Julia Scher: Always There

Synopsis by George Kimmerling

"I am a voyeur," said Julia Scher, beginning a presentation that mixed personal narrative, theoretical analysis and a review of her 15 years’ work participating in and critiquing the surveillance of public and private space.

Scher pointed out that although surveillance is an old practice, the nature and extent of surveillance has changed. Once, surveillance was "occasional," undertaken perhaps by a local snoop or the police, who patrolled the streets for crime. Today, however, surveillance is ever present, a reality that Scher said she is exploring in her new book Always There.

Scher began the slide presentation of her work with stills from "Occupational Placement," a 1989-90 piece at the then recently constructed Wexner Center for the Visual Arts. Scher placed the entire museum under surveillance, allowing visitors to watch themselves and others as they moved through the galleries. The images of visitors were inscribed with text falsely identifying them. In "Predictive Engineering" (1993) at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Scher again installed cameras and monitors throughout the museum, placing the museum under surveillance and recording the movements of visitors. Scher is now updating the piece for the museum to include an interactive website.

Scher started surveillance work by soliciting free equipment from Videotronics, a firm that installed a surveillance system for First Bank in Minneapolis and developed the first equipment to grab single frames of video as still images. Scher used similar technology in "Recovery Agent," where monitored subjects could retrieve their captured images from a video printer. Scher employed a similar recovery strategy at the Whitney Museum in 1989.

In France, Scher introduced "Security by Julia," her tradename for a security guard company that "employs" older women dressed in hot pink uniforms to patrol museum spaces in a way that raises questions about notions of guarded space, who controls such space, who is guarding whom and whether any of this activity is useful. Another "Security by Julia" system, which Scher created during the Persian Gulf War, comprised a line of surveillance products decorated with camouflage patterns in traditional and vivid fashion colors.

Scher also briefly described several other of her installations including:

--"Public Travel Area," a piece Scher constructed in New York in the late 1980s, which monitored visitors as they walked through fenced-in hallways reminiscent of a prison;

--an installation at the American Film Institute in which viewers could be pictured on tape with dead Hollywood celebrities;

--a real-time surveillance piece in Buffalo, NY, in collaboration with a Canadian artist who floated a camera over the city on a balloon;

--a bus tour of surveillance sites in Minneapolis, in which participants learned about surveillance techniques and visited monitored sites;

--a real-time surveillance installation in Vienna in 1991 that linked the city’s rich and poor neighborhoods;

--a series of surveillance beds for adults and children;

--"Tell Me When You’re Ready," a bed people lie down on to have their IDs made.

Currently, Scher said, she is working on a piece with the La Jolla (CA) Spy Club, a group of 12 girls who love sleuthing. With them, Scher created "Wonderland" in which the girls roamed the museum wearing hot pink security guard outfits and arrested "bad" people. She noted how quickly children become tyrants when no one is controlling them.

In addition, Scher listed some state-of the art surveillance equipment available to the general public: real-time imaging systems; software that allows simulation of urban scenes using satellite images of terrain; inscription technology; systems for recognition, radiation and reflection; nondestructive testing equipment; and "Theraview," a product that allows users to conduct noninvasive medical exams.

Noting that surveillance techniques allow for the monitoring of individuals from birth to death, Scher said the question is how close can we get to surveillance before we are hurt or damaged or before it robs us of our freedom.

Scher noted that her artwork is about creating a "cosmology of surveillance" that makes people aware of the web of surveillance we inhabit. She said the trope in all her work is to make clear that data gathered through surveillance systems can be manipulated without the subject’s proper prior consent.

During the question and answer period that followed her presentation, Scher admitted that she both loves and hates surveillance, adding that she hopes to sensitize people to the pervasiveness of surveillance and make people more vigilant of its deployment. While positive medical and environmental uses can come from advanced surveillance equipment, Scher said, the real question is whether technology will be used for good or evil. Right now, she added, "It’s up for grabs."

Analysis by Brian Truglio

In structuring her lecture, Julia Scher chose to emulate the computer structure found in much of her work. That is to say she presented the audience with multiple layers of information at a relentless pace in a seemingly indiscriminate order. This was not really surprising since she clearly stated at the beginning of her talk that she moves freely between performance, theory and fact. Like computer users, it was the audience's responsibility to process and reorganize this information into a structure that could be understood and remembered. She did not do this to merely confuse the audience but to remind them that despite the infinite promise of the computer as a tool, judgment and discretion remain a human responsibility.

The responsibility of judgment is most important when it is applied to surveillance, the focus of Scher's work. She creates spaces in which their occupants are both surveyor and surveyed. She wants those occupants to question where and when they are under surveillance. Who is surveying and for what purpose is this information being used? There is the additional element of analysis in most of her work as well. While being surveyed, occupants can also see someone or some machine making assessments about them, categorizing them by sex, height, weight, sexual preference, etc. Only the surveyor/surveyed can see that these assessments are incorrect and seemingly random.

In addition to raising consciousness, Scher would like her work to answer the question, "How much surveillance will we tolerate in a space?" The technical ability for surveillance to penetrate the body and see through and inside is close at hand. She gave many examples including an advertisement for a machine that probes the body for heart problems. Will we allow ourselves to be surveyed inside and out? Philosophically, surveillance is moving from crime prevention and documentation to pre-crime prevention so that criminal behavior or tendencies can be determined before someone even commits a crime or embarks on a criminal lifestyle. This means the possibility of surveying almost every aspect of life from an early age. How much is too much?

Finally, Scher wishes to warn her audience about the fact that surveillance equipment is sold in the interest of protecting its buyer. Scher suspects this is a strategy for creating a culture of surveillance, one in which everyone assumes and acts as if surveillance is omnipresent. Therefore, the idea that you are under surveillance is more important than the actual existence of cameras or equipment. This strategy is almost identical to the religious suggestion that God is omnipresent, that God is always watching and that you cannot hide your sins from God. Historically, it was this same idea that successfully controlled entire continents of people.

In questions following the presentation I found it interesting that Scher admitted that she was severely disappointed that her work did not provoke vigilance. She felt that her work simultaneously warned and seduced its viewers. But she remained unsatisfied with the fact that there was not a more active response against surveillance. Why not? Is it possible to politically motivate people against something that also seduces and entertains them? Can you convince people that a surveillance space is dangerous if it is also a lot of fun?