although we are dealing only with media surfaces, we think we can gain insights into personalities and track a whole life. From facial features we infer character traits and distinct identities, but ultimately the physiognomies

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presented simply reflect our own personal notions of happiness, acknowledgment, attention or success. As overpowering ideals, as “flawless” models, beautified models create unattainable benchmarks that are nevertheless a challenge. The standards seem overwhelming, impossible to achieve. The comparison is odious; it determines the way we relate to ourselves and also our consumer behavior, our wishes and fears. The media grotesques not only put our self-perception into a new perspective and confront us with incomparable mirror images but also seduce us to exercise exaggerated self-control. They have long since developed into traces that are indelible in the great Web. Eternalized in the book of faces, one remains discoverable, identified and ultimately not only exposed to projections and fantasies of all kinds but also to authorized and clandestine watchdogs.You appear, never to disappear. And so, this publication presents various strategies and projects of rebellion and self-empowerment against these ­overpowering, unassailable demands. The articles are proclamations of an attitude that limits what can be taken to what is willingly given. The images and texts show that it is not only professional border explorers like critical artists who develop their highly personal, subversive methods in order to escape the facial sell-off; people in different social settings have long reacted to the deluge of faces, to the fact that we are expected to be eternally recognizable. Faces do not disappear, but they hide behind masks, are manipulated beyond recognition and sometimes disfigured. Facelessness offers ample space for identities beyond an identity policy. It creates distance and offers “public privacy” as the free social space of the near future, as designer Rudi Gernreich stated in a campaign for cosmetics company Max Factor in the early 1970s. He projected this public privacy in a collection of plastic armor in black and white, intended as uniforms for residents of urban complexity, with only the eyes visible behind the visors. In this vision of the future, privacy does not exist only in a closed space; the public space is also shown as a place in which indivi­ dual privacy can be experienced. This fashionable armor is an

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image of an urban existence that perhaps seeks attention, does not withdraw from society and yet does not reveal itself or loses itself to an anonymous collectivity. In the meantime, public privacy presumably sees itself merely as the apparently continuous Instagram presentation of an ostensibly everyday life. “Private privacy” may still exist, but it is concealed behind social attention. Such privacy is only affordable for those who have time for a life behind the media scenery, who can pay a team to treat the surfaces or whom economic pressures do not practically force to assume a public existence. The once-revolutionary call of the avant-garde for a oneness of art and life was directed at bourgeois contradictions and against double standards of morality in which a conventional appearance could only be perceived as conformist hypocrisy. This radical and unequivocal veracity in terms of desires and attitudes was to replace empty conventions that merely provided room for oppression, class conceit, or irresponsibility. Art and life, semblance and privacy are so often encountered as indistinguishable nowadays and yet no taboos are challenged and no conventions are ousted. The new popular role models with their followers are probably less respected than merely admired or envied. Escaping the face constraint is both expensively acquired luxury

RUD I G ERNREICH’s plastic armor for Max Factor promotion (1973). Illustrated by Violet Dahyun Kim (2018).

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GU E R R I L L A GIR LS: Wealth & Power (2016) Courtesy guerrillagirls.com

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and anonymous freedom in the boundless privacy of the Internet. The face, which has neither to assert itself as a commercial good on the market nor to serve as an ID, is concealed or reinterpreted in such a way that its availability can remain self-determined. Facelessness does not mean disappearing or hiding from the world or society; it means self-empowerment. As an anonymous group of artists, the Guerrilla Girls have achieved mass-media freedom behind their gorilla masks since the beginning of their career in the mid-1980s and can still assert the validity of their demands today. As witnesses, they avoid mutable body-based limitations to their criticism. In the light of such facelessness, political courage takes on a new form, a different surface. It is about addressing many people and involving them in democratic processes. Those who remain faceless in their declarations also enjoy a civic freedom that is not reduced to individual media appeal. Behind their hoods and masks of all kinds, these faces stand up for their critical attitudes. This publication is a documentation of varied strategies whose

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inventiveness is far-reaching and without end, since all who apply them know how to make use of the technological mechanisms that access faces. One might ask why a hard-copy format has been chosen instead of publishing in the Web itself. Does the publication of a book enhance the cultural and artistic significance of a movement that feeds on subcultural necessities, subversive interests, and equally technological creativity? Is the fashionable mainstream thus appropriating a political counter-public? Against this can be said that the compactness of a book offers a sharp focus on a phenomenon in the complexity of media spaces, so that it can be fished out of the mass-media stream and made palpable. Facelessness is not an attitude, but has long become an expression of an individual and also collective struggle for existence that claims public spaces here and there, both analog and virtual, and utilizes them for own interests. The pressing necessity of political public spaces, the need for democratic expression, the sensitive yet combative exercise of personal freedom—all that is revealed in this social movement. Political self-assertion has taken on a new face by emphatically renouncing one. REFERENCES

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Thomas Macho, Vorbilder, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich 2012. Cynthia Fleury, La fin du courage: la reconquête d'une vertu démo­ cratique, Fayard, Paris 2010. Brigitte Felderer, Thomas Macho (eds.), Höflichkeit: Aktualität und ­Genese von Umgangsformen, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich 2002. Elisabeth Haiken, Venus Envy: A History of Cosmetic Surgery, The John Hopkins University Press, London/Baltimore 1997. Helmut Lethen, Verhaltenslehren der Kälte: Lebensversuche zwischen den Kriegen, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1994.

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The Future is Unknown – I am the Future JOSEPHINE BOSMA

By reality and perfection I understand the same thing. – S pino z a, Ethics1

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H E S T E R S C H E UR WA TE R makes self-portraits in which she explores the tendency to see women as sex objects. In 2009 she started a Facebook project where she posted an exhibitionist photo diary of her­ self. Though the photographs generally stayed within the limitations set by the social media platform, i.e. no explicit photographs of genitals or naked breasts, the artist’s account was blocked several times. “The mirrored self-images are my way of reacting to the imitated and fake media images that constantly call upon our imagination without ever intending to be taken too seriously,” she explains, “By switching the ‘subject-­object’ relationship, I try to deconstruct this call’s effect without being victimized by it.” 2

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We have become entangled in a web composed of a myriad of representations of others and ourselves. It is increasingly more difficult to decide who we are and what we are in any given situation. The development of global media networks—­especially the Internet—has forced us to reconsider our position in the world quite dramatically. By entering the hustle and bustle of the worldwide web of our own volition or through the actions of others, we are confronted with a new challenge: managing our media personalities. Suddenly and without warning, psychological skills that enable us to relate to the world, and ourselves, need to be developed and performed on a mediated stage. The theater of life has been expanded electronically, with little to no distinction between what is private and what is public. This makes it extremely difficult to explore and reflect on the self and one’s relation to others and the world in an intimate, uninhibited manner. Paradoxically, the road to freedom now seems to lead through the valley of inhibition and anonymity, while the expanding stages of the theater of life simultaneously engender the need for a behindthe-scenes existence that is increasingly more difficult to achieve. This disturbing realization may well be one of the circumstances that provoked the rising popularity of the mask. The image of the faceless body has become a symbol of the desire to withdraw from the panopticon of surveillance networks; it expresses the hunger to reconnect to an unsettled but living physical self. THE MIRROR

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2  Xavier, Francis. “A con­ versation with artist Hester Scheurwater.” Examiner. com. 8 February 2012. http:// www.examiner.com/article/ artist-hester-scheurwaterblurs-the-line-between-pri­ vate-and-public 3  Rochat, Philippe and Zahavi, Dan. “The uncan­ ny mirror: A re-framing of mirror self-experi­ ence.” Conciousness and Cognition, 20 (June 2011), 204–213. http://cfs.ku.dk/ staff/zahavi-publications/ Con-Cog-Rochat.pdf/

JOSEPHINE BOSMA

We exist in an intersubjective space, something that is affirmed by our gaze in the mirror. “For the child to recognize the specular image as its own is for it…to adopt a perspective or viewpoint on itself that equals what others can adopt on the child.” 3 In effect, this is where self-representation starts: the mirror facilitates a very specific interaction with the self and others, e.g. through the act of doing makeup, fixing hair, arranging clothes, etc. It hides the convoluted, murky experience of existing inside a body while

1  De Spinoza, ­Benedictus. Ethica. Translated from Dutch by the author. (Amsterdam: Boom, 2012 reprint, 56).

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navigating one’s way through the day with a simple, steady image of oneself that exists outside the self. In the foreword to his seminal book on the history of media, Gramo­ phone, Film,Typewriter, theorist Friedrich Kittler connects the mirror to the imaginary. As an optical illusion or trick, the mirror image conjures and reinforces a fictional view of the self that nevertheless has the potential to become at least partially real. In and of itself, however, the mirror—like the media—cannot reveal reality. For Kittler the real “forms the waste or residue that neither the mirror nor the imaginary nor the grid of the symbolic can catch: the physiological accidents and stochastic disorder of bodies.” 4 The mirror has been a valuable tool for artists throughout the ages, especially in terms of self-portraits, but also as a means of exploring a new perspective on the real through a mirrored reflection of, for example, interiors. Philosopher Maurice ­Merleau-Ponty describes how, in the visual art of painting, a view through a mirror is often used to reflect on the act of seeing, of observing.5 Seeing and being, however, are clearly distinct experiences. Representation, even through the immediate reflection of something in a mirror, can never be reality. It is more an intervention, a way to steer or create new perspectives. 4  Kittler, Friedrich A. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Stanford: Stanford University Press (1999 reprint). 5  Merleau-Ponty, ­Maurice. 1964. Eye and Mind. The Primacy of Perception, ed. James M. Edie, trans. Carleton Dallery, Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Revised by Michael Smith in The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader, Galen A. Johnson, ed., Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press, (1993. reprint).

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THE CAMERA The photograph is unlike earlier forms of images. In photography we have developed a way to automate the interventionist act of creating new perspectives similar to our interactions with the mirror. In the black box of the camera we have constructed a way to capture our mirrored image for storage and reproduction, which has in turn taught us to pose without seeing our reflection. The camera as an apparatus enacts and enforces a systemic approach with regard to what is seen through its lens. Nothing, not even a landscape, escapes this technology’s push to shape perspectives: from the manipulation of lighting to the striking of a pose, the camera prescribes the stories it tells.

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In A M Y A L E X A N DE R ’s SVEN (Surveillance Video ­Entertainment Network) exhibition, visitors are caught on camera and their pictures are run through face recog­nition software that compares their faces to those of famous pop stars. When a visitor’s face matches a ­musician’s, the computer generates a music video starring the visitor. The work mocks the mallea­ bility and flaws of surveillance technologies. JOSEPHINE BOSMA

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The Web 2.0 Suicide Machine was a software art pro­ ject from 2009 by MODDR _LA B , comprised of artists Walter Langelaar, Gordan Savicic, and Danja Vasiliev. The software was designed to automatically delete ac­ counts on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Myspace. The work received a lot of mainstream attention worldwide after Facebook presented the artists with a cease and desist letter. Part of the project’s appeal was that it made it easy to delete one’s account from Facebook, which is notorious for making it difficult to remove a profile.

6  Flusser, Vilém. “­Photo­graphy and History.” Translation Erik Eisel. In: ­Writings. Ed. Ströhl, ­Andreas. Minnea­polis: Uni­ versity of Minnesota Press (2002. reprint).

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The Czech-born philosopher Vilém Flusser has written extensively about photography, from describing the movements of the photographer to the way the photograph has created new power relations between an elite of technocrats and an illiterate audience.6 Because the camera as an apparatus is a technological construction derived from its producers’ imagination, what the camera produces inevitably reflects the producers’ way of viewing the world. Flusser discusses how the camera is “programmed,” and how the photographer, the photograph itself, and the subject of the photograph are subsequently programmed too, i.e. everyone and everything has to submit to the limitations and possibilities set out by the equipment. Thus, the result of photography is that despite the possibilities the technology offers, we are fundamentally less in control of our mirror image.

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Nevertheless, the photographic image is the result of methodical reasoning. Flusser points to the similarities between photography and philosophy. In both photography and philosophy, determining a point of view—or a point of departure—is essential. The logic of the camera forces us to make choices that influence how a particular moment is captured, while the photographic portrayal of this same moment ultimately steers how we see events, situations, and ourselves in the future. The post-historical images of photography mark a turn in our reflections on the world. Instead of trying to capture reality in a stream of words we now define it through that single perfect shot. THE NET

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JOSEPHINE BOSMA

The mirror has been replaced by a myriad of reflections online. Nevertheless, few people know how the Internet actually works. Many are as baffled by internet effects as people were when watching Thomas Edison’s train films around 1900. Those people watched a new kind of image unfold in front of them, an image that was animate, that was more like a semi-accidental gestalt than the still images they were used to. The Net is clearly more complex and less straightforward compared to photography or film. On digital networks, old and new technologies and archives stack up and interweave, and the camera is merely an addition to the computer. Visual appearance is no longer the primary form of representation—data have replaced the photographic image. Not only has the photograph itself been transformed into lines of code, but the main form of representation in the digital domain is also textbased—both in human and programming languages—rather than based on visual imagery. The creation of a vision, an object, or an identity in this environment is the result of the use of carefully constructed digital machines (software) operating within equally carefully constructed hardware networks. If we follow the theories of Flusser, we see that the programming of how we are represented and manipulated to present ourselves has been multiplied

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7  Lovink mentions two quite similar views of this covert and even seductive contemporary capitalism: political scientist Jodi Dean’s “communicative capitalism” and sociologist Eva Illouz’ “emotional capi­ talism.” Lovink, Geert. 2012. Networks Without a Cause. Cambridge: Polity Press. 8  Assange, Julian et al. 2012. Cypherpunks: The Freedom and the Future of the Internet. London: OR Books, print and PDF. http://ebookbrowse.com/ cypherpunks-julian-as­ sange-pdf-d426425395

to the extreme—and nowadays is even largely beyond the control of individual experts. The Internet is an information labyrinth, an Escherian construction, seemingly expanding, collapsing and rotating in every direction. In this unstable mega-machine, representation is a clear manipulation of the real. In this environment the configuration of the network architecture engenders and stimulates intersubjective play with identity.Yet as digital databases—and thus also the interests of industry, authorities, and the public—merge, problems arise. In his book Networks Without a Cause, media theorist Geert Lovink describes how geek cultures clash—and clash hard—with new, stealthy forms of capitalism7 in which people are seemingly given more power and control in the form of semi-democratic consumer policies. ­Corporations obscure transformed power networks that utilize consumers’ voluntary actions to increase their value without sharing the profits with their “voluntary employees,” or worse. The fate of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is the ­epitome of this confrontation. Smaller, everyday examples abound in the rampant development of  Web 2.0, from the censorship of nudity on Facebook to Google concealing search results. Rules of behavior are literally programmed into commonplace, individual uses of the Net. In Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet, Assange warns us of the development of the Internet as the ultimate tool for “the new surveillance state.” 8 His mention of a surveillance state suggests a centralized, overt form of government, but surveillance becomes internalized on both a widespread and individual level through protocols such as those implemented by Facebook. It merges with our desire to fit in as a social animal. Behaviors and appearances that do not conform with popular standards or legal boundaries automatically disappear, conditioning us in the process.

9  Knowbotic Research website. http://krcf.org/krcf. org/macghillie/

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JOSEPHINE BOSMA

The MacGhillie Saga is a work in progress by ­K NO W B O T I C RE SE A R C H that evolved from their work Naked Bandit in 2011. By donning a military camouflage suit to ‘disappear’ in public space the work ­establishes a connection between the absence of rights for suspects in military prisons such as Guantanamo Bay, which was addressed in the code artwork Naked Bandit, and the status of the public in a street surveillance zone. “macghillie is roaming around, defying a goal, without intention, withdrawing from purpose, crossing the ­cybernetic loops. macghillie defies classification, attributions are shifted into the void, no will to communicate. recognition does not help. how long can this last in a postutopian space? are there moments for something that does not want to be anything?” 9

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THE STREET, OR WHERE IT ENDS Walking down the street of any major city, it is obvious: street cultures and internet cultures merge. Geek cultures from World of  Warcraft-type games to the visual frenzy of 4chan have started to infect graffiti and fashion. In turn, pictures of street scenes and colourful walls are replicated endlessly on blogs and social media. Street culture is blog culture. Shop windows are browser windows. The matrix is a dirty, material space. Though older than the Internet, surveillance cameras on the street add to the experience of this merging of on- and offline spheres. Like with other older media, their feeds have become part of larger data bodies and compilations of information. Under their watchful eye we have learnt how to hide in plain sight, to blend in without conforming—but soon this will not be enough. RFID tracking and face recognition technologies will deepen the programming of the public sphere, while data tracking maps every move we make online. What we need is a revival of the Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ), in which every connection to the media landscape is cut off, even if only for a few moments.10  This time around, however, it is often a one-person zone. The faceless body is the symbol of our endangered autonomy in the surveillance state. The mask is the first sign of resistance. In the Greater Network, however, escape must include more sophisticated forms of camouflage.

10  Bey, Hakim. 1985-1991. T.A.Z.—The Temporary Auto­ nomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. New York: Autonomedia, anti-copyright.

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ROSA MENKMAN

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1  This chapter is based on a talk I gave during Elevate Festival 2016 (Graz, Austria), for which I was kindly invited by Nora O’Murcu. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Bogomir Doringer for inviting me to present my story and research as part of his FACELESS panel during Resonate 2017 (Belgrade, Serbia) and last, but not least, to Ward Jansen who has been a driving force behind the joint acquisi­ tion of a Vernacular of File Formats by the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Moti in 2016, which initiated my thinking on topics cov­ ered in this paper. 2  Steyerl, Hito. “White Shadows: what is missing from images.” 2012. Gdansk Academy of Fine Arts in Po­ land. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=PoZa707a91s.

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In her 2012 “White Shadows: what is missing from images” lecture at the Gdansk Academy of Fine Arts in Poland, Hito Steyerl speaks about how new technologies force us to reformulate important questions about making visible, capturing, and documenting, information. In the first part of her talk, Steyerl focuses on 3D scanning in forensic crime scene investigations. Steyerl explains how the 3D scanner, or LiDAR technology (Light Detection And Ranging), sends laser beams that reflect off the surfaces of objects that are being scanned. In this process, each point in space is measured and finally compiled as a 3D facsimile point cloud of space. Steyerl states that this kind of capturing does not just provide a completely new image of reality or possibility for capturing the “truth.” In fact, she takes issue with the general belief that this type of new technology should be described as the ultimate documentary, forensic tool; a tool that produces 100% reliable, true evidence.2 Just like any other technology, Steyerl argues, VR has its affordances, and with these affordances come blind spots: for instance, only a few scanning rigs are advanced enough to capture a moving object. Generally, a moving object becomes a blur or is not picked up at all. A “2.5D” scanning rig (a rig with just one 3D scanner that scans a space) can only provide the surface data of one side of the scanned object space. As a result, the final scan of an object or space includes blind spots: the back of the objects or shadows cast by objects in front of an object which, depending on the displaying technology, sometimes show up as an empty, white shell. To really scan an environment properly, the scanning would have to be done from every angle. But in the case of most 3D scanning, certain elements of the scanned environment will always exist in the shadow of the next object and result in white patches, blank spaces or hollowed out shells, remaining in the dataset only as a log of the scanner’s unseen, unregistered space. An important question then—not just for 3D, but for any technology—is: who decides the point of view and stands behind the perspective from which the LIDAR––or any scanning or imaging technology––is operated? Who is casting these white shadows? In order to formu-

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late a possible start to an answer for these questions, what follows is a history of resolutions, specifically the history of the color test card. TEST IMAGES

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3 Thorlabs. Resolution Test Targets. https://www. thorlabs.com/NewGroup­ Page9_PF.cfm?Object­ Group_ID=4338. 4  Gross. Benjamin. “Living Test Patterns: The Models Who Calibrated Color TV.” In: Atlantic, June 28, 2015. https://www.theatlantic. com/technology/­archive/ 2015/06/miss-color-tv/ 396266/.

ROSA MENKMAN

A fundamental part of the history of image processing and the standardization of settings within both analogue and digital compression, as well as codec technologies, is the test card, chart, or image. This standard test image is an image (file) used across different institutions to evaluate, for instance, image processing, compression algorithms, and rendering, or to analyze the quality of a display. One type, the test pattern or resolution target, is typically used to test the rendering of a technology or to measure the resolution of an imaging system. Such a pattern often consists of reference line patterns with clear, well-defined thicknesses and spacings. By identifying the largest set of non-distinguishable lines, one determines the resolving power of a given system, and by using identical standard test images, different labs are able to compare results—visually, qualitatively, and quantitatively.3 A second type of standard test image, the color test card, was created to facilitate skin-color balancing or adjustment and can be used to test the color rendering on different displays. While technologies such as photography, television, film, and software all have their own color test images, these types of test images typically involve a norm reference card showing a Caucasian woman wearing a colorful, high-contrast dress. Even though there were many different “Shirleys” (in analogue photography) or “China Girls” (in color film chemistry) that modeled for these test cards, they were never created to serve variation. In fact, the identities of the many Shirleys that modeled for these cards remained unknown and formed a “normal” standard, as is often written on these color test cards.4 As such, the cards cultivated a gendered, race-biased standard reference, which even today continues to influence our image-processing technologies. In

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his 1997 book White, British film studies professor Richard Dyer observes the following: “In the history of photography and film, getting the right image meant getting the one which conformed to prevalent ideas of humanity. This included ideas of whiteness, of what color—what range of hue—white people wanted white people to be.” 5 The de-facto, “ideal” standard that has been in play since the early part of the twentieth century for most analogue photo labs has thus been positively biased towards white skin tones, which naturally have a high level of reflectivity. As a result, it was not only difficult to capture darker and black skin tones, but it also proved impossible to capture two highly contrasting skin tones within the same shot; when trying to capture a black person sitting next to a white person, the reproduction of any darker facial features would often lose details and pose lighting challenges, and finally present ashen-looking facial skin colors that contrast strikingly with the whites of eyes and teeth. Hence, the Caucasian test card is not about variation, but about setting a racist standard, which has been dogmatically implemented for over forty years. ANALOGUE PHOTOGRAPHY’S SHIRLEY CARDS

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5  Dyer, Richard. 1997. White: Psychology Press.

ROSA MENKMAN

Photographic film stock’s failures to capture dark skin tones are not a technical issue, but a choice. Scholar Lorna Roth writes, in her 2009 article “Looking at Shirley, the Ultimate Norm,” that film emulsion could have been designed with more sensitivity to the continuum of yellow, brown, and reddish skin tones. However, this choice needed to be motivated by recognition of the need for an extended range; after the development of color film for cinema, Kodacolor (1928), and Kodachrome for still photography (1935), there seemed to be little motivation to acknowledge or cater to a market beyond white consumers. It was only when chocolate production companies and wooden furniture manufacturers complained about the impossibilities

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6  Roth, Lorna. 2009. “Look­ ing at Shirley, the Ultimate Norm. Colour Balance, Image Technologies and Cognitive Equity.” Canadian Journal of Communications 34, 111.

they faced when trying to reproduce different shades of brown that Kodak’s chemists started changing the sensitivities of their film emulsions (the coating on the film base that reacts with chemicals and light to produce an image) and gradually started to extend the abilities of the film stock towards a greater dynamic range, or ratio between the maximum and minimum measurable light intensities (white and black, respectively).6 Progress was made during the ’70s and ’80s but, in 1997, Kodak’s dynamic range made a real leap forward with the introduction of its popular consumer film Gold Max. Roth notes how Kodak executive ­Richard Wien described this development within the sensitivity of film stock as being able to “photograph the details of the dark horse in low light.” 7 Still, in the real world, true white and black do not exist—only varying degrees of light source intensity and subject reflectivity. Moreover, the concept of dynamic range is complex and depends on whether one is calculating a capturing device (such as a camera or scanner), a display device (such as a print or computer display), or the subject itself. This is why, around the same time these changes in the sensitivity of film emulsion took place, the color test card was also revisited—albeit only slightly. First, in the mid-’90s, Japanese photography companies redesigned their Shirley cards using their own stock images from their own color preference tests. Since then, the local reference card featured Japanese women with light yellow skin.8 Finally, in 1995, Kodak designed a ­multiracial norm reference card.9 From the single “Caucasian” woman surrounded by the necessary color balancing information codes, Kodak’s Shirley has now evolved into an image of three women with ­different skin colors (Caucasian, Asian, African), dressed in brightly colored, contrasted clothing.

7  Roth, Lorna: Idem. 8  Roth, Lorna: Idem. 9  Roth, Lorna: Idem.

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ONE STANDARD DOES NOT FIT ALL (OR: PHYSICS IS NOT JUST PHYSICS)

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10  Gross, Benjamin. “Living Test Patterns: The Models Who Calibrated Color TV.” In: Atlantic, June 28, 2015.

ROSA MENKMAN

The onset of color television brought no big surprise; in this medium too, producers hired Caucasian ladies as their test models, reinforcing longstanding biases in gender and race—the only difference being that in television, the objectified test model was known by her real name. The red-haired model Marie McNamara, for instance, became known in the 1950s when she modeled to calibrate NBC television cameras, while Carole Hersee is known as the face of the famous Test Card F (and later J, W, and X), which aired on BBC Television from 1967 to 1998.10 Cameramen continued to use Caucasian color girls—either live models or photographs—to test their color settings. If an actor with a different skin color entered the scene, the calibration process was supplemented with special lighting or makeup techniques to ensure that the non-white participants looked good on screen—a task that is not always easy and deferred the development and implementation of adequate, non-biased technologies. Lorna Roth concludes, in her seminal article, that the habitual racism embedded within color reference cards did more than just influence major standard settings such as the hue, chroma, contrast, quantization, and lightness (luminance) values. It is also responsible for the highly deficient renderings of non-Caucasian skin tones, which have resulted in an ongoing need for compensatory practices. While a “one size fits all” or a—as a technician once explained to Roth—“physics is physics” approach has become the standard, in reality the various complexions reflect light differently. What this reveals is a composite interplay between the different settings involved when capturing the subject. Despite the obvious need to factor in these different requirements for different hues and complexions, television technically only implemented support for one: the Caucasian complexion. Moreover, the history of color bias did not end when old analogue standards were superseded by digital ones; digital image (compression) technologies also inherited legacy standards. As a result, even contemporary standards are often rooted within

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these racist, habitual practices, and new digital technologies still feature embedded racial bias. For instance, in 2009 and 2010 respectively, HP webcams and the Microsoft’s XBox Kinect controller had difficulties tracking the faces of African(-American) users. Consumer reports later attributed both problems to “low-level lighting,” again moving the conversation away from important questions about skin tone to the determination of a proper lighting level, still echoing the dull, naive “physics is physics” approach.11 LENA JPG

11  Rose, Adam. “Sign InSubscribe Are Face-De­ tection Cameras Racist?” In: Time, January 22, 2010. http://content.time. com/time/business/arti­ cle/0,8599,1954643,00.html 12  Ahmed, Nasir. 1991. How I Came Up with the Discrete Cosine Transform. Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque: New Mexico PRocEsSlNG 1, 4-5. 13  Overview of JPEG. https://jpeg.org/jpeg/index. html

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In his retrospective article “How I Came Up with the Discrete Cosine Transform” (DCT), Nasir Ahmed describes his conception of the use of a cosine transform in the field of image compression. Ahmed writes how he proposed to the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study the application of the cosine transform; however, and much to his disappointment, the NSF did not support the proposal because the whole idea seemed “too simple.”12 Ahmed decided to keep working on the problem, ultimately publishing his results in the January 1974 issue of IEEE Computer Transactions. Today, more than forty years after Ahmed’s proposal, DCT is widely used in digital image compression. The algorithm has, for instance, become a core component of the JPEG image compression technology developed by the JPEG Experts Group.13 Just shortly after Ahmed’s initial proposal, during the summer of 1973, the implementation of DCT in digital image compression also became a subject of experiments conducted by the University of Southern California (USC)’s Signal and Image Processing Institute. In a 2001 newsletter, Jamie Hutchinson offers an insightful retrospect of the testing of DCT, focusing on the implementation of, again, a Caucasian female color test card. In the piece, Hutchinson quotes Alexander Sawchuk, who

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ROSA MENKMAN

Lena. Playmate of the Month, November 1972. Playboy

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14  Hutchinson, Jamie. “Culture, communication, and an information age madonna.” IEEE Profession­ al Communication Society Newsletter 45.3 (2001): 1-7. 15  The Lena image was actually not the first Playboy image used. The first known use of a Playboy magazine centerfold to illustrate image processing algorithms dates back to 1961, when Lawrence G. Roberts used two cropped 6-bit grayscale scanned images from Playboy’s July 1960 issue, featuring playmate Teddi Smith, in his MIT master’s thesis on image dithering.

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reminisces about his efforts on the implementation of the test card during his time as assistant professor of electrical engineering. Sawchuk explains how he and his colleagues felt tired of the normal test images or “dull stuff.”  “They wanted something glossy to ensure good output dynamic range, and they wanted a human face. Just then, somebody happened to walk in with a recent issue of Playboy.” 14 Sawchuk moves on to describe how they ripped out the centerfold of the Playboy and scanned its top third with their Muirhead scanner, which they had customized with analog-to-digital converters to create a 3-channel, 512 x 512px test image. After the tricky process was finished, Sawchuk realized that they had lost a line during the process of scanning. Moreover, the timing of the analog-to-digital converters was off, making the final test image slightly elongated compared to the original. However, because of time pressure, the engineers settled for the distorted version and simply replicated the top line to arrive at 512. Those three sets of 512 lines—one set for each color, created imperfectly—would become a de facto industry standard. The Miss November 1972 centerfold that the USC employees used for testing the implementation of DCT featured Caucasian model Lenna Sjööblom (or short: “Lena”). Lena quickly became the single most used picture in image-processing research and even one of the first pictures uploaded to ARPANET, the precursor of today’s Internet. In “A Note on Lena” (1996), David ­Munson, University of Illinois professor and editor-in-chief at IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, explains why he believes the Lena image became an industry standard: “First, the image contains a nice mixture of detail, flat regions, shading, and texture that do a good job of testing various image processing algorithms. It is a good test image! Second, the Lena image is a picture of an attractive woman. It is not surprising that the (mostly male) image-processing research community gravitated toward an image that they found attractive.” 15 Munson moves on to describe why the Lena image has become such an issue: “some members of our community are unhappy with the source of the Lena image.

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16  Munson, David C. 1996. “A Note on Lena.” In: IEEE Transactions on Image Processing 5.1, 3. 17  Brown, Janelle. “Play­ mate meets geeks who made her a net star.” Wired. May 1997. https:// www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/ lennapg/wired_backups/ 4000.html. 18  Hutchinson, Jamie: Idem.

ROSA MENKMAN

I am sympathetic to their argument, which states that we should not use material from any publication that is seen (by some) as being degrading to women.” 16 While the use of the Lena image remained a topic of discussion and its rights were never properly cleared or even checked with Playboy, by 1991 SIPI (USC’s Signal and Image Processing Institute) had actually started distributing the image of Lena, for a fee, to researchers all over the world. While Lena was regularly found on the pages of image-processing journals, books, and conference papers, Playboy finally became aware of these transgressions when the Journal of Optical Engineering featured Lena on its July cover. In August 1991, Optical Engineering received a letter from Playboy Enterprises, Inc. asking them, “as fellow publishers,” to cease any unintentional, unauthorized use of the image and contact Playboy for permission for any future use of their copyrighted material. The International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE) responded, arguing that “[t]he image is widely used in the worldwide optics and electronics community. It is digitized and its common use permits comparison of different image processing techniques and algorithms coming out of different research laboratories.”  They also pointed out that SPIE is a nonprofit scientific society and that the material published by SPIE is intended for educational and research purposes. SPIE reached an understanding with Playboy, but in a January 1992 editorial, SPIE editor Brian J. Thompson warns that “it is each author’s responsibility to make sure that materials in their articles are either free of copyright or that permission from the copyright holder has been obtained.” On the other side, Eileen Kent, Vice President of New Media at Playboy, publicly commented on the issue—“We decided we should exploit this, because it is a phenomenon” 17—and granted SPIE authorization for all further use of the image. According to the publications director at SPIE, Eric Pepper: “it was almost as if Lena had entered the public domain by that time. Almost, but not quite.” 18 In May 1997, almost twenty-five years after being Miss November, Lena Söderberg attended the 50th anniversary of the Imaging

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19  Asuni, Nicola, and Giachetti, Andrea. 2013. “TESTIMAGES: A Large Data Archive For Display and Al­ gorithm Testing.” Journal of Graphics Tools 17.4: 113-125. 20  Hutchinson, Jamie: Idem. 21a  Quotes by Scott Acton in: Iozzio, Corinne. “The Playboy Centerfold That Helped Create the JPEG.” In: The Atlantic. 9 Feb 2016. https://www.theatlan­ tic.com/technology/­ archive/2016/02/ lena-­image-processingplayboy/461970/. 21b  Iozzio, Corinne: Idem.

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Science and Technology (IS&T) Conference in Boston. Jeff Seideman, the president of the Boston IS&T, had arranged for Lena to appear, and after the event Seideman started working with Playboy’s archivist to re-scan Lena’s image and compile the missing information, including the type of photo emulsion used to make the print featured in the magazine and the technical specifications of the scanner. As a result, Seideman hoped that the image of Lena would remain a standard reference image for compression technologies throughout the 21st century. Today, the standard Lena test image is still downloadable from several laboratory sites.19 But the controversy around the Lena image did not end in the ’90s. In 2001, David Munson, editor of IEEE’s image processing journal, wrote: “It was clear that some people wanted me to ban Lena from the Journal … People didn’t object to the image itself, but to the fact that it came from Playboy, which they feel exploits women.” Rather than ban Lena, Munson wrote an editorial in which he encouraged authors to use other images.20 In 2016, Scott Acton, editor of IEEE Transactions, proposed that the journal’s editorial board instate a prohibition on the use of Lena in any published research: “In 2016, demonstrating that something works on Lena isn’t really demonstrating that the technology works.” Acton believed that the Lena image “doesn’t send the right message” to female researchers about their inclusion in the field.21a But Acton’s strongest objections were technical in nature: “Lena contains about 250,000 pixels, some 32 times smaller than a picture snapped with an iPhone 6. And then there’s a quality problem: The most commonly used version of the image is a scan of a printed page. The printing process doesn’t produce a continuous image, but rather a series of dots that trick your eye into seeing continuous tones and colors. Those dots, Acton says, mean that the scanned Lena image isn’t comparable to photos produced by modern digital cameras. Short of an all-out ban in the journal, he says, making authors aware of the image’s technical and ethical issues might be a way to usher Lena gracefully into retirement.” 21b While it is clear that the use of the Lena image opened a discussion

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about embedded bias and the consideration of gender in test card usage, there are still many questions that remain unanswered: how much are the performance, texture and materiality of digital photography actually influenced by the use of the image of a Caucasian Lena? What would it have meant for the standardization of digital image compression if the image chosen for the test card would have been the first African-American Playboy centerfold Jennifer Jackson (March 1965), or if the 512x512px image had instead featured the image of Grace Murray Hopper, one of the first African-American pioneers in computer programming and the person responsible for inventing some of the first compiler-related tools— moreover, the woman who, coincidentally, coined the widely used computer slang “bug”? How much do the compression standards we use on a day-to-day basis reflect the complexities of the “good” 512x512px Lena image; and how well do these standard settings function when capturing another kind of color complexity? JENNIFER IN PARADISE

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A woman is sitting with her back towards us, topless, on a beach. Silver sand, blue water, a green island in the distance. We can’t see her face but we know her name: Jennifer. This photo, taken in 1987 by one of the two original creators of Photoshop, John Knoll, became the standard test image for the development and implementation of Photoshop and its suite of creative effects. Twirling, deleting and copying Jennifer were just some of the processes that were tested on the image. At that time, the early days of digital computing, there was not a large array of digital images available, which is why this 24-bit scan of a holiday photo of John’s soon-to-be Jennifer “Knoll” became a standard test image for all of the development of Photoshop. It is also one of the reasons why the image did not disappear when Photoshop moved out of its development phase; when Photoshop was finally ready for public demonstrations, John and his brother Thomas used the image again and again in public and online demos.

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22  Comstock, Gordon. "Jennifer in paradise: the story of the first Photo­ shopped image." In: The Guardian. 13 June 2014. https://www.theguardian. com/artanddesign/pho­ tography-blog/2014/jun/13/ photoshop-first-image-jen­ nifer-in-paradise-photogra­ phy-artefact-knoll-dullaart 23  Dullaart, Constant. 2015. "The Possibility of an Army." https://media.ccc. de/v/32c3-7517-the_possi­ bility_of_an_army

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“It was a good image to do demos with,” John Knoll recalls, “It was pleasing to look at and there were a whole bunch of things you could do with that image technically.” 22 As Dutch artist Constant Dullaart explains in his Chaos Computer Club presentation “The Possibility of an Army,” John Knoll confirmed an age-old motif: a man objectifying a female body.23 But besides being critical, Dullaart also underlined the special cultural-historical value of the artifact, which formed a key inspiration for his 2013 Future Gallery solo show Jennifer in Paradise. In this show, Dullaart focused on the excavation and exhibition of a reconstruction of the Jennifer image. In an open letter accompanying the show, Dullaart describes the image of Jennifer as an important artifact in the history of software development and as an anecdote in Adobe history. He also asks Jennifer to share the original image file with the world. A sentiment that was later echoed by Gordon Comstock in a 2014 piece for the The Guardian, in which he describes the image as “central to the modern visual vernacular as Eadweard Muybridge’s shots of galloping horses or the first use of perspective.” In a way, just like the Lena image, Jennifer has become “a phenomenon.” While Dullaart never obtained any rights or permissions for the use of the Jennifer image, he did digitally reconstruct the original image and created an image series consisting of Photoshopped versions, materialized as wallpapers and a series of prints featuring enthusiastically filtered versions of Jennifer (twirled, blurred, etc.). Dullaart also spread the digitally reconstructed version of the original image with an added payload: he steganographically added messages to the reconstructed JPEG image file. By doing so, he intended to treat the JPEG image not just as an image, but also as a unique container format for content, to open a debate on the value of the digital file (format). The reconstructed Jennifer JPEG is not just a format that carries the reconstructed image information; via steganography it has become a unique container and placeholder to discuss the materiality of digital photography. In terms of monetization of the material, Dullaart only sells the password to the encrypted payload added to the

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reconstructed version of the original JPEG—the access to his secret message. Finally, in an effort to translate the work to the context of the gallery, Dullaart organized a performance in which he briefly showed his secret message written in phosphorescent paint on top of the wallpaper by shining a blacklight on its surface, followed by the destruction of the blacklight as a metaphor for encryption (and inaccessibility). Dullaart never received a direct response from Jennifer or John Knoll to his request to enter the original image into the public domain or to gift it to an (media) archeological institution such as the Smithsonian. Remarkably, for his Guardian article Comstack did manage to get a short response from both. John Knoll seems unconvinced: “I don’t even understand what he’s doing,” he says, bristling at the idea of the image being reconstructed without permission (ironically using Photoshop). Jennifer is more sanguine: “The beauty of the Internet is that people can take things, and do what they want with them, to project what they want or feel.” 24 And maybe even more remarkable is the fact that the Guardian article features just one image: the original Jennifer in Paradise photo taken by John Knoll, embedded on the newspaper’s website (and thus finally entering the digital domain). Albeit indirectly, Dullaart had now fulfilled one of the main goals of his solo show. IN FRONT OF THE ANGEL OF HISTORY

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24  Comstock, Gordon: Idem.

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Covered in a heavy layer of white makeup, she shot her face on a DV tape. She wished to mask her flaws, to be perfect. But only a short time into the shoot the illusion shattered and she found herself forced to visit the emergency room of the hospital. An allergic reaction to the makeup hurt her eyes violently and left her sight affected for days.

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A VERNACULAR OF FILE FORMATS

25  Gibson, James J. 2014. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception: Classic Edition: Psychology Press. 26  Mackenzie, Adrian. 2008. “Codecs.” In: Software Studies: A lexicon: MIT Press.

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A file format is an encoding system that organizes data according to a particular syntax or compression algorithm. The choice for a particular image compression algorithm depends on its foreseen mode and place of usage, which involves questions such as: how much accuracy is necessary for a particular task, what hard- or software will process the image, what data is important, and what can be discarded? An image file format answers to certain affordances. Affordances, or—as described by James Gibson in 1977—preferred “object action possibilities,” are created by considering settings such as speed, size, and quantity as relative to each other.25 The bigger the file, the more time it will take to read and write it from memory and the slower the camera will respond. As Adrian Mackenzie wrote in 2008, “Software such as codecs poses several analytical problems. Firstly, they are monstrously complicated. Method­ ologically speaking, coming to grips with them as technical processes may entail long excursions into labyrinths of mathematical formalism and machine architecture, and then finding ways of backing out of them bringing the most relevant features. … Second, at a phenomenological level, they deeply influence the very texture, flow, and materiality of sounds and images.” 26 Reverse engineering a standardization process is thus complex, if not generally impossible. However, although standards are often set in a way that avoids or hides all traces of testing and standardization regimes, traces can (re)surface in the form of flaws, inherited dogmas, or (obsolete) artifacts. Every compression algorithm comes with its own set of rules and compromises, which, even though often invisible, influence our media on a fundamental, meaningful, and often compromising level. In AVernacular of File Formats (2010), I explore and uncover these otherwise hidden protocols: via a series of corrupted self-portraits I illustrate the language of compression algorithms. AVernacular of File Formats consists of one source image, the original portrait, and an arrangement of recompressed and disturbed iterations. By compressing the source image using different compression languages and subsequently implementing a same

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27  Benusvy, Kevin. 2012. “The Queer Identity and Glitch: Deconstructing Transparency.” http://www.kevinbenisvy. com/sites/default/ files/2012%20-%20The%20 Queer%20Identity%20 and%20Glitch.pdf (site discontinued),

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(or similar) error into each file, the normally invisible compression language presents itself on the surface of the image. Beside every iteration of the image I describe not just the general use of the particular image compression, but also try to give an explanation of how I disrupted the image and the basic affordances of the compression responsible for the aesthetic outcome. In doing so, A Vernacular of File Formats formed not only a start for my ongoing research into the politics of file formats and their inherent resolutions, but it is also a thesaurus or handbook for glitch aesthetics— the aesthetics of digitally disturbed imagery. When I released AVernacular of File Formats, initially its images circulated quite naturally, following the random flow of the Internet. Some of them were republished with consent or attribution, others were badly copied (also without attribution). Once in a while I found my face as a profile picture on someone else’s social media account. Soon it became clear that particular iterations of the self-portrait had quite a bit more traction than others; these got frequent requests and pulls and were featured on the ­covers of books, magazines, and online music releases. One of the images became the mascot for a festival in Valencia (with a poster campaign throughout the city). It was only some years after the release of AVernacular of File Formats that the displacement of a portrait made me rethink my relation to the image. The first time this happened was when I read a description of the work in a piece by Kevin Benisvy, at the time a student at the University of Massachusetts. Benisvy writes that the protagonist is presented “in the act of brushing her hair, with an almost ‘come hither’ expression, as if caught by surprise, having an intimate moment in a Playboy erotic fiction.”27 I never considered the image erotic; to me, the image contained a painful and eerie vibe (it is a documentation of me losing my vision for a certain amount of time). But reading this gave me insight into the various readings the image can evoke. Soon after, a sequence of nonconsensual, non-attributed instances of exploitation appeared: the face became an embellishment for cheap internet trinkets such as mugs and sweaters, was featured

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on the cover of a vinyl record by Phon.o released by the Berlin label BPitch Control, and as an application button for two proprietary glitch software apps for iPhone and Android, it became   ung Joey (a black rapper who Photothe outline of the face of Y shopped his face onto mine), and was also used in a sponsorship campaign for a Hollywood movie about a woman being stalked, to name just a few surprising appearances.28  The image, exploited by artists and creators alike, started to lose its connection to the source—to me—and instead became the portrait of no one in particular; a specter similar to a Shirley test image, though in this case a Shirley for de-calibration. “First, it’s okay to copy! Believe in the process of copying as much as you can; with all your heart is a good place to start—get into it as straight and honestly as possible. Copying is as good (I think better from this vector-view) as any other way of getting‚ ‘there.’” 29 – Phil Morton (1973) SPECTERS CONTROLLING OUR IMAGING TECHNOLOGY

28  I have been in touch with both Phon.o and the creators of the sponsorship campaign after their re­ spective releases and now gave my consent for using the image. 29  Morton, Phil. 1973. “Notes on the Aesthetics of Copying-an-Image Proces­ sor.” In: Caates, Jon. Copying-IT_RIGHT_AGAIN. relive: Media Art Histories, 337.

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While taking an image of the face and saving it to memory seems like a simple, straightforward act, in reality a large set of protocols intervene in the processes of saving the face to memory, including, but not limited to scaling, reordering, decomposing, and reconstituting image data in favor of certain affordances, which cater to techno-conventional, political, and historically biased settings. Some of these biases can be traced back to the history of the color test card; a history that can offer an insightful perspective on how image compression standards have come to exist. The first color test cards were developed almost a century ago. They would feature a “normal” Caucasian, anonymous, brightly dressed girl, smiling friendly at the camera. Throughout the many legacy histories of image processing—including, but not

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Top Y U NG JOE Y: About Me, cover of digital release (2014)

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Bottom RO S A MENKMAN: BLINX2, from: A Vernacular of File Formats (2011)

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30  Iozzo, Corinne: Idem. 31 http://artdaily.com/ index.asp?int_sec=11&int_ new=92471#.WFQzOaIrJE5.

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limited to analogue photography, film, television, the JPEG algorithm and even Photoshop effects—this trope grew into a habitual, racial bias, violently lodged under the fold of image processing. The habitual use of Caucasian test cards such as the Lena photo led to the development of certain affordances in the compression algorithm, scaling or sometimes even cutting away certain image data. It is important to be aware that a bias does not just influence the final rendering of the image; the bias also exists in what a technology does not show; what it obscures or obfuscates and what image data simply deletes. The Shirleys and, more importantly, the technicians that implemented the use of these Shirleys or color reference cards cast white shadows, patches of unregistered information, during image processing. And while artists such as Hito Steyerl or Constant Dullaart make an effort to spread awareness around the biases and habits that are embedded in the histories of resolutions, even today, a history of these specters influences our images, albeit often invisible from the perspective of the unaware observer. Six years after releasing AVernacular of File Formats, and after close study of some of the histories of standardization and resolution setting, I realize that by using my own face as a Shirley card for de-calibration, I unintentionally aligned myself with the historical trope of the Caucasian test card. The message of AVernacular of File Formats—that file formats come with a certain language and thus an inherent bias—would have been communicated stronger if I had used another, more unexpected test image. But in this case, unfortunately, quite the opposite happened—just like Jeff Seidemann once said about Lena: “when you use a picture often, it becomes just pixels”30—my face had become just pixels, or even, I had simply lost my face: I no longer owned an individual identity, but became an anonymous image, ready for co-optation. During the winter of 2016, AVernacular of File Formats was invited to be part of a large-scale, joint acquisition of Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and MOTI.31 After thorough consideration, the institutions agreed that the best format for the purchase would be the full archive of digital files, which consists of over 16GB of data

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(661 files), including the original and “glitched”—broken—image files, the PDF, videos, documentation and a collection of (unsolicited) appropriations. While the whole collection now remains in the archive of the Stedelijk, AVernacular of File Formats will also remain freely available online, inviting artists and designers to use the files as source footage for their own work and research, following the spirit of ; but this time not just to copy, and in doing so copy my mistake, but to learn about the biased history of standardization from it. One way to make the habitual whiteness of color test cards more apparent is by insisting that these standard images, which often are trapped in the histories of our technologies, become part of the public domain. These images need to lose their elusive power. The stories of standardization belong in high-school textbooks and the possible violence of standardization should be studied in any curriculum. By illuminating the histories of standardization, we will also expose its white shadows.

ROSA MENKMAN

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As our body (parts) are being translated into machine-readable data, bio­metric processes distill our corporeal identity into a pass/fail binary. French police officer Alphonse Bertillon was the first to measure and index bodies in 1893, creating an identification system for law enforcement that is echoed in today’s mugshot database. Bertillon’s intention was to be able to identify repeat offenders. Creating a file for each arrested individual, ­Bertillon invented a strict protocol of measurement and photography to re­ cord the person’s physical dimensions. Since early practice, the translation of the physical body into archive-friendly numerals and measurable data has been performed under the pretext of the public’s protection. Safety as an incentive for biometric data collection is problematic, as refusing entry into the system is rendered a potential threat. In Philip K. Dick’s novel A Scanner Darkly, the protagonist hides his identity by blending in among others by shifting between various human appearanc­ es and social identities, ultimately losing himself. Here Be Faces is a video documentary on celebrity lookalikes, facial copyright claims, and plastic surgery as a camouflage tactic: reveling in scenarios where taking on dif­ ferent identities doesn’t lead to a loss of self but to a multiplied, encrypted identity. Beyond the technical aspects of reading and understanding a body through machines, Here Be Faces challenges the cultural shift such strat­ egies would necessitate—an urgent need for a fluid understanding of what a corporeal (visual) identity might look like, breaking with our obsession to define, analyze, and categorize ourselves as well as others.

In the aftermath of the 2011 London riots, the Metropolitan Police took to the photo-sharing service Flickr, using it as an online “wanted” billboard, calling on the public to aid in identifying the suspects. Meanwhile autono­ mous forensic efforts organized via Google Groups like “London riots facial recog­nition”made use of the open source face.api algorithm to crossmatch public pictures with Twitter and Facebook profiles. Will profile pictures be stored in a biometric cloud for ease and speed of identification? Faces effortlessly roam online as a bunch of pixels; reblogged, repurposed, and renamed. How do you design your face for such a fluid environment? Would your face be most anonymous if your profile picture were the most pirated, spread, and repurposed? What is the value of the face in a time of crowd­ sourced forensics and faceless enemies?

Images from SIMON E C . N IQUIL LE/ T ECHNO F LESH: Here Be Faces, FaceValue Part2 (2014), HD Video, 07:00 min, stereo sound

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SIMONE C. NIQUILLE

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SIMONE C. NIQUILLE

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SUPPRESSED IMAGES Written by Heather Dew ey-Hagborg & Chelsea Manning Illustrated by Shoili Kanungo

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In 2015, Chelsea Manning and artist Heather Dew ey-Hagborg collaborated on an artw ork titled Radical Love. In this w ork, Heather created portraits of Chelsea based on DNA extracted from her hair clippings and cheek swabs. Suppressed Images is a graphic short story illustrating how this collaboration took place and imagining what future might unfold.

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Heather: In 2015, Paper Magazine contacted me w ith a proposal—they asked if I w ould create a DNA portrait of the American whistleblow er Chelsea Manning.

We can’t photograph her as she is incarcerated. We thought your DNA portrait approach could help?

Chelsea: I'm currently living at the United States Disciplinary Barracks, at Fort Leavenw orth, Kansas. I have been in the military prison system since May 2010.

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Heather: Chelsea is serving a 35 year sentence for information she made public that exposed, 1 8 8 among many other things, the scale and prevalence of torture and civilian deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Due to a strict policy on visitors almost no one has seen her since she transitioned from male to female while at the prison.

Chelsea: Heather realized that a DNA portrait could give me back some of the visibility that I have been stripped of for years. Heather: And I was thrilled at the prospect of w orking w ith her. Faceless_20180417.indd 188

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Heather: I had made DNA portraits before from chew ed up gum and cigarette butts I found on the streets of New York in an art project titled "Stranger V isions."

The process I use is called DNA phenotyping. It's an emerging technique that puts clues about a person’s genetic traits together to create a composite representation.

Chelsea: The technology used has a lot of promise, right?

Heather: Yes, but it also has some serious problems.

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Chelsea: So I grabbed some clippings next time I got my hair cut, and I took some saliva samples w ith a Q-tip and mailed them out of the prison.

Heather: Then I extracted the DNA and sent it for sequencing.

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Heather: And I generated a handful of different possible faces based on the data and then chose the one1 9 2 that I thought was the most compelling.

He Iw Ch it w Iw if it

RS12913832 GG: BLUE EYES RS4648379 CC: TYPICAL NOSE RS6548238 TC: BMI -0.26

Chelsea: Right, and I had a little bit of say in the selection. I didn't want to look too masculine.

Heather: There w ere tw o options that I thought of. I could leave the sex parameter out entirely. There really wasn't any reason to deem it w orthy of analyzing. Or w e could go w ith self-identified gender over genetic sex.

Chelsea: Either could be a pow erful choice.

H I b o w

" Heather: So I created tw o portraits, one gender "neutral" and one "female." Heath one ge

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st trait!

Heather: I wanted to send prints to Chelsea but I was w orried 1 9 3 her in trouble. it w ould get I wrote her a letter to ask if it was ok.

A ugust 21, 2015 Dear Chelsea, I was so excited to receive the request from Paper to w ork on your DNA portrait! Your courage is truly an inspiration. But I was so disturbed recently to hear about the harassment and warrantless penalization you are receiving for the magazine and toothpaste. I want to send high quality prints of the tw o versions of the portrait I generated of you but now I am concerned that it might be considered problematic and get you in trouble. Please let me know, I w ould be very happy to send you the tw o portrait prints - but only if it is safe. Best, Heather Dew ey-Hagborg only nd of I red ase r s

y

st trait!

Heather: I couldn’t believe her bravery and optimism when she wrote back:

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Chelsea: Send me whatever—let the lawyers w ork the free speech angle if there is a problem! (ACLU rocks!)

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Heather: The 3D printed 1 9 5versions premiered at the World Economic Forum in 2016.

Chelsea: They gave me a kind of visibility back to me.

Heather: At one of the most elite and inaccessible events of the year, at that. And now, the portraits continue to travel the w orld. Chelsea: But, I still haven't seen them in person.

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Chelsea: I love the androgynous one! 25.04.18 20:09

ndrogynous one!

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Chelsea

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Permission is a Material: Jill Magid Faces the Information Sublime JOE MUGGS

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The first thing I thought of on discovering the work of Jill Magid—before I even knew she sees herself as a writer as much as an artist, before I’d seen her use of the quote “Let’s say I’m a protagonist from someone else’s novel,” to trail one of her projects—was the heroines of  William Gibson stories. Marly Krushkova in 1986’s Count Zero and Cayce Pollard in 2003’s Pattern Recognition are both drawn by their unique aesthetic sense into webs of global (and, in Count Zero, extra-global) wealth and intrigue. Krushkova is a gallery-owner fallen on hard times who is recruited by the billionaire Josef  Virek to investigate a set of surrealist assemblage pieces that it transpires have been constructed by an artificial intelligence. Pollard is an advertising consultant with a sensitivity to corporate branding so intense as to approach a pathological superpower, who is also headhunted by a mysterious, wealthy figure—this time advertising agency founder Hubertus Bigend—again to try and find the source of montage artworks: this time a set of disquieting online viral film clips. In each case their relationship to their patron becomes more complicated and a significant part of the story is about how, or whether, they can disentangle themselves as an individual from their situation, and indeed whether an individual can still be an individual when at the beck and call of powers that technologically are moving towards omniscience and omnipotence. Of course, in many senses Magid completely inverts these patterns and power relations. In her work it is she that instigates relationships with powerful, potentially all-seeing, institutions and individuals, not vice versa—and rather than tracing links in existing art, her detective work is applied to spotting the patterns in her subjects’ behaviour. It’s she that creates the montages and assemblages as the product, not the catalyst, for these processes. But always there is an ambiguity—between who is manipulator and who is material, who is observer and who is observed, and who is seducing whom—in Magid’s navigations through the structures of companies, courts, families, religions, police and security services, and her interactions with the individual people

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who make them up. And even more resonant with Gibson’s ­stories, there is something incontrovertibly sci-fi about Magid and the worlds she illuminates. Particularly in Pattern Recognition—which was set in the (then) present day, the metaphorical dust of 9/11 still settling over the ruins of 20th century certainties—her investigations expose the absurdities and glories, the bizarrely human and the equally bizarre inhuman aspects, concealed in the data flows of our weird, wired world. Whether she’s romantically walking through a city’s catacombs with one of its guardians, flirting with security cameras, documenting the minutiae of spies’ lives, obsessing over the echoes of unexplained gunshots through the repetitious rituals of media and legal systems, or trying to buy and sell creative legacies using alchemically transformed human bodies, Magid’s interactions home in on and amplify strangeness that is everywhere.

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JILL MAG ID : I pick a life (2007), Silkscreen four-color print, 111.8 x 69.2 cm, Gagosian Gallery

JOE MUGGS

My friend, AI designer and inventor Ben Bashford, has a fondness for citing a “Moore’s Law of  Weirdness.”  The original Moore’s Law, formulated in 1965, is an expression of how fast our digital world transforms itself: in essence, processing power of new computers doubles every two years or so, something that has held true ever since and looks set to for at least another decade. Bashford points out that as this enables information channels and the amount of information flowing through them to proliferate in similar wildfire fashion combined with ever more incomprehensible algorithms governing the flow of that information— algorithms designed by algorithms designed by algorithms way beyond their human designers’ comprehension directing trillions of dollars and billions of individual humans’ life stories across the planet—so the human world and our culture can’t help but get spectacularly much stranger with each passing year. We’re moving into a period beyond mere Big Data, into the Information Sublime: an era where even the most microscopic and banal aspects of our individual lives are plugged into systems of data that surge and shift as powerfully and unpredictably as the elements, where digital hurricanes, earthquakes, and volcanos can wreck

JILL MAG ID : Protagonist (2007), Silkscreen four-color print, 111.8 x 69.2 cm, Gagosian Gallery

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or remake cultures, governments, and banks, while all around us smaller manifestations of turbulence erupt into our consciousness as glitches, blips, and memes. Throughout Magid’s work, like a hacker looking for backdoors, she looks for unorthodox routes into our information structures and flows. Where we might walk past a service hatch or door marked “STAFF ONLY” a thousand times never wondering what was behind it, she not only finds out how to get through, but holds it open for us all to peer in. She’s interested, in the words of the great psychedelic huckster Terrence McKenna, in “the wiring under the circuit board,” or—as she said in an interview for London’s Tate Modern—the things that you can only see with “the slow eye that watches things, and that magic that happens in the city if you just stop and stare at the same thing.” But rather than doing a big unveil and announcing “look, this is how it is, this is how things are” in every case, Magid puts herself into the situation she’s revealing, bringing things back to the microcosmic, living out a very human story in the midst of the strangeness that—like all human stories—doesn’t really have a beginning or end and is all the more comprehensible to us as such. And crucially, she does it all with warmth, kindness, and a sense that whatever digital and cultural storms may rage around us, however incomprehensible the tectonic shifts happening on the grand scale, the small stuff always matters. So, in Lincoln OceanVictor Eddy (2007) Magid’s process of inveigling herself into the routines of a New York cop becomes, at points, heart-stoppingly tender. The Spy Project (2005-10), in which she met members of the Dutch secret service in anonymous public places and spent hours in one-on-one conversation with them, becomes especially poignant in its final public version, Becoming Tarden, because of the redactions made by her institutional sponsors. The removal of identifying details from conversations actually makes the existence of those details more vivid to us as observers and each absence of information in itself

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J I L L M A G I D: His Shirt, Cropped (2007), Digital photograph

All of this could be very dark … psychopathic even. Magid is without doubt a manipulator and a seducer, drawing information out of people through flirtation and gentle humor, and

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becomes representative of the humanity of the individuals that make up that very institution. The uncensored report itself had been exhibited behind glass as part of the Authority to Remove exhibition: again, a tantalising display of human stories just out of reach beyond the walls that law imposes, but still by its existence emphasising the reality of those stories. Conversations between Magid and the Liverpool police who observe her via the city’s security cameras in Evidence Locker (2004), which provide the soundtrack for the films that make up part of the project’s exhibited form, are full of everyday charm and sweetness, even as the work opens up the structures of surveillance in a 21st century city. Her relationship with Federica Zanco—Italian architecture historian and wife of Swiss furniture magnate Rolf Fehlbaum— which has grown over the course of The Barragán Archives (ongoing), during which she has tried to persuade Zanco to part with and publicly share the archived work of Mexican architect Luis Barragán in exchange for a diamond made from the carbon in the architect’s cremated remains, is intriguing not only for its “content” but for its very existence as an exchange between two living, breathing people anchored in space and time.

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J I L L M A G I D: I Can Burn Your Face (2009), Neon and transformer, Installation views, Yvon Lambert Paris

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even making threats based on the power that information gives her, as in I Can BurnYour Face, part of the Spy Project. The NewYork Times described her work as “exquisitely sly.” Her stated favorite author is the Polish-born, American novelist and sociologist Jerzy Kosinski, whose 1975 novel Cockpit and its central character, the mysterious and impossibly wealthy former spy Tarden, give the title to her book Becoming Tarden and provide the “Let’s say I am a protagonist…” quote that launched it. Kosinski’s work can be cold and harrowing, delving frequently into the worst that human beings are capable of. In Cockpit, Tarden plays games with people’s lives for good and ill with the detached curiosity of a child tearing open an ant colony. The reference to it in Magid’s work is disquieting, but as with so much she does, it feels most like a blend of mischief and honesty: an acknowledgement that she knows the risks of her games, that the search for knowledge takes people to some dark places, that making art out of people’s lives requires Graham Greene’s “splinter of ice in the heart of a writer,” that maybe even a part of the self is lost in the investigative and creative process. But it’s hard to look at her work and not find that counterbalanced by affection, by that vital sense that even the most banal aspects of the most seemingly insignificant lives can matter, and even by idealism. After all, her artistic advocacy for untold women’s stories (Postcards from the Pier, 2014), the victims of torture (A Reasonable Man in a Box, 2010), and the memories of institutionalized mental health patients (The Salem Diamonds, 2006) suggest someone a long way from an amoral voyeur.

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We live—it bears endless repeating—in the strangest of times. Not only can we often feel like corks tossed on the ocean of the Information Sublime, but among the chaos we catch glimpses of sci-fi reiterations of ugly, old human patterns. The leaderships of supposedly great nations and corporations are shown to be organisations as brutish, devious, and primitive as Tudor courts or Viking chieftanships. Incautious recordkeeping and sly hacking show us the ins and outs of how celebrities and corporations hide, and frivolously spend, fortunes big enough to raise whole

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nations out of poverty. Our own day-to-day dealings—full of unrecognised passwords, misdirected deliveries, and malfunctioning payment systems—show a digital world with a facelessness and arbitrariness that would probably raise a wry smile from Franz Kafka. To return to William Gibson’s work, from the self-replicating “wasp factory” of the Tessier-Ashpool family of his first novel Neuromancer (1984) to the “klepts” of The Peripheral (2014), a recurring theme is dynasties becoming ugly, implacable ­post-human organisms. But Jill Magid’s work provides a caution against nihilism, a reminder that behind the facelessness, behind the delirious digital rattle of money in the Paradise Papers—and even in the courts of barbarian kings—are still always human ­stories in all their banality, foolishness, and romance. And it reminds us that behind that “STAFF ONLY” sign is often someone that can be spoken to, and in that act of speaking perhaps we can, like Magid, place ourselves inside the machines that seem to manipulate us. “Permission,” she says in the description of Lincoln OceanVictor Eddy, “is a material and changes the work’s consistency.” It’s easy to think of permission as something very abstract, very forbidding, often absurdly so, as in Kafka’s fable Before the Law—but Magid reminds us that permission is also a matter for individuals, something that can be won by guile, charm and even just kindness. Now more than ever, knowledge about intimate permissions and who accepts or ignores them is shaking the world. And like the ­heroine in a science-fiction story—or maybe even a fairy tale—she walks into the heart of institutions and information systems and wins permission to see, and show, their human reality.

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Rotterdam-based film production house, mint film office, contributed to the book with a transcript of filmed interviews for the film WE MARGIELA. The fashion house of Margiela is still widely studied as exemplary for their branding and marketing, for their critique of the fashion industry, and for their views on anonymity in a world where privacy seems obsolete. Models’ faces were very often covered or under masks, creating an uncanny pres­ ence on runaways and an almost politically oppositional standpoint, in a fashion world where faces are celebrated. The Maison has also challenged the notion of the individual designer. The transcript of filmed interviews for the movie WE MARGIELA challenges readers to reflect on those notions, which dominate ideas on creativity, product building, authorship, and financial return in our neoliberal times. However, the insights of WE MARGIELA are not self-evident. The interviews reveal that many, now iconic, images and notions of the Maison came into existence by coincidence. The House was managed by gut feelings, not concepts. Even though its principal designers worked in complete anonymity, Maison Martin Margiela has become known as one of the most radical and influen­ tial fashion houses of the 20th century. After twenty years, co-founders Jenny Meirens and Martin Margiela sold the company and retired almost immediately. Both employees and aficionados were left disillusioned. In WE MARGIELA, Jenny Meirens and other members of the creative team of Maison Martin Margiela tell the untold and intimate story of the most enigmatic fashion house for the first time. The film portrays a saga in which friendship, partnership, shared creativity, and money set the stakes. Meirens and Margiela were no longer in contact with each other after the company was sold. Co-founder Jenny Meirens died on 1 July 2017. The documentary WE MARGIELA shows how she remained unseen and unknown to many, yet played a vital role in the creation of the house, its approach and style. After Meirens’s death, the international media praised her visionary and trailblazing work. E DUA R DO DE N TE director interior design IN GE GR OGN A R D make-up artist LUTZ H UE LLE artisanale and knitwear designer H A R LE Y H UGH E S menswear designer A X E L K E LLE R commercial director JE N N Y ME IR E N S co-founder Maison Martin Margiela LISE PA R ME N TIE R head atelier artisanale VIC K Y R ODITIS sales manager PA TR IC K SC A LLON communications director

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Selected ­E xcerpts from the WE MARGIELA Interviews

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[00:08:02.04] JENNY MEIRENS: In fact it all started with the blank label. That was the first step. [01:48:51.21] MINT: That means that the label without a name already had the idea of anonymity in it? [01:49:03.29] JENNY MEIRENS: But it wasn’t all so premeditated. A lot of things came about unintentionally. It wasn’t all contrived. The house grew because of a lack of means, because of our mentality. [01:49:35.18] JENNY MEIRENS: When we were in Italy, really at the beginning, I told Martin that we had to talk about the label. I said we couldn’t do something obvi­ ous. We couldn’t just put our name on it. So we came across an artist who was ­anonymous and never signed with his name. And I said, “Martin, that is what we have to do.” Martin had some difficulty with it. [00:10:21.26] MINT: What were his doubts? [00:10:23.21] JENNY MEIRENS: I think the first thing he said to me was, “oh no, my parents will be a bit sad that my name is not on it.” For me, that was not an argument. For me, the label was a very clear image. I could imagine you being in a store with so many clothes, and you see among them great clothes without a name on it; you immediately want to know who made them. Because they are nameless. I found that intriguing. I could totally imagine what kind of powerful effect that would have. After a few days, Martin called me and said, “I have thought about it and I think that is what we should do.” But a blank label is not that easy. The label has to be accepted by the lawyer, factories. Nobody took it seriously. [00:11:29.19] MINT: Why not? [00:11:31.22] JENNY MEIRENS: Because you cannot register it. How do you register a blank label in a contract? In time the label got protected by us using it. But in the beginning, our lawyer said, “Madame Meirens, you cannot do this.” And I said “But we are going to do it anyway.” It is also the liberty you take. The four stitches on the back were completely Martin’s idea. You can immediately see from afar what it is about. [00:14:06.20] MINT: Was that a compromise? [00:14:11.17] JENNY MEIRENS: For me, it was a compromise. I would have preferred it to be without the stitches. [00:14:16.10] MINT: That it was completely... [00:14:17.24] JENNY MEIRENS: Yes. But we never discussed it. Martin wanted it like that, and that is what we did. I was already happy it had no name.

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[01:37:31.15] PATRICK SCALLON: This was the time when designers wanted their name on things. I think there is some sort of provocation when you decide to leave the label blank. The white label and the not doing interviews were part of the idea that the designer isn’t the important parcel. What is important is the people, how these clothes work in the wardrobes of the people who buy them. [02:55:42.18] MINT: Vicky said that with the white label you could also write your name on it or a date. Or cut it out. [02:56:04.06] PATRICK SCALLON: You know what, in all of the years I’ve been work­ ing at Margiela I’ve never heard that one. It is interesting. Sometimes the stitches would get loose, and I used to say to customers they could cut it out. But people would send their clothes back because it had a loose stitch, and they wanted us to put it back on. LUTZ HUELLE: It’s one of the things I loved. There was no name on the label. I loved that. MINT: Why did you love it? LUTZ HUELLE: Because it was the opposite of what happened before. MINT: Do you understand why the label was blank? What the intention was? LUTZ HUELLE: For me it was a reaction to the idea that you can sell expensive clothes because there is a well-known name in them. What an amazing thing to do. [01:31:09.20] What a new thing to do. An incredible idea. In the ’90s we didn’t want to buy expensive clothing anymore. We wanted to wear jeans, a white t-shirt, and go out dancing. Clothes had become so unimportant. The white label said “designer clothes are insignificant.” These are clothes. Wear them or not. They are just clothes.

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[00:40:47.29] MINT: Did you ever discuss the idea behind, for example, the white label? [00:41:01.21] AXEL KELLER: Oh yes, because we had to explain it to clients. The white label was strongly connected with the fact that Martin did not want to do inter­ views. So, if you don’t want to show your face and you don’t want to speak to people, why would you put your name on the label? The stitches on the outside are a technical approach. They are on the first layer of fabrics, but not necessarily on the outside. Actually, in the beginning, it disturbed clients to have the stitches

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on the outside. I remember that we had discussions with them, and they said, “But why are they there?” And he would answer, “But how do you want us to attach the label? This is the only way. It is just a T-shirt, so there is only one layer of fabric. It has to be on the outside.” People were complaining about it. After a while, every­ body wanted to have it on the outside and we had to say, “No, it can only be on the lining. We don’t need it on your back like a signature.” [00:42:51.02] MINT: But the anonymity of Margiela and the white label must also have been upsetting to people. [00:43:00.19] AXEL KELLER: Of course, of course. For the clients who were there from the beginning, it was not a problem. When Martin arrived, he crossed the show­ room, said hello and went to his office. Also he appeared now and then through­ out the week. It was not organized, and there were no speeches, but most of the ­customers who were with us for a longer time know him, have seen him and ­probably have drunk a glass of red wine with him. At a certain point, it became more complicated. People wanted to have something like a personal appearance and things like that. But because we never made an exception, it was accepted. Probably it was much more complicated for the press department than it was for sales. In the usual ­fashion business, it is much more the press that has a lot of contact with the designer, not the clients. [00:44:15.29] AXEL KELLER: The fact that we were only doing interviews by fax, ques­ tions that Martin (if it was Martin) would reply to, caused much more frustration. But it has everything to do with the size and funds of the fashion house. We would never have been able to support a star designer with a star system around them. Jenny would never have been able to produce enough funds to support that, so there was no... [00:45:09.04] MINT: Choice... [00:45:10.04] AXEL KELLER: No, there was no choice. But it was, of course, impecca­ bly wrapped up as a way of thinking, not a financial choice. The star that we were working for was the garments. [01:26:51.20] MINT: When you started working at Margiela, did somebody explain to you the codes of the house? [01:27:23.19] LISE PARMENTIER: I don’t think it started out as codes. The use of white maybe, but at the beginning, anonymity was not as dominant as it became later. Margiela did interviews and, this is what he said to me: instead of asking

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Anders Edström (photo), Autumn/Winter 95–96

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him questions about the collection and publishing pictures of the garments, they asked him if he liked spaghetti and they wanted to publish a portrait of him. It was stupid. I mean, he was happy to have the opportunity to show what he was doing in the magazine or newspaper, but he didn’t want to show his face instead of the garments. He didn’t want to speak about his taste in food, he wanted to talk about his collection. So he decided not to do this anymore. He said, “If you have space in your magazine to write about Margiela, you write about my collection because that is what I want to express.” So in the beginning, it was not the idea of “I am going to be anonymous.” It was the idea of showing his work. More and more he became the man you never see, but it didn’t start out like that. For the white label, it was the same. You want people to buy a garment for the garment, not for the name on it. [01:29:12.16] MINT: But the whole idea of not giving interviews or showing his face, did it upset people? [01:29:26.10] LISE PARMENTIER: Oh yes! People wouldn’t want to do articles about the house. Some people from the press knew Martin and for them it was a privi­ lege. Other journalists were infuriated and said that the house was not following the rules. For them, the journalist is the one who decides what is needed and the designer should just be happy to be in the magazines. When you start something like this, it’s difficult to stop. But I think Martin was happy with the decision. He’s not the kind of person to have the [spot]light on him. [01:58:51.11] JENNY MEIRENS: Martin always had problems with the press. In the beginning, he would do interviews, but the result was never what he wanted. By not giving interviews, so he said, they had to write about his work. And that is how this came about. [00:08:25.29] MINT: Did he consult you about this? [00:08:26.25] JENNY MEIRENS: No, this was purely his decision, but I totally agreed. And he never went back on it. Martin is very coherent. I am also coherent in my strategies so, in fact, we were both very extreme. [01:13:17.06] PATRICK SCALLON: I was speaking on behalf of the company because the artistic director decided that he wanted to focus on designing. It wasn’t impor­ tant what he had to say about his clothes; it was important how people lived those clothes and the effect that had on them. People were provoked or asked for their opinion of what Margiela was, rather than him explaining it to people. That was a decision that was taken very early on.

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[01:02:27.11] PATRICK SCALLON: As more attention was given to who we were, we had more and more demands for interviews. I would wait for the office to go quiet and then I’d sit typing the interviews. I had zero problems with doing what I did because I saw it as a way for Martin to 1) focus on his designs, but 2) also have the life that he deserved to have. Were we not aware at all that it had a mysterious effect? Yes, we were. It wasn’t the reason why we did it. But we knew it was a win-win. [01:13:17.06] PATRICK SCALLON: What people don’t realize is that, for example, the most prominent American magazine canceled eight or nine pages for the very fact that Martin refused a lunch. Those eight pages were—for a company like us—a serious amount of exposure. People were pissed off. So when people talk about the mystery and the marketing aspect of the mystery, I saw how much coverage we didn’t get because of it. [01:20:53.03] MENNA: You never went to him and said, “Would you reconsider? Could you do this or that?” [01:20:56.07] PATRICK SCALLON: No, no, never. I would give Martin the opportunity to do the interviews and step out and be photographed or whatever. I didn’t want to be responsible for locking him into a persona that he wasn’t comfortable with. It was always his choice. [02:49:46.01] PATRICK SCALLON: I think because Martin was not physically present, it allowed people to sort of plunder his work. They wouldn’t necessarily have done so if they had had more of a physical idea of who the person was, had heard his opin­ ions or were afraid of what he would say. In a certain way with Martin not speaking to the press, other designers would be directly influenced by his work, but they could do it with a different level of compunction because they knew he would never speak back. I think they wouldn’t have necessarily done this if they had more of a physical idea of who the person was.

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[01:23:03.24] PATRICK SCALLON: Martin knew how much time handling media needs would take. So in a certain way, not speaking to the press was a very practical decision. I think Jenny was the one who enjoyed the provocation of it more and also understood the conceptual integrity of it more than Martin did. I think Martin saw it more from a pragmatic point of view. I don’t believe that Jenny was given the proper credit for being the conceptualist that she was. She was the one who built the atmosphere and the behavior around Martin’s designs and for me that was intrinsic to what Margiela is as a company. The clothes wouldn’t have been as com­

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pelling if the company didn’t behave the way it did and the company couldn’t have behaved in the way that it did if the clothes weren’t the way that they were. [00:26:20.25] VICKY RODITIS: We didn’t have a mainstream type of communication at the house... First of all we had no advertisements, we didn’t do publicity for the house. The name “Martin Margiela” was not registered in the Yellow Pages. In the beginning we didn’t use computers. Martin didn’t want that. Everything was hand­ written. All the videotapes were sent in envelopes made of white cotton that were hand sewn in the artisanal atelier. You must understand Martin was someone who didn’t have a driver’s license, didn’t like cellular phones or the Internet. [00:26:29.23] MINT: Ah... [00:26:29.23] VICKY RODITIS: At a certain point it was Jenny who said to Martin, “the commercial department has too much work to do all the correspondence in hand­ writing. We need at least typewriters.” Later we also started using the fax. But this was how we all did it, it was something very personal. And that I found so interest­ ing, the anonymity of the house was also totally personal. [01:39:28.19] PATRICK SCALLON: I was a communications director at a company that wasn’t even in the telephone directory. If you went to the Yellow Pages and looked up “Margiela,” you wouldn’t find it ‘cause it was called “Neuf.” [01:42:45.05] MINT: Was it called “Neuf”? [01:42:48.02] PATRICK SCALLON: Yes. In the telephone directory, the Yellow Pages, it was “Sarl Neuf.” There was no listing as “Martin Margiela” or “Maison Martin ­Margiela” or anything. [01:05:27.27] JENNY MEIRENS: Neuf, nine. It is Martin’s birthday. [01:05:47.14] MINT: We thought nine was your lucky number. [02:03:00.22] JENNY MEIRENS: No. Martin was born on the ninth of April. But there once was a fortune-teller who told me that everything with the number nine would bring me luck. Only this was after we called the company “Neuf.”

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[00:28:13.17] VICKY RODITIS: When they started in Paris they named the company “Neuf.” Nine was also Martin’s birthday: the ninth of April. But then the number nine came up so many times in the whole story of the house of Margiela. We were always located in the 9th district. After that we moved to Chappele, which is the 18th district: 1 plus 8 is 9. The first store we had in Milan was on the ninth floor.

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When you added the numbers of the postal code the total was nine. To get there with the metro was nine stops. [00:29:08.20] MINT: *Laughter* [00:29:10.01] VICKY RODITIS: And the store had nine doors and forty-nine windows. [00:29:15.06] MINT: Haha, okay. [00:32:14.12] VICKY RODITIS: Talking about numbers! Even the codes of the ­different collections we were selling were thought out. “0” is Martin, “1” is Jenny. When we started to sell more different collections we had to find a way to identify each one. The numbers 0 to 23 would be printed on the label and the number of the specific collection would be circled around. “0” was the Artisanal collection; the one that ­Martin loved the most and where it all started. “1” was the women’s collection. “10” was the men’s wardrobe. “22” were the shoes as in two feet and a pair is two. “8” was the glasses, because when you lay down the number eight it looks like two eyes. [00:27:37.22] VICKY RODITIS: Everything was real. From the beginning to the end. For me the house of Margiela was a world, a complete world. There was a thread that connected everything to everything. This was something very intense, you know. [01:24:54.03] HARLEY HUGHES: The whole idea of Martin not engaging with the press and not using his face as a vehicle for the company, it was something that just seemed completely natural. I think he explained once—not from his own ­prompting—how this came about, and I believe it was partly when he worked for Gaultier that he had seen how big it can get if you become a visual face of a ­fashion company. I liked it that we weren’t like anyone else. I thought it was good and I can’t remember questioning this, in any sense. [01:27:32.04] MINT: Did people from the outside question you about it? Were you ever asked about the house and how it was? [01:27:45.21] HARLEY HUGHES: I’m sure people were asking me things like “What’s he like?” because nobody had seen a picture of him. But I am fairly sure that there was a sense of loyalty that we all shared, a sort of protecting, not necessarily ­Martin, but protecting this place where we worked and all its values, for good and bad. I think there was an element that you had to be quite discreet and not necessarily talk too much about what went on in the company and how it worked. Again, this added to the feeling of being in a special place.

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[01:36:01.18] LUTZ HUELLE: Martin just said he didn’t want to speak about the collec­ tion. But I never understood why. I thought it must be a marketing thing. Because why wouldn’t you want to talk about your collection? There are so many interesting things to say. It did make him more intriguing to a lot of people, more mysterious. [01:39:03.10] MINT: Why do you say, “Maybe it was a marketing thing?” LUTZ HUELLE: I was just wondering. He is a nice person, why wouldn’t he want to talk about his work? Then I thought, maybe he doesn’t know what to say about his work. Maybe he doesn’t want to talk about it because he doesn’t know what to talk about. That’s fine because why should you have to talk about your work? MINT: Did you get to know him as a person who might not know what to say? LUTZ HUELLE: We never had deep conversations about his work. I am not sure he wanted to speak about his work like that. I felt like it was never very metaphysical. It was very simple.

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[00:54:07.13] EDUARDO DENTE: I never considered the company very intellectual. For instance, we never started with a concept for a show. We just had the location, the blueprints, the conditions, the budget, etc. For me, the company was in many ways very pragmatic. Ehhm off the record we had to prepare this exhibition in Hong Kong and there was this wonderful collaborator of mine she was someone who did art school and she maybe in some meeting she had a very formal of speech about she would consider that this is connected to new realism in painting in France and Mr. Margiela said [...] we are not at school and what I need that this is cut in a certain way and that’s all. And I understood immediately, It’s not that Martin, sorry Mr. Margiela, is not intellectual. It’s just that we don’t need words to realize a project. We want to put this chair here and that table there. One of the reasons we were so free to try out new things, in whatever aspect, was because the company didn’t have a steady idea, you understand? Mr. Margiela just turned things around and they seemed like something new. And I think what we did with interior design was the same. For example, we took a simple advertising picture and from something small in the back of the back of the photo we got an idea that we developed into an interior, and that was all. For me, it was as simple as that. Which meant, of course, many nights not sleeping, running against the clock, fighting the budget, negotiating with the architect. I am sorry to simplify things but believe me, it was simple.

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Anders Edström (photo), Spring/Summer 96

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[00:58:52.25] MINT: Ha ha. [00:58:53.09] EDUARDO DENTE: It was really simple. .[00:58:56.15] EDUARDO DENTE: The biggest challenge was to make it look like a spon­ taneous gesture. And in that way not intellectual. [00:59:46.10] EDUARDO DENTE: When you read the speeches and texts that the House of Margiela sent out, you see that the House had a certain way to say nothing. You don’t answer the question. When I had to brief my colleagues at the press office about a project we did in the design department I always tried to think what Patrick Scallon would write. That’s how I learned to avoid certain kinds of questions and to feel free to answer with something which for me represented the style of speech for the company. In a certain way that’s also intellectual, but not in the way a lot of people outside the company perceived Margiela. For me, it was forbidden to use words like “deconstruction.” Make it simpler, use other words, find other ways to answer questions. [01:09:35.28] EDUARDO DENTE: I think the company was over-interpreted. At Margiela, all the teams learned how to find inspiration, but you make something new and you don’t necessarily show where it comes from. But nothing comes from nothing. So, over-interpreted is the right word, yes. [01:10:56.15] MINT: How did inspiration work for you? 01:11:15.23] EDUARDO DENTE: We had several sources. The street, of course, was important. We would walk around and see a piece of furniture, just waiting to be taken away by the lorry. And though it was just standing there, unknown, left behind, there was something good in it. It’s like giving value to something anonymous or cheap or used. For me, it was very cool. I think that we mostly collaged materials. Putting things together, from different places, different pasts to create a new present. Sometimes we had pictures and books and Mr. Margiela would come to the office and we would go through them. But it was not what was on the front that was important, a dancer or a portrait, but something that was in the background of the photo, or on the floor. Something very small and silly, but silly as in you would normally not pay attention to it. [01:23:43.09] MINT: Were you aware of the outside world while you were working inside? [01:23:46.27] EDUARDO DENTE: No.

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[01:09:01.26] LUTZ HUELLE: The knitwear had a slight retro aspect to it. It was a bit ’70s, and ’60s, an old-fashioned way of looking at sweaters. It wasn’t like finery; more a little rustic. But designed so it wouldn’t be rustic as in old. It was rustic but in a designed kind of way. It was also things that you would wear really, really easily. They were always so easy to wear because they had a slightly used aspect to them. You felt like they had been worn before. You know how new clothes, when they are perfect, can be daunting. You buy something and it stays in the closet because you don’t feel like you can just throw it on because it looks so amazing. With Margiela, it was easy to put on the clothes because they looked as if you had already worn them. The idea of doing knitwear that looked used, slightly old, lived in, was an easy logic. MINT: At Miss Deanne we saw this enormous cardigan. It was really big, with cuffs that were frayed. LUTZ HUELLE: Moth-eaten, that was the idea of it being moth-eaten. MINT: It had the shape of breasts in it. LUTZ HUELLE: He loved it when big things still showed the shape of the body when worn by a skinny person. [01:22:00.25] LUTZ HUELLE: I just thought it looked nice. Like a strange, double body. MINT: Being over-mystified... Did we make it bigger than it was? LUTZ HUELLE: That is a question you shouldn’t ask yourself. It is what it is for you. If it’s a positive thing then it’s amazing, it’s perfect. If it’s mysterious for you from the outside, then it’s fine. It doesn’t matter how it was from the inside. It’s like saying that the music of Michael Jackson is less interesting because of what he did in his private life. But it isn’t. From the outside, it was seen as mysterious or intellectual because people weren’t able to explain it. It was more complex than a regular fash­ ion collection. That’s why it became what it became.

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[01:46:28.17] HARLEY HUGHES: I suppose the intellectuality comes from it being a concept. The conceptual element, if you like. And maybe that was part of the mys­ tique. I wouldn’t necessarily describe him as overly intellectual in that sense. And he’s definitely somebody who laughs, so we weren’t working in a library. But I do think that possibly we took ourselves too seriously when we were there, who knows? [02:07:48.10] MINT: Last time you said that the notion of anonymity is also some­ what of a golden cage. You are stuck in it.

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[02:08:03.24] JENNY MEIRENS: Yes, of course, of course. Just like any other image. When you portray such a strong image, you are partially caged in it. [01:10:58.26] JENNY MEIRENS: At the shows, we had no seating. So you open the door and then there are people pushing and fighting to get in. I have to say, to go through that, I was completely worn out after each show. [01:11:31.06] MINT: But why did you decide to do it like that, without seating? [01:11:34.25] JENNY MEIRENS: From the first show on, Martin wanted it like that. And I have to say I never wanted to change that, I totally agreed. [01:11:46.25] MINT: But what is the meaning of not having seating? [01:11:49.19] JENNY MEIRENS: Democracy. [01:01:24.23] INGE GROGNARD: This system of a first row for Very Important People, no, at Margiela everybody was equal. Which was great. Also the locations of the shows. These were the strangest places in Paris. And people didn’t like that at all. Oh no, they felt that it took too much moving around. Even though there weren’t as many shows then as there are now, people preferred them to be all in one place, with all the comfort and luxury. That is much easier. Now they had to take the subway or a taxi. So yes, you had to make an effort to see a show by Margiela. Plus, the seating was limited. There was no space for thousands of people, so in time this became a much-wanted ticket. [00:56:37.27] INGE GROGNARD: Martin was not interested in standing and fame. Martin was not someone who got a kick out of film stars or famous fashion models. He wanted nothing to do with this cult of celebrity. For him, it was not relevant at all because then it was not about what you wanted to express with your work, but about the fame of these people. [00:55:17.13] MINT: Your make-up, the painted stripe that covers the eyes, it seems very much linked to anonymity. [00:55:24.23] INGE GROGNARD: Voilà. That has always played a part with Martin and that is why he kept out of the picture himself. He always said, “What is first and foremost of interest are the clothes. That is what is important.” And the anonym­ ity came straight from that, eyes covered with hair or strong make-up. In pictures, eyes were covered with black tape. [00:56:08.06] MINT: How did people react to this?

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Anders Edström (photo), Spring/Summer 96

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[00:56:12.08] INGE GROGNARD: I can’t remember. I know, no, I can’t remember. For us it was self-evident. MINT: That nobody could take pictures... JENNY MEIRENS: It was almost from the beginning that there were no photos. MINT: But when people come to work for you, they have to know the rules. That you can’t take a picture, that you know you have to respect that? JENNY MEIRENS: It was just respected by everyone. I think people felt we were strict in that and didn’t take any risks. MINT: What do you mean with “strict”? JENNY MEIRENS: I think that when you work for us, you felt very clearly what was proper and what not. [01:35:00.13] Without speaking about it, you could sense it. MINT: Axel said, “When I worked at the house, I found everything completely normal. It was when I left that I understood some people looked at us as a sect.” Do you understand that? JENNY MEIRENS: Yes, yes, I understand that. I think a lot of people saw it like that. MINT: Did you ever experience it like that? JENNY MEIRENS: No, but there were people who told me so. MINT: What did you say to them? It is nonsense or... JENNY MEIRENS: That people said that, washed over me completely. [01:36:06.08] MINT: Did it interest you and the team how the outside world thought about your work? JENNY MEIRENS: No, we never thought about that. MINT: I don’t believe that. JENNY MEIRENS: We never questioned our way of being. MINT: Did you look at other designers? JENNY MEIRENS: In the beginning for sure. We looked at Gaultier and Comme des Garçons. Nothing we did could resemble their work. Not the one, not the other. Not Gaultier, because Martin had worked there. And not Comme because we both were big fans of their work. Copying is a lack of talent. That is how we saw it. [01:21:59.04] JENNY MEIRENS: I remember the first show we did. We had a look at the location—a small hall—and all the velvet cushions on the chairs were red. Mar­ tin said, “Oh no, that is so Gaultier.” We spent the whole night making new cushion covers. When people stormed inside to find a seat you couldn’t see the colors of the

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covers for one more minute. “Just this once, but never again,” I thought. [01:18:49.27] MINT: Where did the “we” come from? [01:19:04.03] JENNY MEIRENS: But I don’t think we ever said “we.” You say that, but we never said that. [01:19:10.00] MINT: You did. [01:19:11.13] JENNY MEIRENS: No, we always said “house,” not “we.” [01:19:19.25] MINT: Sorry, but it is in all the books, interviews. [01:19:21.26] JENNY MEIRENS: No. [00:58:14.06] PATRICK SCALLON: At one point, I was on Mallorca with my parents for a week, I wrote out a seven-page letter by hand and faxed it to Jenny and Martin from the hotel. In the letter, I said if we call it Maison (house), it means we don’t have to put Martin into a position where he has to do things that he feels creatively he doesn’t need to. And at the same time, the company could expand and grow. Because we were being asked increasingly to be part of exhibitions that were good for us as a company, but Martin didn’t have the time. He was too busy focusing on the collections. And these were things where the team, or myself, and a lot of the time Jenny, could creatively step in. We would call these exhibitions Maison Martin Margiela. So for many years, you were invited to a Martin Margiela fashion show in Paris, but you would go to an exhibition in Kyoto, Rotterdam, or Florence and that exhibition would be by Maison Martin Margiela. It was a tacit and subtle way of telling people that this is what Martin is doing as a creative director, and this is what is done by the spirit of a group of people including Martin, including Jenny, including Axel, Patrick, and other people. MINT: The whole idea of a shared creativity, a shared creative environment where there is not one designer but a group, a “we,” do you agree that that image is there? LUTZ HUELLE: The image is there. MINT: But? LUTZ HUELLE: I didn’t feel ....Let’s put it differently...

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LUTZ HUELLE: When you continually stress this is the work of a team, you take away people’s individual worth, which is a very dangerous thing to do. I think that’s what it is. You stress... Obviously, it was that thing of “We are doing this all together. We are all in this together,” but it obviously is not that simple. One of the things that were tough about working at Margiela was that it was you as a group, but you

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never felt your work as an individual was seen for what it was. It had, in a way, no worth because it was part of this group. LUTZ HUELLE: When you start a house and don’t have money, you have to surround yourself with people who will help you. So in a certain way you have to find a way to make people work with you. If you’re not including people, they don’t want to work with you. People do it for the money or because you feel like part of a group. Margiela didn’t have the money to pay people to do all these things so...what they had to do was create this atmosphere that you were part of a group. This sounds very... MINT: Manipulative? Deliberate? LUTZ HUELLE: Yes, deliberate but I don’t mean that negative. They had a project, believed in it, and they wanted people to also believe in their project. So that’s an amazing thing to do. It did work. The problem was once it started working, and it became big, the mindset stayed the same. It worked for them for such a long time, why change it? MINT: It was institutionalized? LUTZ HUELLE: Exactly. It became part of the politics of the house to be like that.

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LUTZ HUELLE: I remember very clearly having this conversation with one of the designers who said, “Every time people tell me ‘I love the collection, it’s amazing,’ I would feel guilty for saying ‘yes.’ I would feel like I wasn’t allowed to say “yes,” or even to say that I had worked on it.” I knew exactly what he was talking about. Whenever people would say something about the collection, we were not supposed to say “I am working on the collection,” because it is “we.” It’s the house. I am nothing. It’s WE. So saying “I work at Margiela, it’s a great job,” is something you shouldn’t say because it’s not about you. I would never say that I made a certain sweater. I would have felt so guilty about taking anything for myself. The people who worked at Margiela were similar in that we were all people who didn’t have an attitude. Today people would tell you to fuck off. We wouldn’t dare. And I only real­ ized afterward what a weird way of being that is. Because you...never take anything for yourself. In the end, you are left with nothing. Because you weren’t supposed to… MINT: Claim? LUTZ HUELLE: Exactly. You weren’t supposed to claim.

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[03:06:43.27] PATRICK SCALLON: This film should also define where the “we” lives, in what room of the house the “we” lives. The “we” lives in all that surrounds the design of the clothes. And Martin, the artistic director of the company, was also involved in the “we” and all of the rest. But “we” as a company were also operating under the strategic vision and direction of Jenny as Martin’s creative partner, and Martin as the artistic director of the company. It was never a flat structure. So the “we” was not on the front door. The “we” existed on one floor of a house that has a creative director on the top floor. [03:07:41.28] MINT: Okay. [03:07:42.23] PATRICK SCALLON: The “we” did not define the entire house. It defined how we complimented our artistic and creative director in making it happen. [01:33:56.05] PATRICK SCALLON: We weren’t this structure that was making collec­ tive decisions all of the time. There was a framework. But people were given a lot of autonomy, total autonomy, to do within that framework what they felt. So a lot of the time you were doing something very intuitively and instinctively, but it seemed to melt together. Things happened almost like by alchemy. That’s not to overstate or to romanticize it. As colleagues, we had a trust in what the other was doing. Jenny was there as a mentor, but she also believed that we needed our space to be able to function. And that was what was beautiful about it, and that is something which is a huge tribute to her, it was based very much on trust. [01:02:27.11] PATRICK SCALLON: That Maison thing ended up being turned round to make it seem that Margiela was some sort of fashion kibbutz, that creative decisions were taken collectively. We all know that there is nothing less democratic than the creative process. The creative vision is an individual one. It’s a lonely soul journey. And I feel that what happened after a period of time was that Maison ­Margiela was put on everything. So the collection became Maison Martin ­­Margiela, even Martin was Maison Martin Margiela. The Maison became the brand, which meant that nobody could be stronger than the collective parts. In a certain way, the Maison Martin Margiela thing ended up becoming a bit of a monster. [01:11:47.08] LISE PARMENTIER: When you were there, you were really part of the team. You also gave your heart. I don’t know how to explain that, but I mean, it was as important to us as it was to Jenny and Martin. We were really building our

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story together. What I think was fantastic with Jenny and Martin, [was] that when they gave you something to do, they completely trusted you. So you do your job as well as you can, and you come back to them when you’re finished or because you have big problems that you cannot solve. I think it’s very exciting to work this way because you give your best, you know. It’s your own responsibility to be good. There is not someone who is checking if the job is done properly and on time. No, it was just like: this is your mission.

[00:40:47.09] PATRICK SCALLON: It was a period where the provokers could provoke the people who wanted to be provoked. People enjoyed the game of provocation. For

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[01:13:18.13] MINT: Is this different than how other houses work? [01:13:21.07] LISE PARMENTIER: Completely, completely. I think that Margiela is the only place I have worked like this, that you have so much freedom. [01:13:40.05] MINT: Is this sect feeling something you were aware of? [01:13:56.20] LISE PARMENTIER: It’s like your family, you understand? So it was much more than work. It was your life. You really felt like you were part of the story like a finger is a part of a body, you know. And because you give so much you forget there is also a life that is not Margiela. After you quit, there is this place that is empty, which you have to fill again. It takes time to rebuild your life when you leave. [01:14:24.07] MINT: People thought of the house of Margiela as a sect, a cult. [01:14:36.24] AXEL KELLER: We never felt that way. You are on the inside, and you do what you do. When I first heard somebody from the outside use the word “sect,” I found it insulting. I thought what the hell are they speaking about. What we do is normal. It has nothing to do with a sect or cult. But when you look at it from the outside, and you place yourself in their shoes, you understand it. We are in the showroom in the 18th arrondissement, and everything is white. All the people wear white coats. The whole thing was a little bit strange probably. [01:15:36.13] MINT: Was that what people said? [01:15:39.17] AXEL KELLER: They didn’t dare to say it to us openly. But it was not meant like that at all. What I am trying to say is that in the same way we tried to teach the clients, we developed ourselves, and we became something that was very different and very unique. And to an extent very uniform probably. Very specific and precise. Just like the collection.

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example, one of Jenny’s best invitations was a card with a telephone number. So you got a white card with a telephone number, you phone that number, and you would get an answering machine that would give you the address of the show, you took the address down, and you showed up to the show. People enjoyed that then. Now, journalists don’t phone up. It’s an assistant who phones up and they want to know what seat they’re in and the whole thing. I don’t like being nostalgic, but it’s not the same in that way anymore. [01:37:32.29] MINT: Do people now respond to the word “we” in the same way as you did then? [01:37:41.23] AXEL KELLER: I have the feeling that the word “we” doesn’t connect in the same way. Younger team members, they don’t understand precisely what our generation meant with it. I think that is a little bit the history of humanity. One hundred years ago we accepted a lot of sacrifices in our life. We were sent to war, society forced patterns and ways of life on us. Over time our goal has become more and more that you want to be satisfied and happy in your life. So you are much more the center and the actor of your life. You play the leading role in your life. I think that in the last twenty-five years that has had an impact on how people see and how they do, and the “we” is not part of that. It is much more “I am the one who does. I am the...” [01:38:53.18] MINT: Star? [01:38:54.09] AXEL KELLER: The star, exactly. But that was not what it was about with Martin and Jenny. It was the opposite. So probably something similar to Margiela back then would not work today. [01:39:08.01] MINT: But I think that the longing for “we” is bigger than ever. I have the feeling that a lot of people are looking for a “we” much more than an “I.” The “I” is also a big burden. I think a lot of people long to be part of a group like you were. [01:39:45.08] AXEL KELLER: You know what, I don’t know, but I think people want the comfort of a “we,” but on the other hand they would not accept what a “we” means. [01:40:03.21] MINT: What does it mean? [01:40:06.07] AXEL KELLER: It means defending things that are not necessarily 100% yours, or support things that are difficult. I am not sure that that side of “we” is what people like. On this project, this story, this work adventure, the life that I had then, there was no question that whatever the company decided and Jenny and

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Martin were going for, that was what we were going to do. In the end, we were able to understand it, defend it, push it and promote it. So the “we” is natural. I honestly don’t see how this would work today because things are not so homogeneous. Companies are bigger, the pressure that comes with the system is more extreme. The schedule, the money involved. It really is a different game. [01:41:33.01] MINT: Hmm. [01:42:16.20] AXEL KELLER: At Margiela the “we” was logical and natural because really everything had one direction. It was very precise, it was very defined, it was very clear, it was very directional, and everything—communication, distribution, production, development—had the same intention and goal. I don’t see that many ­designers today who have such a clear message. And who have all these things that I just mentioned going in one direction. It is very... [01:43:15.24] MINT: Rare? [01:43:17.00] AXEL KELLER: Rare. [01:29:16.22] MENNA: Jenny said that for her it was all about long-term investments. Which means taking it step by step, slow... [01:29:32.11] AXEL KELLER: Yes, I’m thinking if “slow” is the right word. I would ­probably say “measured.” You need time to conquer your world. You have to give people time to understand. The thing I enjoyed most and which I still think is ­fabulous: one day we sold an empty page. There was just a price. We didn’t say what we were selling; we actually didn’t know what it was by the time we were selling it. Everybody bought it. [laughs] It was great. [01:52:08.24] MINT: [laughs] But what does it stand for? [01:52:15.03] AXEL KELLER: It means that people trust you.

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Masking the Body as a Trope of Japanese Reflections on Reality WALTER SEIDL

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1 http://waltermignolo. com/on-pluriversality 2 Ibid.

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Ever since a postmodern visual rhetoric entered the pluriverse of expressive modes that adhere to certain power formations, the modernist paradigm of the avant-garde as an experimental, radical and unorthodox approach to art, culture, and society has become subject to scrutiny. While avant-garde pushes the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm within modernist thinking, modernity itself, according to Walter Mignolo, has become a “fiction that carries in it the seed of  Western pretense to universality.” 1 Starting from the Western cosmology of hermeneutics as a former universal mode of thinking, pluriversality entails the “entanglement of several cosmologies connected today in a power differential. That power differential is the logic of coloniality covered up by the rhetorical narrative of modernity.” 2 For Mignolo, there is no world of independent units in a sense of cultural relativism. While his observations follow a colonial matrix of power, it becomes essential not only to study but also to live within the borders of different cosmologies in order to understand their entanglement of sorts. Looking at Japan as a historically cosmological unit––its reflections on meaning and interpretation and output in art and design especially since the second half of the 20th century––has left many bewildered as to how a cultural pluriverse of looking at and opening borders was created.The uniqueness of Japanese thinking that resulted from its cultural traditions developed over more than 200 years of island seclusion, during which the population’s contact to the outside world was almost completely cut off. This isolation ended in 1868 with the return of the emperor and the decline of the Tokugawa shogunate, better known as the Edo period. The reason for this was the U.S.-led Perry Expedition in 1853/54 that aimed to establish trade agreements with Japanese ports, open the country’s economy and widen its diplomatic relations. Thereafter, an empire following Western economic and cultural models was created as a hyperreal construct, which irrevocably made Japan one of the leading world powers. The epitome of this development marked the post-WWII period, when Japan became not only the world’s largest manufacturer of motor vehi-

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3  Garber, Marjorie. 1992/97. Vested Interests: cross-dressing and cultural anxiety. New York: Rout­ ledge, 23.

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cles but also the world’s leading producer of electronic goods, a boom that ended with the economic stagnation of the 1990s. On a cultural level, the refined production tools, handicrafts, and modes of perfection that had developed in a mono-cultural legacy continued to be improved while Western traditions were simultaneously adopted after the country had opened not only its physical borders but also mental frontiers with eagerness and zeal. Many of the Westernized rituals, cultural tropes, and commodified gestures were embraced like a mask, re-enacted and/or even developed further as if to discard or hide the strict Japanese code of ethics. On the other hand, there has been the long tradition of The Noh theater, dating back to the 14th century, which combines masks and other props in a dance-like performance. Hence, over-perfecting (formerly) Western tools of expression could not have happened without Japan’s own traditions and regulations. Towards the end of the last millennium, for instance, Japanese society still had one of the world’s most regulated dress codes for students of junior or senior high schools, “from shoes to hair, including the exact width of the pants’ cuff for boys—with allowances for overweight students—the number of buttons and tucks in pants and skirts and the number of eyelets in shoes.” 3 Thus, it is with no surprise that in the aesthetic domain of art and design Japan has developed some of the most daring und unusual forms of expression, where a confluence of  Western as well as domestic influences has been taken up, albeit rearranged, deconstructed and defined anew, with the frequent use of masks or masking techniques as a replacement, or visual signifier, for the body. However, the country’s obsession with market-driven perfection as well as the neoliberalism-inclined negation of failure, or non-­ acceptance thereof, has put many individuals under pressure, so much so that Japan ranks among the ten countries in the world with the highest suicide rates. An early literary and visual example would be Yukio Mishima’s writings and staging of his own self. In his novel ­Confessions of a Mask, published in 1949, a young boy with an imperfect body struggles to fit into Japanese society during the 1930s. He desires

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one of his male friends, but publicly puts on a mask that makes him pretend to fall in love with a girl despite his strong homoerotic urges. This sort of masquerade and self-denial can be considered semi-autobiographical and is pertinent to Mishima himself, who had adopted a pseudonym and was married to a woman and had two children although he frequented gay bars at night to engage with men. Having been debated as a possible candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature, Mishima was a famous writer, but also performed as an actor, bodybuilder, and model who posed for photographer Eikoh Hosoe. Together they published a book focusing on surreal erotic gestures, Ba-ra-kei: Ordeal by Roses, in 1961-62. The photographs show a virile, masculine Mishima in melodramatic poses with various props relating to torture and pain that automatically generate subliminal homoerotic imagery. In 1970 Mishima staged his own suicide in a Seppuku ritual—a disembowelment by cutting the belly—following a failed coup d’état. A nationalist militant, he had stirred up soldiers of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces by demanding stricter involvement of the armed military and an empowerment of the Tenno; however, he was merely mocked after giving a speech on a balcony. As an early example of how the rules of decorum must be followed in a seemingly infallible society the “Mishima incident” is a well-known case study. Palpable visual and linguistic tropes continued to be denied or masked, even after his death, due to the contradictions in his writings, beliefs, and public staging of his self. Hiding behind a mask, however, does not necessarily mean to negate reality, it also circumvents it, which can lead to grotesque playfulness and a deconstruction of reality’s basic parameters. Playfulness and mimicry are the foundation of Yasumasa Morimura’s photographically staged self-portraits as art-historical figures, actors, politicians, and colleagues as well as of a wide range of well-known eccentrics, since 1985. Making use of the technique of appropriation, Morimura has mainly copied Western idols and public figures by looking through a masked reality onto his own self. In 2006, he turned away from Western idolatry and consecrated himself to his own country by performing Yukio Mishima’s

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4  Tsuzuku, Masatoshi. “Morimura Yasumasa: A Trip to ‘Iwo Jima’ via ‘Mishima.’” In: Morimura Yasumasa. 2010. A Requiem: Art on Top of the Battlefield. Tokyo: ­Tokyo Metropolitan Muse­ um of Photography, 111. 5 Ibid. 6  Garber, 9.

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attempted coup d’état on the very spot the writer had chosen in 1970, calling his performance Season of Passion—A Requiem: MISHIMA. This work “marked a turning point in [Morimura’s] ‘rambling journey’ of masquerading the beauty of the world.” 4 The artist replaced Mishima’s speech with a critical note on contemporary Japan, “trying to question the current state of art, that has lost its radical objectiveness, and society in the 21st century, with derisions of his earnestness and airs of apathy.” 5 For him, the mask Japan has been wearing for so long to overcome its own past, and the pretense of the West, has been a lingering phenomenon in an unmentioned reality that has been concealed through bodily rituals and visual signifiers. Turning back to Morimura’s staged photographic situation, the impersonation of both genders focuses more on a queering, cross-dressing perspective than, for example, Cindy Sherman’s work. His tribute photograph to her from 1998 is entitled To My Little Sister: For Cindy Sherman and shows him/her lying on the ground in a checkered skirt and orange top in one of Sherman’s provocative poses. For the viewer, however, the issue when contemplating the photograph lies in the process of forgetting the act of knowingly gazing at a man or of conjuring up the notion of a cross-dresser. Morimura’s photographs enable the viewer to look through the artist and his body and onto the bodily mask of the impersonated individual, regardless of any implicit notions of gender. With regard to literary and cultural critics, Marjorie Garber also remarks that they often have the tendency “to look through rather than at the cross-dresser, to turn away from the close encounter with the transvestite and to want instead to subsume that figure within one of the traditional genders.” 6 In Morimura’s case, the artist and his actual physique equally disappear in favor of the portrayed figure while grotesque playfulness, which cannot be attributed to any concrete notion of gender, directs the viewer’s gaze. Props and prostheses help to arrange a scenario that derives from a known visual vocabulary while introducing moments of irritation. The same accounts for Sherman’s appropriations from her early work in black and white, which

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Y A S U M A S A M OR IMUR A : Still from Seasons of Passion / A Requiem: MISHIMA (2006), Video, 7min 47sec Courtesy of the artist and Yoshiko Isshiki Office, Tokyo

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Y A S U M A S A M OR IMUR A : To My Little Sister: For Cindy Sherman (1998), Ilfochrome mounted on aluminium, 66.2 × 119.2 cm Courtesy of the artist and Yoshiko Isshiki Office, Tokyo

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drifts into the grotesque through a vividly colored masquerade of clothing, make-up and/or clownery. In 1993, this artistic trope led to a collaboration between ­Sherman and the Japanese design company Comme des Garçons, a perfect match when it comes to deconstructing art and fashion through two kindred spirits, the American artist and Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo. Conceived as an ad campaign for Comme des Garçons, the photographs unequivocally form an outstanding, oft-quoted part of Sherman’s oeuvre. Both ­Sherman and Kawakubo frequently take up the motif of the clown, which automatically entails a masquerade of sorts. Over the years, Kawakubo, for instance, has elaborated on the theme of the clown shoe in her men’s collections. In recent years especially, her runway shows have defied any ordinary perception of fashion, regardless of any categorization of gender. Bodies and faces disappear behind masking techniques such as wigs and dress sculptures. The beginning of this (de-)formation marked her groundbreaking spring/summer 1997 women’s collection entitled “Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body,” which has up to now mostly been referred to as the “Lumps and Bumps” collection, featuring tubular gingham dresses stuffed with pillow-shaped filler that lead to deformed body configurations and voluptuous sculptural silhouettes. Invited by Merce Cunningham to come up with the costumes for his dance piece “Scenario” in 1997, Kawakubo eventually agreed and continued to elaborate on this collection with a number of gingham outfits containing down padding to deform or re-form traditional body shapes in the context of performing arts. Hence, Kawakubo masked the body and turned it into an architectural object rather than a clothed subject, a trope which she has applied in most of her recent women’s collections, whose sculptural artistic landmark pieces were on view at the exhibition Art of the In-Between at the Metropolitan Museum in New York throughout summer 2017. Kawakubo’s shifting between clothes as bodies in their own right and, concealing the real body and its sexualized features, leads to ­ enjamin notions of the sex appeal of the inorganic, which Walter B

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7  Perniola, Mario. 2004. The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic: Philosophies of Desire in the Modern World. (transl. by Massimo Verdicchio). New York: Continuum, 46. 8  Comme des Garçons Homme Plus. Spring/Sum­ mer 2017. The collection referred to Hans Christian Andersen’s short story The Emperor’s New Clothes. 9  Ibid. Spring/Summer 2015.

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linked to fashion and which automatically transcends any stereotypical designations of gender, sometimes oriented towards fetish-like surrogates. Mario Perniola extended ­Benjamin’s observations, claiming that “the experience of a neutral and inorganic sexuality is no longer suitable to fashion, a notion by now obsolete and antiquated, rather to the look, understood as the culture of the body-clothing completely emancipated both from the conformism of haute couture and from the subjectivity of anti-fashion.” 7 Perniola speaks of the look as the overall outer gestalt with its extension to hairdo, accessories and other additional elements. For Kawakubo, this would still be too classical an explanation as she usually exploits certain themes in each collection that go beyond the notion of a mere “look.” Her artistic vision lies beyond the ordinary and acceptable, and thus beyond any clearly defined notions of gender or sexuality. Especially, her men’s runway shows have seen a dissolution of the sexes through the use of wigs or unusual headpieces, colored hair and make-up, as well as an abundance of skirts, which move the attraction away from the models’ “sexualized” male bodies by focusing on the shape of the garments and their subliminal or sometimes direct messages such as “The King is Naked. It’s My Fashion” 8 or “What War can do, Peace can do Better.” 9 A more holistic approach in terms of the overall look that turns clothes and wigs into masks, and sometimes lets the body completely disappear, started with the White Drama Spring/Summer 2012 women’s collection, which marked a point from which Kawakubo has increasingly played with polymorphous, but also architectural and geometric, forms that moved away from traditionally ensheathing an organic body, especially the anatomic shapes of the female physique. Like Kawakubo, Junya Watanabe has applied similar strategies to his collections and runway shows for the House of Comme des Garçons. While his women’s collections can be seen more as a reshuffling of certain styles and handicrafts—with a predilection for sartorial noir, Goth, Punk and fetish-like accessories such as rivets and spikes—he constantly uses a wide range of different wigs and make-up for his runway shows to accentuate a

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C O M M E DE S GA R Ç ON S Spring/Summer 2012 Courtesy: Comme des Garçons

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J U NY A W A T A N A B E C OMME DE S GA R Ç ON S Fall/Winter 2016/17 Courtesy: Comme des Garçons

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10  Cf. Sudjic, Deyan. 1990. Rei Kawakubo and Comme des Garçons. New York: Rizzoli.

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c­ ertain look while letting the bodies of the models disappear and drift into androgyny behind his masking tropes of design. For Watanabe’s fall/winter 2008/09 show, Katsuya Kamo developed actual face masks that were turned into head sculptures on their own—one of which was shown in FACELESS, part I— and which barred looking onto the models’ faces to make the audience and press totally concentrate on the overall silhouettes of his design. Apart from the models on the runway, the masks were then to be displayed in selected flagship stores. Recently, Watanabe’s womenswear has developed more into architectural, sometimes origami-inspired and mathematically construed, body sculptures. His fall/winter 2016/17 presentation again featured constructivism-inspired hat-masks, which partly or fully covered the face and are reminded of the costumes Oskar Schlemmer would have developed for his theater design productions during the Bauhaus era. The disappearance of the body, or the negation of its real features through symbolic masks, has been a trope employed by the ­Japanese art intelligentsia since the second half of the 20th century due to a dissatisfaction with the reality at hand. ­Mishima’s unease with a dominating heterosexual matrix, Morimura’s disbelief in artistic progression, and Kawakubo’s frustration with the vapidity of ordinary fashion and its market strategies,10 led to the circumvention of an aesthetic, social, and political reality through said tropes on a radical artistic level. Japanese reflections on reality have marked an “in-between” or even “beyond” vis-à-vis any Western and/or other geographically defined cosmologies by laying bare ruptures within aesthetic and visual constellations. However, constructing new visual realities in order to mask stereotypical representations of the body is a trope that entails a pluriverse of artistic possibilities. It is the transcendence of traditional body configurations and the attempt to overcome the borders of any given spatial and organic paradigm of power that constantly challenges a visual and linguistic rhetoric anew.

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C O M M E DE S GA R Ç ON S Fall/Winter 2017/18 Courtesy: Comme des Garçons

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Exhibitionism as the New Normal: From Presenting to Performing HILLE KOSKELA

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Screenshot, Pic-Me (V1), marclee.io

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INTRODUCTION: “I AM HERE”

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In the early 2000s there was a considerable amount of multi­ disciplinary research on private live webcams as a form of self-­ exposure (e.g. Jimroglou 2001, Koskela 2004, Senft 2008). At that time, many scholars were expanding the fairly new conceptual understanding of the latest forms of looking, presenting and circulating images that related to self-created visual representations. For me, as a surveillance studies scholar, this meant a transformation from conventional research to “the other side” of surveillance: the public exposure of private lives (Koskela 2006). In contrast to being targets of surveillance and submitting to passively being observed, people increasingly play an active role in the production of images. This deliberate exposure of the self  has shifted the surveillance model. Webcams create new social practices and change old ones, and clearly have functions that are different from—or even the opposite of—surveillance and control. Later, the focus shifted from private webcams to social media and my interest is in what kind of changes this shift incorporates. While being seen may be unpleasant for some, others are eager to increase their visibility. As Weibel states, “Everything and everybody is exposed and wants to be exposed” (2016: 235). He sees that exposure relates to people’s understanding of existence as something which needs to be confirmed by being observed and claims that “[p]eople expose their private views almost in panic, in order to be observed, to be seen, and to be viewed” (ibid: 235). Visual content on the Internet “is provided to others to be seen, with the hope that people will pay attention” and this “attention and visibility is a goal in itself ” (Marwick 2012: 389). Within this new attention economy, people increasingly “demand recognition as living subjects” (Senft 2008: 5). Currently, “the” attention economy is increasingly being associated with visual forms of social media. The phenomenon of online self-presentation, self-representation, image ­creation, or impression management, has become a common point of interest for a number of researchers (e.g. Papacharissi 2009, Meek 2012, Gómez Cruz and Thornham 2015). This discussion focuses on the elements of constructing visual images of oneself. The pro-

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duction and circulation of images of oneself is part of what has been called “user-generated content.” This has been claimed to be “vastly different from the producer-generated content” (Jones 2010: 261). Moreover, it has accurately been pointed out that “technology and subjectivity are mutually constitutive” (Russo 2010: 152) and that “image creation (along with distribution and its use in social media), does not only represent bodies, it also generates them” (Gómez Cruz and Thornham 2015: 6). Old explanations of webcams and current interpretations of social media are surrounded by narcissism, vanity, and banality. One reading of webcams is that they promote nothing but the existence of the person presenting oneself. The success of webcams was largely based on “an endless expectation that something might happen” (Senft 2008: 37). Current discussion of selfies and other user-generated content has a similar tone. It has been stated that “banality and the mundane also become intricately woven into genealogies of the selfie” (Gómez Cruz and Thornham 2015: 4). Many websites entail “acceptance of the recording and publishing of daily life activities or banalities” (Munar 2010: 409). I would call this reasoning banality justification. This justification is partly accurate, but it remains uninteresting because it is difficult to develop the argument any further. BEYOND BANALITY There are several other readings which I regard as socially and politically interesting. Webcams are worth studying since they challenge our understandings “of presenting and hiding, power and control, hegemonies and resistance” (Koskela 2006: 172). Indeed, as Russo notes, “Online self-display lies at the heart of present-day negotiations of technological and political power” (2010: 155). As Jimroglou argues in her analyses of JenniCAM— one of the first and best-known webcams—Jenni created a paradoxical stage, playing with moral codes, in which she “stabilizes and yet disrupts the process of subject formation by repeating yet

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resisting cultural norms.” (2001: 291). The change that happened with the launch of the first live webcams was seemingly minor. However it permanently changed the conventional code of what can or cannot be shown and so hit deeply in the collective cultural understanding of looking and being looked at. This again relates to “[a] subtle, yet very important distinction…between striving to make visible something that we normally cannot see and striving to make visible something that we normally should not see” (Bertrand 2016: 261). The visual representations of bodily subjects were crucial to webcams. They contest the common idea of disembodied avatars and generate a re-embodiment of subjects. The body is presented as “something to be seen,” although within the parameters set by the one who is seen. The subject is “simultaneously the shower and the shown” (Russo 2010: 138). Furthermore, the websites are “characterized by both watching and a high awareness of being watched,” as Marwick discusses in a wider context of technically mediated communities (2012: 379). This has not always been easy to comprehend and “people find it puzzling, peculiar and perverted that someone would expose herself in such a graphic, public way” (Jimroglou 2001: 291). Webcams are often explicitly connected with sexuality. ­Images “range from young women turning their real-life images into pornography—by charging the viewers of their websites—to gay communities building a global collective identity by presenting their lives in the net” (Koskela 2004: 201). Many experiments “intentionally blur distinctions between art, life and porn” (Senft 2008: 44). In JenniCAM, Jenni’s show created a subject capable of resisting the conventional readings of female embodiment (Jimroglou 2001). She seemed “to be flouting the cultural rules for the display of the female body by clearly announcing her own precedence and awareness of the position as something to be seen” (Koskela 2004: 208-209). In this context, it was more important to reveal than hide. Interestingly, webcams do not fit into the Foucauldian conceptualization of power. When subject and object fuse, as happens when

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the object of a camera simultaneously “oversees her own viewing” and is “refuting and resisting the traditional representations of objectification” (Jimroglou 2001: 292), some understandings of power fade away. Webcams confront the connection between visibility and power. People deliberately make themselves visible, but are not submitted to automatic functioning of power as ­Foucault would suggest. To be more visible is not to be less powerful, and vice versa. Furthermore, in Foucault’s understanding, being conscious of being constantly watched by invisible overseers is supposed to lead to an internalization of control. This does not apply either. It is the other way round: by presenting intimate pictures of private life, people with webcams refuse to play “the game of bad conscience.”  They rebel against the shame embedded in the concept of the private and “refuse to be humble” (Koskela 2004: 210). EMPOWERING EXHIBITIONISM The choice to present one’s private life publicly can be understood as a form of exhibitionism. The essential question here is how to comprehend exhibitionism. The concept carries a heavy load of dubious meanings. Nevertheless, it is important to distance if from the conformist reading of sexual perversion. Discourses about the cultural meanings of exhibitionism easily slip to extremes and slide towards discourses of pathology. Russo articulates the direction where discussion should go in order to be constructive: [T]he assumption of popular and academic critics that exhibitionism is pathological…cyber-exhibitionism embodies a more complex engagement than typical condemnations of its perverseness suggest and in fact represents a meaningful axis of sociality not fully mastered by systems of control. (2010: 132)

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Exhibitionism can and should be interpreted in ways that are beyond the pathological. Exhibitionism can be an emancipatory process. Exhibitionism can be a form of resistance. Exhibitionism can be a political act. Research on webcams provides thought-provoking interpretations of exhibitionism. The emancipatory process can be read from the websites of people who have installed cameras: with the practice they have chosen to engage in, they seek to be subjects rather than objects. In other words, “what they actually do is reclaim the copyright of their own lives” (Koskela 2004: 206). The logic behind this can be understood when interpreting webcams as part of the contemporary surveillance society: if practically anyone else can circulate one’s images, why not do it yourself? By revealing their intimate lives, people refuse to take part in norms related to the concealment of privacy. They actively show an “ability to remove, or at least rearrange, the boundaries between public and private spaces” (Papacharissi 2009: 206). Jimroglou points out that “the aversion to JenniCAM lies in its ‘profane’ nature, the way in which it pushes against trad­itional definitions, particularly of the private and public” (2001: 291). When exhibitionism succeeds in overcoming the traditional boundaries of private and public, then it can truly work as a form of empowerment—as liberation from shame and from the “need” to conceal. “Conceptually, when you show ‘everything’ you become ‘free’: no one can ‘capture’ you any more, since there is nothing left to capture” (Koskela 2004: 208). Private performances enable individuals “to traverse from private to public, but also, potentially, from the personal to the political, or from the individual to the collective, and back” (Papacharissi 2012: 1991). The Internet may have a profound and increasing role in generating resistance. What is at stake is not political ­activism resistance in the traditional sense, but this reasoning moves on a conceptual level. It is not that the actual pictures might show resistance, but webcams prove that it is possible to understand “revealing as a political act” (Koskela 2004: 210).

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FROM WEBCAMS TO SOCIAL MEDIA In the present understanding of the online world, it is clear that webcams remain a curiosity. The popularity of webcams, which were “typically configured with sluggish refresh rates” has stagnated (Russo 2010: 134). Simultaneously, creating represen­ tations of oneself has become one of the most prevailing social behaviors in present society. There has been an explosion of user-generated content. People actively and knowingly generate their own visibility: they think about the image they project and the identity they want to present. As Weibel states, “[E] xposure, originally a technical term, has become a social term" (2016: 235). Image-making is increasingly often based on conscious strategies. Social media allows people to perform their profiles, yet it remains dual-faceted: personal and collective at the same time. Some people “broadcast extensive information about their identity” while others “may choose to restrict information” (Lange 2008: 369). There is “an increasing emphasis on the visual, on immediacy, on connectivity” (Gómez Cruz and Thornham 2015: 6). The appreciation of proximity has led to an increase in speed, from which it follows that “the recording of the memorable has been changed by speed and by immediateness” (Munar 2010: 409). Exposure is strategic. Hawkins points out its simulated nature: The artificiality of our participation online, and the limited scope of available media, suggests that the Internet will never let us show our true selves. Other characteristics, ­however, such as the persistence of information and the ease of recombining information from different places, suggest just the opposite: that we cannot conceal our true selves for long. (2011: 20) To some extent, performances aim for a sense of authenticity. People try to—or claim they try to—present an intimate sense of self that is honest and precise. Exposure is perceived as a verifi-

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cation of one’s embodied self. However, the question about truth is deceptive. The latest theories of performativity enable us to understand that identity is always performative and that people live by means of performance (e.g. Senft 2008, Jones 2010, Papacharissi 2012, Gómez Cruz and Thornham 2015). From this it follows that there actually is no “true self ” distinct from the identity people are presenting. Rather, “individuals performatively constitute their ‘identities’ as a result of the operating power relations” (Bonanno 2014: 10-11). There is no one true self to be revealed. The Internet is “a highly intimate yet extremely public medium” (Hawkins 2011: 18). In social media, “the public and private fractalize in complex ways” (Lange 2008: 377). Bertrand discusses the dualistic nature of privacy claims: “As the public and the private grow ever more tightly interlaced, we publicly show more and more about our private lives than ever before, yet we remain anxious to protect our privacy and maintain the rights to images of ourselves" (2016: 264). For some, “[a]bsolute transparency is the goal, with the permanent illumination of every corner of an individual’s life” (ibid: 263). For others the important practices are more social, such as the “media-generated ‘confession culture’” (Senft 2008: 3). Additionally, Meek claims that “[n]ew forms of social media are increasingly becoming integrated into evolving forms of political protest" (2012: 4). The crucial question I wish to approach in this article is: what has changed? Several common features apply to both webcams and social media. Both include deliberate exposure of the self, both need some amount of self-management, and both depend on online social relations and communities. The distinction is not clear-cut, but there are certainly conceptual differences. Webcams were exceptional, but social media has increasingly become a norm. People with webcams were peculiar, as are people who do not use social media today. There was no social pressure for installing a webcam, but there undoubtedly is social pressure to participate in social media. Thus, the pressure has turned upside-down: it was as daring to have a webcam as it is to live outside social media.

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PA B L O G A R C IA /A DDIE WA GE N K N E C H T: Webcam Venus (2013)

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CUSTOMIZED EXPOSURE It has been pointed out on several occasions that “individuals performatively constitute their identities on social media” (Bonanno 2014: 2) and, undeniably, performativity seems to be an essential concept in current research. The online world offers a perfect platform for self-performance. People show active agency and are clearly “subjects rather than objects” (Koskela 2006: 172). They bravely present intimate pictures and stories of their private lives. Also, “[p]erformativity is associated with preparation, presentation, script, symbolism, props, drama, and, last but not least, an audience, actual or imagined” (Papacharissi 2012: 1989). As Papacharissi tellingly concludes: “[r]emove the audience, and the context of the performance is lost” (2012: 4). Gómez Cruz and Thornham claim: It is precisely through the staging, shooting, choosing, sharing, posting, commenting, liking through digital mediations that the performance of the image-self becomes meaningful not as a single image but as a complex process of practices that performatively construct the self through their normativity. (2015: 7)

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One difference with webcam times is that people increasingly customize their visual exposure. This “entails a large degree of reflexivity and purposiveness” (Munar 2010: 413). Visual representations are based on conscious strategies. Customization is often competitive. People intensely and intentionally negotiate their own visibility—the image they reveal and the character they want to generate. They have augmented self-awareness and apply constant self-monitoring. Performances juxtapose social benefits with privacy costs. Most user-generated content can be described as “dynamic and fluid, always open to alteration” (ibid: 418). The character exposed publicly serves different purposes in different settings and can be modified as suitable for each possible audience. The progress of self-performance “has resulted in a more personalized and customized fashion of creating ‘profiles’” (Bonanno 2014: 3). Munar describes “the creation of virtual identities” as “the management of personal information” and sees that it

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“demands reflexivity” (2010: 413). Social norms are contextual. When planning and updating profiles, people “customize them to connect better their offline and online interactions” (Papacharissi 2009: 203). This means that “all submitted content is quantified, categorized and marketed to appeal to a target audience” (Jones 2010: 267). People “adapt to different types of roles in virtual communities” and in each case one’s participation in a particular community “helps to provide a multidimensional virtual identity, which can take many different shapes depending on the platform of communication” (Munar 2010: 414). Hawkins notes that whatever people choose to expresses or reveal is a conscious modified choice, but that it “doesn’t mean we are deceiving ourselves, or others: we are just becoming a stylised version of ourselves" (2011: 20). I find this point important and constructive: It meets well the understanding of performativity and rejects the idea of simple one-and-only “real” identity. Performance of the self is “simultaneously a way of expres­sing the self and managing its complex webs of relations” (Papacharissi 2012: 1993). There is an element of control in this process as “people self-monitor their online actions to maintain a desired balance between publicity and seclusion” (Marwick 2012: 379). This self-monitoring is different from the surveillance form of control in which being seen connotes being under control (Koskela 2006).Yet, it is not only the self who maintains control. Online social relations serve mutual control and increase pressure for self-management. People frequently internalize “the perspective of others with respect to oneself ” (Jones 2010: 264). Social media reinforce the critical interpersonal character of the online world. As control always entangles with resistance, “participants manipulate media to maintain social networks and intimacy amid public scrutiny” (Lange 2008: 362). Online image production is loaded with resistance.

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PLAYFUL FANTASIES AND STRATEGIES One consequence of competition and constant critical evaluation by others “is the reflexive observation of oneself, including one’s own body” (Jones 2010: 264). The main difference between visual and textual media is that in every visual media, the body matters. The body is to be perceived as a culturally constituted entity that both creates and is created by social discourses. Social media “increasingly render the human body as a mutable object open to constant imaginative experimentation” (Alexias et al. 2012: 3). A down side of this is that “sexuality is transformed from a forbidden good to a commercial commodity” (ibid: 2). Social media are intensely connected to the process of consumption, and people often express class and taste statements. “The mere act of joining a particular network”, as Papacharissi notes, can represent “a taste statement” or “a statement of class and profession” (2009: 212). People “frequently express our cultural identity by expressing affinity for material things…and through a culture of conspicuous consumption” (ibid: 212). Online performances are constituted around one’s taste, opinions, and values in the offline world. One of the forums that consumption influences strongly is, indeed, sexuality. “The sexual body signifies the mainstream rationale of consumerism” (Alexias et al. 2012: 1). Sexuality invites fantasies, both those reflecting conservative beauty standards and those evoking alternative forms of sexual performances. The online world, as Jones points out, provides freedom for expressing fantasies:

The online world provides “mediated pleasure and escape” (Munar 2010: 406). Communities invite people to mix the imaginary with their actual physical life. Personal exposure “reflects

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Because the Internet establishes a place apart from physical space, the usual social norms regulating modesty are placed on hold. In this regard, the bulletin board, chatroom, etc. becomes an experimental zone where performers may enact fantasies and test their own personal boundaries. (2010: 264)

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C H E R Y L S O U R K E S: Homecammer (2006)

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the tension between the real and unreal” (ibid: 417). Emotional gestures and contacts may “infuse the storytelling of the self with emotive impressions that enhance performances of the self but may also entrap the self in a continuous loop of (mediated) affect” (Papacharissi 2012: 2002). In some cases “online meetings provide us with a more real experience of a person than face-to-face encounter” (Senft 2008: 56). Offline and online worlds are not isolated realities but, rather, operate in synergy. The difference is that there may be “several online identities by one person” (Munar 2010: 413). Online “each self contains an ever-increasing multiplicity of other selves— multiple voices or aspects of one’s own personality” (Papacharissi 2012: 1992). A performance structured around these multiple selves can be described as “an information game” (Papacharissi 2009: 210). Exhibitionism plays with visibility (cf. Koskela 2004: 209). Conceptualization of play reveals novel connections between enjoyment and control (Koskela and Mäkinen 2016). Both the performative nature of online exposure and the changes in social control reveal playful and enjoyable sides of watching and exposing. Performance and identity play “can be conducted for fun and amusement or for mutual social communication” but “can also be an attempt to hide something” (Koskela and Mäkinen 2016: 10). Playfulness invites people to perform their different fantasies and the online world serves as an ideal platform for that. ­Papacharissi claims that “[s]elf-reflexivity, irony, and play are central themes in performing the sel(ves) in realities that are relational” (2012: 1998). Faking, tricking, masquerading, and camouflaging are currently persistent elements of online culture (Koskela and Mäkinen 2016). Play is an essential element of performance, and strategies of play are used to imagine, mix, mimic, deconstruct or reconstruct the elements of exposure.

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CONCLUSIONS: FROM PRESENTING TO PERFORMING This article offers an overview of the ways in which surveillance has ceased to be the sole arena where people watch each other. While webcams used to be exceptional, social media has become a standard. The deliberate exposure of the self provides new understandings of how power and visibility entangle in unexpected ways. Empowerment was hardly possible in a context of strict control. As I have previously argued, exhibitionism can be empowering (Koskela 2004, 2006). Since then, many scholars and artists have shown that exhibitionism can be explained in ways which do not fall into pathological rationalizations. Indeed, it needs to be detached from its conformist relation to perversion. It seems that constructive interpretations have ultimately taken over. I have been delighted to discover several partly overlapping concepts, such as cyber-exhibitionism (Russo 2010), digital exhibitionism (Munar 2010), mediated exhibitionism (Jones 2010), and online exhibitionism (Hawkins 2011). Hawkins beautifully explains that there is room for empowerment in Foucauldian conceptualization: Foucault writes that we have become “subjects in both senses of the word”: we are subjected to powers that draw confessions from us, and through confession we come to see ourselves as thinking subjects, the subject of confession. In this context online exhibitionism or performance equals empower­ment. (2011: 21) To conclude, I revisit the question of what has changed in this process when the popularity of webcams has faded and social media has become dominant. The online world offers almost unconstrained freedom for people to perform themselves. However, people present predominately optimistic images of themselves and attempt to expose a socially desirable self who has an interesting and enigmatic life. Their performance is motivated by their hope for extensive attention. People who deliberately make themselves visible do not necessarily encounter automatic functions of power.Yet, beyond the

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frame of surveillance, people may be submitted to power again, although not from the authorities. They face power related to the social pressure of online communities as social surveillance and mutual control takes place. Furthermore, they are increasingly submitted to power that relates to the consumer society. From this it follows that people are increasingly managing and customizing their performances. Something has changed. I will call this change “from presenting to performing transformation.” Nevertheless, performativity, too, can be approached as an empowering concept. It can challenge existing norms and display possibilities of change and discovery. REFERENCES

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Alexias, G., Kountria, A., and C. Tsekeris. 2012. “Exploring the Embodiment of Female Sexuality in Cyberpornography.” In: Humanicus 7: 1–15. Bertrand, A-C. 2016. “The Changing Gaze: from Documentary Photography to Voyeurism to Surveillance.” In: WATCHED! Surveillance Art and Photo­ graphy in Europe after Nine-Eleven, edited by Wolthers, L., Vujanovic, D., and Östlind, N.: Walther König. Bonanno, E.R. 2014. “The Social Media Paradox: An Examination of the Illusion Versus the Reality of Social Media.” In: Sociological Imagination 3, 1. Hawkins, K. 2011. “Browsing the Performative: A Search for Sincerity.” In: Hummingbird 17, 17–22. Gómez Cruz, E., and Thornham, H. 2015. “Selfies Beyond Self-representation: The (Theoretical) F(r)ictions of a Practice.” Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 7, 1–10. Jimroglou, K.M. 2001. “A Camera with a View: JenniCAM, Visual Rep­ resentations and Cyborg Subjectivity.” In: Virtual Gender: Technology, Consumption and Identity, edited by Green, E., and Adam, A.: Routledge. Jones, M.T. 2010. “Mediated Exhibitionism: The Naked Body in Perfor­ mance and Virtual Space.” In: Sexuality & Culture 14 (4), 253–269. Koskela, H. 2004. “Webcams, TV Shows and Mobile Phones. Empowering Exhibitionism.” In: Surveillance & Society 2, 199–215. Koskela, H. 2006. “‘The other side of surveillance.’ Webcams, Power and Agency.” In: Theorizing Surveillance: The Panopticon and Beyond, edited by Lyon, D.: Routledge. Koskela, H., and L.A. Mäkinen. 2016. “Ludic Encounters—Understanding Surveillance through Game Metaphors.” In: Information, Communication and Society 19. Lange, P.G. 2008. “Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on YouTube.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13, 361–380.

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Marwick, A.E. 2012. “The Public Domain: Surveillance in Everyday Life.” In: Surveillance & Society 9, 378–393. Meek, D. 2012. “YouTube and Social Movements: A Phenomenological Analysis of Participation, Events and Cyberplace.” Antipode 44, 1429–1448. Munar, A.M. 2010. “Digital Exhibitionism: The Age of Exposure.” In: Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research 2, 401–422. Russo, J.L. 2010. “Show Me Yours: Cyber-Exhibitionism from Perversion to Politics.” Camera Obscura 25, 131–159. Papacharissi, Z. 2009. “The Virtual Geographies of Social Networks: A Comparative Analysis of Facebook, LinkedIn and ASmallWorld.” In: New Media Society 11. Papacharissi, Z. 2012. “Without You, I’m Nothing: Performances of the Self on Twitter.” International Journal of Communication 6, 1989–2006. Senft, T.M. 2008. Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in the Age of Social Networks: Peter Lang. Weibel, P. 2016. “Photography and the Administration of Data.” In: WATCHED! Surveillance Art and Photography in Europe after Nine-Eleven, edited by L. Wolthers, L., Vujanovic, D., and Östlind, N. Walther König.

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Browsing the Internet, I encounter a URL that leads to the portal of a museum. It displays a GIF of an edifice slowly rotating upon itself over a gray background watermarked with a logo stating: “The Museum.” I click the revolving emblematic icon and find myself in front of the 3D augmented version of this insignia. This is the monumental edifice of a façade covered by cream marble and composed of straight lines that collide in an adjacent posterior spherical section. To get access to its interior, I cross an automated security check. I swipe down on the fingertip sensor and the small doors open ­silently. Now I find myself in a luxurious, spacious, and polished museum. To my mind, it references the Avenue at Etihad Towers in Abu Dhabi, the Leopold Museum in Vienna, and the lobby of the Mira Hotel in Hong Kong, from where E ­ dward Snowden leaked the classified information about the NSA. Its design seems drawn from 271

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notions of speed, smoothness and aerodynamics. Consider, for example, Umberto Boccioni’s bronze sculpture titled Unique Forms of Con­ tinuity in Space from 1913, the ergonomic interior of a luxurious BMW—one of the Individual 7 Series—or the flawless movement of a military drone. The museum is empty and over its walls, sometimes, homemade online videos appear that seem to be playing on shuffle. These are neither holograms nor projections—these are haptic visual algorithms. They emerge: on and off the walls. The first video appears before me. The camera is positioned low, near the floor, capturing a part of its cream limestone tiles and a small part of a light gray wall showing an electrical socket. A new Goodyear Wrangler ­DuraTrac tire 31X10.50R15 LT 109Q stands alone in an upright position. I see a protagonist in profile entering from the right of the frame. The protagonist is wearing a new Dainese Aero EVO D1 leather motorcycle racing suit, predominantly white and black, ornamented with red and blue patterns, still with the price tag on. The helmet, gloves and boots all match. The protagonist sits down on the tire like a jockey on a horse. In this 272

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position the protagonist bounces their hips up and down as if to check the tire pressure. Soon the protagonist slowly rolls the tire back and forth, navigating this movement with their pelvis. This action is repeated about eight times, producing squeaking sounds due to the friction of the rubber tire on the floor. Then, the protagonist stands up, steps back, and lies down with their torso and pelvis over the tire. With the left hand, the protagonist slowly removes the cap from the silver valve stem. The protagonist puts the cap on the floor and now I see that they hold a red four-way tire tool in the left hand. The protagonist starts slowly unscrewing the valve stem, producing a hissing sound. The valve is completely unscrewed and the air deflates rapidly. While pressing their pelvis hard against the tire and keeping their hands on the floor directly under the shoulders, the protagonist lifts their feet up in the air, creating a 90° angle with their legs. Subsequently, the protagonist starts to gently bounce their pelvis up and down on the tire about 15 times. The protagonist remains in one position for a couple of seconds, as if o ­ bserving the deflation effect. As the air pressure reduces, the airflow slows down. With subtle bounces, the protagonist s ­ queezes the tire hard with the pelvis and thighs until 273

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­ aximum deflation is reached. The protagonist m slowly walks their hands back towards their feet to reach a standing position and exits the frame on the right, the same side that they have initially come from. The tire is left behind, standing alone and deflated. Now, without having any pressure exerted on it, the tire automatically starts to slowly reinflate. The video finishes here and disappears before my eyes, revealing once again the empty, polished marble wall of the museum. I don’t know who this performer was or why this v ­ ideo ­appeared. But obviously, the performer has turned on the camera, recorded the video, and subsequently uploaded the video online. Anybody can see this video at anytime and anywhere. Someone is probably watching it right now. It is most likely that I am also being surveilled here at the museum. It is so large and empty that I feel exposed to an unknown observer, to the eye of the other. There is nowhere to hide. I am conscious that I am internalizing a law and obeying a force of an external power. I walk further, entering the cabinetry look-alike space coated with the finest mahogany wood. 274

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Wooden doors smoothly slide open and reveal a huge rotunda topped with a glass dome. The sunlight shining through the dome reflects on the polished walls. The room is majestic, yet it resembles an enlarged dome-style security camera turned upside-down. The room pulls me into its center and now I face the two symmetrical escalators leading to the gallery that encircles the space. Everything in the space gleams and the reflections of light discretely accentuate the novelty of the materials. There is not a s ­ ingle scratch to be found, not on the marble floor or walls, the die-cast aluminum floor plates of the escalators, or on the black-rubber coated handrails. Everything is quiet and presented as a matter of fact. The motor assembly and the main drive gear of the escalators make a subtle hissing sound that calms me down. Nothing moves except for the escalator’s steps. The step chain continuously pulls one-piece aluminum steps from the bottom platform to the top one in an endless loop. As if everything else has slowed down, I feel relaxed. The stairs, flattening on the top and bottom landing plat­ forms, produce a pleasant rhythmical, and almost in­audible, clickety-clack sound. This sound stimulus affects me physically as if my skin 275

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has been touched around my hips. The escalators keep on going. Occasional slight rubber squeaks of the handrails passing through the truss activate a tingling sensation that starts on my scalp and smoothly runs down to my neck and upper spine, causing a thrilling sensation that I ­never want to end. Each time the rubber squeaks, it rasps my spine pleasurably. This is a shared moment of intimacy while being alone in the room. Vulnerable, I let myself go and I feel the flow of energies and fluids woven in the fabric of the marble walls, the metabolism of the ­museum. The sense of coming together with this abstract entity compensates for my lack of comprehension. Behind the escalators, a wall segment resolves into a new video. I am presented with the close-up of two hands holding an iPhone X over an out-of-focus ­Arizona White granite kitchen countertop. A young voice greets the viewers and announces that this is a customized iPhone X plated with 950 platinum. I am assured by the voice that this will be the most satisfying video ever. The hands present a silverish, fresh-out-of-the-box Masamoto Gyuto 210mm chef’s knife that foregrounds the platinum-plated phone. The protagonist suspends exhaling and announces that 276

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they will make a tiny inscription on the phone. With the edge of the knife, the protagonist starts slowly engraving “YOLO:)” Once concluded, the protagonist exclaims “awesome” in wonder and amazement. To make sure we see the last incision well, the protagonist adjusts the phone to better fit the angle of the camera. Once the result is demonstrated, the voice announces the next phone embellishment phase, saying that they will inscribe a series of arabesque ­motifs on it. With the knife, the protagonist slowly scratches several layers of rudimentary arabesques over the phone’s entire back. Once concluded, the viewer is presented with the ­result. After a brief pause, a third episode starts. This time, the scratching of the phone appears voracious and entirely arbitrary. The protagonist scrapes the remaining untouched parts of the phone roughly, even mercilessly. This is followed by a rhythmic hammering on the logo and the home button. Once the phone is all bashed up, the voice expresses the hope that this v ­ ideo turned out to be satisfying. The protagonist closes the video and, with an enthusiastic hangloose hand gesture, encourages viewers to “stay tuned.”

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The video dissolves and I am faced with the wall of the museum again. In the same way as lightsensitive cells of the retina get photo-bleached when exposed to very bright lights, causing black spots to appear where the cells have ­previously been overstimulated, I see the pale marble engraved with scars analogous to the ones of the iPhone X. I sense the tactile proximity of these engravings. The structure I am in is not inanimate and here, at the museum, these engravings seem to be saved for posterity, but due to the museum’s volatility that remains ­uncertain. At first, it seems illogical to destroy a commodity that is so new and luxurious, but this should not be dismissed as merely an absurd gesture. Because something else matters here, and that is the illusion of personal attention, and this, again, compensates for my lack of understanding. This video is probably made to indulge the viewers in the satisfaction of witnessing something deeply irrational. Something that is at odds with the obsession for flawless forms of industrial designs and the impeccable perfection of its materials, textures, and even smells. I have just witnessed an action freed from the obligation for utility value. This is the expres278

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sion of irrational non-productive expenditure that speaks to my unconscious desires. So, being observed here at the museum is now less of a burden because I am coming to recognize something within me that escapes the possibility to be surveilled and objectified. Videos such as these make me come undone and I feel as though I am entering a new cycle of subjectification. I hear something up on the gallery and I walk back to the escalators. From the ascending staircase I can already see a new video playing on my left; it is curved to fit the concave wall of the space. I see a shot, from above, of two feet wearing a pair of new Air Jordan 6 Carmine sneakers. The soles are flatly stuck together as if to better expose the medial part of the sneakers. The sneakers are predominantly made of white and red leather. The outer soles are white, black, and transparent blue. The right sneaker has two sentences handwritten with a blue ballpoint pen, one stating “hate to play with these sneakers” alongside the eyestay, and the other stating “hot Jordans” on the outer sole. The 279

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left sneaker has two other sentences, one saying “sneakers 4 trash” and the other “just R.I.P. it.” The next shot displays the two sneakers alone, standing next to each other on a lightgray carpet with a white-colored wall in the background. Over the embroidered “Jumpman” logo, the padded tongue of the right sneaker has the word “COOL” handwritten on it with a king-size permanent black marker. The hands, now armed with a hunter’s knife, re-enter the frame. The transparent air cushions are slowly pierced, one after the other, producing short sounds of d ­ eflation. The shoe with the hunter’s knife strangled between the deflated cushion is exposed to the camera for a couple of seconds. At this angle, one can read three statements written with a black marker: “hurt deep inside,” “awesome ­destruction,” and “not a time waster.” The hands leave the frame for a while and reappear, exposing a thick black marker that is rolled between the fingers. The marker’s cap is removed, and the protagonist writes, in large capital letters, the word “CRAP” over the embroidered logo on the tongue of the left sneaker. The two sneakers are placed on the floor next to each other, facing the camera. Together they read “COOL CRAP.” The hands leave the frame and return again with a hunter’s knife and start 280

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slashing the black-padded collar of the right sneaker, revealing the inner padding. The protagonist puts on the sneaker, cuts the laces with the knife and rips the tongue with their hands, spreading debris on the floor. Once detached from the sneaker the tongue is exposed to the camera. The knife cuts the horizontal line on the medial side of the sneaker, exposing the protagonist’s bare foot. The foot keeps the sneaker standing on the ground while the hands are tearing it apart. Once concluded, the sneaker is taken off and left standing like a suspended ruin, enabling one to see its interior. The disfigured sneaker is then pushed to the background, leaving the space in front of the camera available for the left sneaker to feature. A new series of statements written with a black marker can be read: “YOUR sneakers next time,” “srt8up4shot,” “pretty freakin hot,” “the art of sneaker killing,” and “slow death for this pair.” A wooden chopping board is placed under the sneaker and a vertical transverse section is hand-sawn through “it” to expose its anatomy. The two halves of the sneaker are turned 360° counterclockwise, one after the other, showing both their interiors and exteriors. 281

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The two remaining parts of the left sneaker, the front and the rear elements plus the tongue of the right sneaker, are reassembled, reviving the original shape of the left sneaker before it was torn apart. The sculpture is suspended on its own for a while, as if the protagonist wanted to suggest a new model of sneaker. This video dissolves before me and I turn away from the wall. Through the glass dome, I see the clear sky. I conclude that The Museum is a technology that surveils and reflects upon itself. It guards the space outside and within itself, and those who visit it watch surveillance while ­being surveilled. What I see in The Museum has an impact on me, and simultaneously I impact on its infrastructure. And due to this reciprocal reconfiguration, any distance I still have from it collapses.

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UNDER NEW MOONS WE STAND STRONG Symbolism and Literacy in an Era of Digital Oppression TERESA DILLON

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T E R E S A DI L L O N : UNDER NEW MOONS WE STAND STRONG (2016) Image: Ministry of Transport, Sustainable Mobility and Transport Electrification of the Quebec Government

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On 3 January 2016 the closed circuit television (CCTV) camera positioned at the intersection of Autoroute 40 and Boulevard des Sources, in the West Island of Montreal, ­Quebec, captured a stunning series of images—a snowy owl in flight. Four days later, on 7 January, the images, tweeted by Quebec’s then Transport Minister, Robert Poeti, went viral, turning the snowy owl into an “Internet star.”

www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/08/montreal-trafficcamera-captures-stunning-images-of-snowy-owl-in-flight. Last accessed 23 Nov 16

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/03/22/traffic-camera-capturesglorious-image-of-snowy-owl-in-flight/. Last accessed 23 Nov 16

buzznigeria.com/stunning-images-snowy-owl-caught-canadamontreal-traffic-camera/#. Last accessed 23 Nov 16

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-35259984. Last accessed 23 Nov 16

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www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/weird-news/harry-potter-owl-­capturedpicture-7139733. Last accessed 23 Nov 16

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The above headlines are a small sample of the ­international news coverage associated with the images of the snowy owl, which were referred to by some as an “animal selfie” or “photobomb.” The image is, of course, neither, as the snowy owl did not take the photo nor plant itself in the background of a picture taken by another party. So how does this CCTV image of a snowy owl relate to the exhibition and the title of this book? In the opening statement of the FACELESS exhibition, ­curator and artist Bogomir Doringer addresses how in a period of unprecedented personalised tracking, a destabilizing of identity occurs, which calls for new forms of protection. Doringer proposes that this need to protect can help explain the trend and return of the mask in contemporary ­society both as a functional and aesthetic object. Masks, as we know, have long been associated with traditions, rituals, and performative rites, acting as shields, disguises, performative objects, hoax mechanisms and clownish devices. In an era of digital oppression, by which I mean the digital regimes and systems of traceability and accountability that we now encounter everyday, the mask and masking of oneself takes on another meaning. It is within this context that the return of the mask can also be read as a form of obfuscation, a symbolic act of protection and an act of privacy. I am interested in the role of symbolism within digital regimes and the acts or states of mind that emerge as a result of them. It was from this context that the work UNDER NEW MOONS W   E STAND STRONG emerged. UNDER NEW MOONS W   E STAND STRONG took the form of a large paper model of a CCTV camera and its accompanying bird spikes. Made from recycled cardboard, the sculpture was over 3.5 meters high, 2 meters long, and 0.5 meters wide. Accompanying the sculpture was a single black-framed image of the snowy owl taken by the CCTV camera, and the one-line poem and title of the work “UNDER NEW MOONS  WE STAND STRONG,” transferred onto the gallery wall.

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T E R E S A DI L L O N : UNDER NEW MOONS WE STAND STRONG (2015) Image: Yvi Philipp & Fraser Denholm

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ANIMAL SYMBOLISM As the national symbol of Québec, re-posts of the snowy owl circulated widely within Canada, as well as internationally. Across many cultures, owls are associated with death, transformation, wisdom and “seeing” beyond the illusion. The owl is also the emblem of Athena, the patron goddess of Athens, the city most often credited in the Western world as the seat from which the early tenets of democracy and civic life developed. Symbolically, owls, like many other birds and animals, are often considered to act as spirit guides or carriers. Imbued with human-centric ideals and values, the owl as a figure in dreams or visions is regarded as a guide towards a deeper understanding, enabling one to become more in tune with one’s inner self and the world. Whether we choose to believe or receive such metaphors, they nevertheless function to assist and impress upon us our interdependent relationship with the natural world and the species with which we share the planet. Focusing on the ideals of wisdom and seeing beyond the illusion, I want to pick up on the opposed values that I see at work in the snowy owl, particularly within the context of the UK and Scotland, where UNDER NEW MOONS W   E STAND STRONG was initially exhibited. A BRIEF HISTORY OF CCTV Since the invention of the CCTV camera during World War II and the advent of videocassette recording (VCR) ­technology in the 1950-60s, the commercial availability of CCTV ­cameras in our cities has steadily increased. The first city to install CCTV cameras was Olean, New York, in 1968. In an online article for the Olean Times Herald in 2008, retired communications industry executive Mike Arnold, who led the installation, discussed his memories of the event. In the article, Arnold describes how the initial idea to install the cameras came in response to a need expressed by a local business during a community trade meeting. At the time, the department store chain SEARS had an outlet in

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Olean, while its company headquarters sat in Chicago. Due to a recent break-in, the bosses in Chicago asked the Olean store manager to get a guard dog. The store manager was not keen, as it would mean that they had to take care of the dog. So Arnold, who was working in cable television in Olean, proposed that his company could adapt, develop, and install their product on the utility poles. Arnold went back to his boss, who agreed, and for the next two years he designed and installed the system, which was the first all-weather closed-circuit camera system to be used outside of military contexts (costing $1.4 million). As a result, Olean gained international attention and became part of surveillance history. In the same article, Arnold notes that for the period of time the cameras were installed on the street, no crime took place. Instead, crime moved to other streets in the city. What is key here is that crime was not actually prevented but only deterred and dispersed by the cameras’ presence. Within the UK, the independent group The Big Brother Watch acts to some extent as “checkers” of policies relating to CCTV by challenging those who threaten our privacy, freedoms and civil liberties. The organisation’s 2016 report Are You Still Watching, The Cost of CCTV in an Era of Cuts notes that studies show that CCTV cameras are of little or no use in preventing crime, but in certain instances can deter, disperse and/or help solve it. Additionally, studies show that where CCTV camera use is installed, it is usually bundled with other security measures such as lights, security personal, dogs and gates. This makes it difficult therefore to evaluate CCTV’s individual effect or influence on crime. Despite such ambiguities, since the late 1990s the amount spent on CCTV within the UK has been astonishing. To give some indication of this spending, in the period between 2007 and 2011 local authorities in the UK spent £515 million installing, maintaining and monitoring CCTV cameras (Big Brother Watch, 2012). This averages to £103 million per annum. To put this figure into perspective, in 2007/8 the Department of Culture Media and Sport gave £423,601,000 grant-in-aid to the Arts Council of

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England. This means that the money spent on CCTV cameras in 2007/8 equates to around a quarter of the money spent in grant aid for the arts for the whole of the country. In a follow-up report on CCTV spending in 2016, the Big Brother Watch reported that between 2012 and 2015 only £277,079,999.60 was expended on CCTV installation, maintenance and monitoring. The reason for this drop relates in part to austerity measures and cuts in public spending, as well as the decommissioning of CCTV cameras by communities and local authorities as they view them as neither fit for purpose, nor value for money. Despite the cuts, in 2014 the UK government appointed Mr. Tony Porter as Surveillance Camera Commissioner, an intelligence specialist with financial and policing experience. Mr. Porter’s main role is to encourage and advise on surveillance camera compliance and codes of practice. It therefore took fifty years of CCTV use on UK streets and intense government spending and investment before an appointment that focused on “codes and practice” was created. Within this same fifty-year period, the UK has become one of the most intensely monitored countries in the world, with reports claiming that an individual in the UK is captured approximately seventy times a day, rising to three hundred times a day in London (Big Brother Watch, 2012, 2014). HOSTILE, UNPLEASANT AND DEFENSIVE ARCHITECTURES One of the key costs associated with CCTV cameras is their maintenance, particularly in relation to the effects of weather and urban animal life. Given this, across cities it is commonplace to see large metal spikes on top of CCTV cameras. Bird spikes are generally mounted on top of CCTV cameras and range in length from 99 to 170 mm. Primarily used as a means to ward off birds, the spikes ensure that they cannot perch, deface or nest on the cameras. Another popular solution for preventing birds

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from landing on CCTV cameras is a product called Bird Free Gel, composed of ultraviolet gels and natural oils. The birds perceive the gel as fire because they see in ultraviolet. This solution is considered less violent than the spikes as the Bird Free Gel acts as a visual and sensory deterrent, altering the bird’s behaviour by changing its course of flight. In addition, the taste of the natural oils that go into the gel would be off-putting to the bird’s sense of taste. In comparison, the spikes stab or wound the bird’s flesh. In this respect, Bird Free Gel is considered a “low-profile” solution, which is further augmented by its application procedure. The gel is applied in petri-like dishes (approx. 8mm high). As a result, it is not visible from the ground or to the human eye in the same way as the spikes. As a low-profile solution, it ensures that the public image of the city is kept “positive” by protecting the human eyeline from the violence and harm potentially caused by the spikes. Solutions like the spikes and Bird Free Gel are examples of what Gordan Savicˇ ic´ and Selena Savic´ call “Unpleasant Design” (2013), also referred to in the media as hostile or defensive architecture. Unpleasant, hostile and defensive architecture all contribute to a similar urban dictate—the city as a commercial-only haven, accessible primarily to those who have and hold the wealth. In a Guardian newspaper article headed “Anti-homeless spikes are part of a wider phenomenon of ‘hostile architecture’” (2014), architectural historian Professor Ian Borden traces this turn in urban design to the late 1990s, where the city is viewed primarily as a commercial site in which we spend or make money. It is within this period that the roll out of CCTV cameras across the UK occurred. Therefore, animals that deface urban space, or people who busk, protest, sleep or skate, are unwelcome in this city vision as they deter or mess up the commercial imperative. In the same Guardian article, Professor Rowland Atkinson discusses hostile and defensive architecture as the intolerance towards “social difference and poverty within cities.” I would also add that it is indicative of a pushing of anything wild, feral and disruptive to this proposed commercial norm, out of the city, and this includes animals and birds.

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Whether the actual CCTV camera that captured the snowy owl in Quebec had spikes or Bird Free Gel on it is not at the moment known. According to the Director of the McGill Bird Observatory, Barbara Frei, in a CBS interview that was paraphrased in much of the news coverage, it is likely that the camera captured such a perfect image because the owl was looking for a place to perch. Snowy owls—whose wingspan can reach between 1.3 1.5 meters, and weigh 1.6 - 3 kg—are creatures that enjoy broad and open, tundra-like terrain. The camera’s height would have provided such a vista while also providing the owl with an opportunity to survey the land and hunt its favorite food, small rodents. At a most basic level then, the camera itself becomes a site for survival and, as a techno-invasive object, it replaces the initial perching sites (trees) for the owl. Taking this view of the CCTV camera as an urban object that the bird can utilise for its survival, sticking spikes or Bird Free Gel on it could be constituted as a crime against animal rights and welfare. Additionally, in having removed its natural habitat (the tree), one could also argue that we should be obliged to provide a suitable alternative, particularly if we are decimating a species’ resting and eating spots. SEEING BEYOND THE ILLUSION Returning to opposing forces at work in the image of the snowy owl and therefore in the work UND ER NEW MO O NS WE S T AND STR ON G , at one level we have a stunning image of an owl taken by a CCTV camera that is positioned on a motorway monitoring traffic. This image went viral, spreading across the Internet and celebrating the symbolism of the owl in our cultures. On another level, CCTV cameras are commonly adorned with metal spikes and gels, which are purposefully installed with the goal of violently altering and even destroying winged wildlife. Since the late 1990s, across the UK and in response to what could be considered a distorted politics of fear and terrorism, over a billion pounds have been spent on the installation, monitoring

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and maintenance of CCTV cameras. With little evidence to justify why this much was spent, the continued use and upgrade of surveillance technologies is considered a just spend, particularly when aligned with the global “fight against terrorism.” Calls for CCTV upgrades or replacement services are now commonplace so that systems can be aligned with new facial, gait, and sound recognition softwares and other personal and smart profiling services (refer to the forward in the Big Brother Watch Report 2016, by Surveillance Camera Commissioner Tony Porter). The question is then not just about the skills and literacies that we need in order to code, decode, understand and navigate such intensively traceable, smart spaces, but also how we survive on an intra- and inter-personal level within them. For example, what are the internal and social, psychological mechanisms, the affective conditions and stories that emerge so that we can safeguard, protect, and rise above these deeply embedded forms of trace, track, and account? Working on the affective dimension, the decision to enlarge and amplify the CCTV camera in UNDER NEW MOONS W   E STAND STRONG was tactically employed as a means to draw attention to the physical properties of the hardware of the camera and therefore the hardware of “disciplinary society” (Foucault, 1977) or “societies of control” (Deleuze, 1992). In scaling up the dimensions of the CCTV camera, the work brings people and citizens into a more confrontational and direct relationship with the object by bringing awareness to its physical form and architecture with an explicit emphasis on the bird spikes and the camera’s body. The selected material (recycled cardboard) intentionally reused everyday, discarded street materials, which still bore the marks of its original stamps and prints, as well as the knife scores created while making the sculpture. Despite such markings and the object’s dimensions, the sculpture still provoked responses as to whether it was “real” and “on.” Such responses illustrate what the political philosopher Jane Bennett (2009) described as vibrant matter, where the quasi-agency of the material can provoke a

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condition within which we are confronted or brought back to the “reality” of our current ways of living and its associated politics. In this case, the hardware of control and surveillance, normally placed out of sight, is brought down to eye level to call it out from its city cubbyhole so we can again question its infrastructural placement and affect on our lives, environs, and the lives of other species. While the accompanying title of the work UNDER NEW MOONS WE STAND STRONG was conceived as a one-line poem, it doubles as a call for solidarity during a time when technology is being used for mass, omnipresent capture. Note: I use “capture” here not just in the sense of image taking but also in the sense of a reduction in freedom and movement for all types of species, including the birds whose patterns and habits it can radically alter. Accompanying the gallery installation, members of the public were also invited to take part in a procession, so to speak. Each person held a small black stick on which a model of a CCTV camera was perched. The procession went from the Peacock Contemporary Arts Centre, Aberdeen (original commissioners of the work), through the streets of Aberdeen, making its way to the beach. Along the way, the group stopped at various CCTV points, where a brief history of CCTV was retold. Arriving at the beach, the models were ceremonially burnt on a fire in a techno­ shamanic act of cleansing and purification (owl, eye, land and sky). Returning to the opening sections of this piece and the thinking that lies behind FACELESS, one could argue that a certain level of identity destabilization is a continual process of living. For example, it is part of the transition from childhood to becoming a young teen. However, if destabilization results from a sense of being constantly watched, it can become a form of ongoing stress or trauma, which if normalized can in turn fracture the sense of self in a more profound way. The explicit and implicit psychological and symbolic use of masks helps to protect us from such fissures, as can other forms of ritual, narration, humor, and action. It is within this context of ritual, protection and solidarity that I   E STAND STRONG. With the notion place UNDER NEW MOONS W

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T E R E S A DI L L O N : UNDER NEW MOONS WE STAND STRONG (2016) Image: Yvi Philipp

of solidarity intentionally moving beyond the human to take what I refer to here as an omnestory narrative. Omnes referring to the Latin word for “all” and “every”; takes a more ecological and interspecific account of issues relating to the materiality and make up of technology, its effects and affects. This omnestory perspective provides a wider framing from which the circumstances of control and freedom that emerge from the proliferation and use of such surveillance hardwares, can be understood. U N D E R N E W MOON S WE S TA N D S TRON G

Further info: polarproduce.org TERESA DILLON

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R E FE R E N C E S Argyle, Rachel. 2015. “The end of the CCTV era?” BBC online News Magazine, www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30793614. Accessed 1 Dec, 2016. Atkinson, Rowland. 2015. “Limited Exposure: Social Concealment, Mobility and Engagement with Public Space by the Super-Rich in London.” Environment and Planning A, vol. 48(7), 1302–1317. BBC. 8 Jan. US & Canada. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada35259984. Last accessed 26 Nov 2016. Bennett, Jane. 2009. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Duke University Press. Big Brother Watch. 2016. “Are You Still Watching: The Cost of CCTV in an Era of Cuts”. In: Big Brother Watch Report, https://www.bigbrotherwatch.org. uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Are-They-Still-Watching.pdf. Accessed 16 Nov 2016. Big Brother Watch. 2012. “The Price of Privacy: How local authorities spent 515 million on CCTV in four years”. In: Big Brother Watch Report. https://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/files/priceofprivacy/Price_of_privacy_ 2012.pdf. Accessed 16 Nov 2016. Brandt, Henrick. Daily Record. 11:58, 8 Jan 2016. http://www.dailyrecord. co.uk/news/weird-news/harry-potter-owl-captured-picture-7139733. Last assessed 26 Nov 2016. Casini, Siliva. 2016. “UNDER NEW MOONS WE STAND STRONG.” In: Furtherfield, www.furtherfield.org/features/under-new-moons-we-stand­ strong-1. Accessed 2 Dec 2016. Cameron, Heather. 2004. “CCTV and (In)dividuation,” Surveillance & Society, Vol 2, No 2/3 http://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-so­ ciety/article/view/3370. Accessed 26 Nov 2016. Deleuze, Gilles. 1992. “Postscript on the Societies of Control.” In: October, vol. 59 (Winter), MIT Press, 3-7, www.jstor.org/stable/778828. Accessed 26 Nov 2016. First published in L’Autre Journal, No 1 (May 1990) and later in Pourparlers (Paris: Editions Minuit, 1990), Columbia University Press. Eberth, John T. 2008. “Nation’s first surveillance cameras were installed in Olean”. In: Olean Times Herald, www.oleantimesherald.com/news/nationsfirst-surveillance-cameras-were-installed-in-olean/article_fa09f59d4ce3-558d-b713-1aa287a57d7e.html. Accessed 1 December 2016. Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Pantheon Books. Fussey, Pete. 2004. “New Labour and New Surveillance: Theoretical and Political Ramifications of CCTV Implementation in the UK”. In: Surveillance & Society, vol 2, No 2/3. http://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveil­ lance-and-society/article/view/3377. Accessed 26 November 2016. Hunt, Elle. The Guardian. Friday 8 January 2016 05.50 GMT. https://www. theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/08/montreal-traffic-camera-cap­ tures-stunning-images-of-snowy-owl-in-flight. Last accessed 26 Nov 2016.

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Molloy, Mark. Telegraph. 7 January 2016. 9:15pm. http://www.telegraph. co.uk/news/2016/03/22/traffic-camera-captures-glorious-image-of-snowyo­ wl-in-flight/. Last accessed 26 Nov 2016. Mmuojeke, Chinwendu. Buzz Nigeria. https://buzznigeria.com/stunningimages-snowy-owl-caught-canada-montreal-traffic-camera/. Last accessed 26 Nov 2016. Norris, Clive. 2009. “A review of the increased use of CCTV and video-surveillance for crime prevention purposes in Europe”. Briefing Paper for Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE), European Parliament, Brussels. http://www.statewatch.org/news/2009/apr/ep-study­ norris-cctv-video-surveillance.pdf. Accessed 22 November 2016. Norris, Clive. 2006. “Closed Circuit Television: a review of its development and its implications for privacy”. A paper prepared for the Department of Homeland Security Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee ­quarterly meeting on 7 in San Francisco, CA, 1-27. Norris, Clive, McCahill, Mike and Wood, David. 2004. “The Growth of CCTV: a global perspective on the international diffusion of video surveillance in publicly accessible space”. In: Surveillance & Society, Vol 2, No 2/3, http:// ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/view/3369. Accessed 22 Nov 2016. Quinn, Ben. 2014. “Anti-homeless spikes are part of a wider phenomenon of ‘hostile architecture’”. In: The Guardian, https://www.theguardian. com/artanddesign/2014/jun/13/anti-homeless-spikes-hostile-architecture. Accessed 1 Dec 2016. Maguire, Mark, Frois, Catarina and Zurawski, Nils. (eds.). 2014. The Anthropology of Security: Perspectives from the Frontline of Policing, Counter-Terrorism and Border Control: Pluto Books Savicic, Gordan, and Savic, Salena (Eds.). 2013. Unpleasant Design: G.L.O.R.I.A Spiller, Keith. 2015. “Experiences of accessing CCTV data: the urban topologies of subject access requests.” Urban Studies http://journals.sage­ pub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0042098015597640 Accessed 1 Dec 2016.

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COVER: © Lisette Appeldorn, Untitled, 2016 © Marina Abramovic´ – Courtesy of the Marina Abramovic´ Archives and Krinzinger Gallery, p.69 (top-right) © Albertina, Wien. Leihgabe E. Ploil, p.29

Courtesy of Carla & Hugo Brown Collection, Amsterdam, p.44 (bottom), p.47 (middle)

Courtesy of Galerie Frank Taal, Rotterdam, p.62 (bottom), 148

CC-BY 2.0, p.52 (middle), 113

Courtesy of Galerie Raum mit Licht, Vienna, p.70 (bottom)

© Centre Pompidou, MNAMCCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Georges Meguerditchian, p.21

Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna, p.48

Courtesy Galerie Ron Mandos, Amsterdam, p.75 (top)

© Lewis Chaplin, p.43 (middle)

© Gagosian Gallery, p.201

© Guillaume Airiaud, p.67 (bottom)

Courtesy of Cobra to Contem­ porary collection, p.47 (top)

© Pablo Garcia & Addie Wagenknecht, p.258

© Amy Alexander, p.151

Courtesy of Comme des Garçons, p.244–245, 247

© Hrafnhildur Gissurardóttir, p.69 (bottom-right)

©Sterling Crispin, courtesy of the artist, p.83

© Google Maps and Sofie Groot Dengerink, p.50

Courtesy of DAM Gallery, Berlin, p.81 (top)

© John Goto, p.24

Courtesy of American Medium, New York, p.52 (top) Courtesy of Anne de Villepoix Gallery, Paris, Photo: Timur Celikdag, p.59 (top) © Jeremy Bailey, p.82 (bottom), 85–86, 89–92, 94–95, 97–105 © Martin Backes. p.80 (middle) © Jonathan Barnbrook for DAVID BOWIE, Courtesy of Sony Music Entertainment / Barnbrook p.68 (top) © Ivana Bas �ic´, p.65 © William Basinski, p.47 (bottom) © Will Becton & Stephen Hoban, p.23 © Evelyn Benc �ic �ová & Adam Csoka Keller, p.53 (bottom) © Zach Blas, p.80 (bottom) Courtesy of Breenspace, Sydney, p.76 (top) © Heiko Bressnik, Photo: Martina Strilic, p.74 (middle) © Thorsten Brinkmann & VG Bildkunst 2016, Bonn, p.72 (top) © Ondrej Brody & Kristofer Paetau in collaboration with Mark Ther, p.54 (bottom), p.70

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© Caron Geary, p.44 (top)

© Alberto De Michele, p.54 (top)

© Guerrilla Girls, courtesy guerrillagirls.com, p.144

© Olivier de Sagazan, p.64 (bottom)

© Ren Hang, p.63 (middle)

© Martin C de Waal, p.74 (bottom) © Ben DeHaan, p.76 (bottom) © Heather Dewey-Hagborg, p.80 (top) Courtesy Dittrich & Schlechtriem, Berlin, p.64 (top)

Courtesy of Adam Harvey, New York, p.79 (bottom), 122, 124–127, 129–134, 136–137 © Viktor Herak for House of Malakai & Dumitrascu, p.58 (bottom) © Heinz Holzmann, p.75 (middle)

© Bogomir Doringer, p.6, 42

© Ursula Hübner, p.59 (bottom)

© Anders Edström, p.213, 216, 220–221, 225, 228

© Yung Joey, p.177

© Nezaket Ekici, p.43 (bottom)

© Katsuya Kamo for Junya Watanabe COMME des GARÇONS, p.58 (top)

© Arthur Elsenaar, p.81 (bottom) © Shahram Entekhabi, p.42 (bottom)

© Brian Kenny, p.57 (bottom) © Jürgen Klauke, p.34

Courtesy of frei_raum – Q21, Wien, p.9

© Ute Klein, p.62 (top) © Nienke Klunder, p.63 (bottom) © Jakob Lena Knebl & Thomas

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Hörl 2013, Photo: Georg Petermichl, p.71 (middle) © Nikola Kneževic´ & Bruno Listopad, p.269, 284 © Knowbotic Research, p.155 © Kodak, p.162

© mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Schenkung des Künstlers, p.30

© Theo-Mass Lexileictous, p.68 (bottom) Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest. 333.1939 © 2017. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence, p.20

© Cheryl Sourkes, p.262 © Hito Steyerl, p.77

© Marco Pezzotta, p.75 (bottom)

© Sergei Sviatchenko, p.59 (middle)

© Yvi Philipp & Fraser Denholm, p.291, 299 Courtesy of Tatjana Pieters, Gent – Photo John Stoel, p.71 (bottom) © Playboy, p.167 © Willem Popelier, p.39 © Gerda Postma, p.78 (right)

© Vanessa Lodigiani, p.43 (top) © Eva-Maria Raab, p.50 (bottom)

© Jill Magid, p.203

Courtesy of RAF SIMONS and ModeMuseum Provincie Antwerpen, p.44 (middle)

© Lauren McCarthy, p.50 (middle) © Rosa Menkman, courtesy of the artist, p.177 © Bob Miloshevic´, p. 49 (middle) © Ministry of Transport, Sustainable Mobility and Transport Electrification of the Quebec Government, p.288 Courtesy of Jelena Miskovic´, Mislos Dodjevic, Vladimir Peric´, Mark Vos, p.55 (bottom) © MODDR_LAB, p.152 © Slava Mogutin, p.45 (bottom) Courtesy of Yasumasa Morimura and Yoshiko Isshiki Office, Tokyo, p.240–241

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© Jan Stradtmann, p.52 (bottom)

© Maiko Takeda, Photo: Bryan Huynh, p.78 (left) © Saša Tkac �enko, p.45 (top) Courtesy UBERMORGEN and Carroll/Fletcher, London, p.111 © UNDERCOVER, p.66 (middle)

© Manu Luksch, p.49 (top)

© Maison Martin Margiela, Photo: Tyrone Lebon, p.58 (middle)

© Sneaker_mask, p.56

© Simone C. Niquille/ Technoflesh, p.79 (top), 181–183

© Miodrag Krkobabic´, p.55 (top) © Marc Lee, p.250

Courtesy of Schleifmühlgasse 12–14, Vienna, p.72 (bottom)

© REBEL YUTHS, Photo: Patricia Imbarus, p.45 (middle) © Ana Rajcevic, p.67 (top) © Daphne Rosenthal, p.62 (middle) © Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels/photo: J. Geleyns – Ro scan, p.46 © Tarron Ruiz-Avila, p.66 (top) © Mustafa Sabbagh, p.57 (top) © Daniel Sannwald for WOODKID, p.68 (bottom) © Bryan Lewis Saunders, p.74 (top) © Carmen Schabracq, p.66 (bottom) © Frank Schallmaier, p.60

© Sabi van Hemert, p.67 (middle) © Ari Versluis & Ellie Uyttenbroek, p.55 (middle) © Viktor & Rolf, p. 57 (middle) © Philippe Vogelenzang & Majid Karrouch, p.63 (top) © Thomas von Wittich, p.71 (top) © Addie Wagenknecht & Stefan Hechenberger, Photo: Heinz Holzmann, p.49 (bottom), 108 Wikimedia Commons, p.40 © Mårten Westin, p.15 © Bernhard Willhelm, 3D: Geoffrey Lillemon, Photo: Petrovsky&Ramone, p.82 (top) © Jwan Yosef, p.76 (middle) Courtesy of Yvon Lambert, Paris, p.53, 204

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2018937497 Bibliographic information published by the German National Library The German National Library lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in other ways, and storage in databases. For any kind of use, ­permission of the copyright owner must be obtained. Editorial assistance: Alessia Scuderi Translation from German into English (Thomas Macho, Brigitte Felderer): Chris Marsh Copy editing: Scott Evans, Dune Johnson, Jonathan Quinn Graphic design: SCHIENERL D/AD, Vienna

Project Management “Edition Angewandte” on behalf of the University of Applied Arts Vienna: Anja Seipenbusch-Hufschmied Project Editor and Production on behalf of the Publisher: Angela Fössl

Cover image: Lisette Appeldorn, Untitled, 2016 © Bildrecht, Wien, 2018: Marina Abramovic´, Heiko Bressnik, Karin Fisslthaler, Jürgen Klauke, Jakob Lena Knebl & Thomas Hörl, René Magritte, Eva-Maria Raab, Olivier de Sagazan © Succession Picasso/ Bildrecht, Wien, 2018: Pablo Picasso © 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Printing: Holzhausen Druck GmbH, Wolkersdorf Printed in Austria

ISSN 1866-248X ISBN 978-3-11-052513-7 This publication is also available as an e-book (ISBN PDF 978-3-11-052770-4). www.degruyter.com

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