A University of Calgary art historian is preparing to release her first book examining contemporary artist’s response to the rapid expansion of surveillance in the 21st century.
States of Observance: Contemporary Art and Surveillance Logic in Canada, by Susan Cahill, is scheduled for publication this fall. The book is a culmination of her ongoing Art and Surveillance project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and provides a thematic dissection of the surveillance culture artists respond to.
Cahill’s research focuses on works produced between 2001 and 2021, as surveillance technologies expanded across North America following the 9/11 attacks. During this time, tools such as closed-circuit cameras, biometric tracking systems and large-scale digital data collection became normalized.
Artists from this period questioned the social and political implications of being watched by incorporating surveillance imagery and technologies into their work.
Cahill examines artists who use these technologies to create environments where the audience becomes aware of their visibility and are prompted to consider the broader cultural implications of surveillance. These pieces encourage viewers to reflect on their sense of safety, privacy, how those perceptions shift depending on their identity and the power structure operating within a space.
In a Canadian context, this work often involves the relationship between surveillance and the country’s history of colonialism, including the ways monitoring technologies have historically been tied to territorial control and governance.
“Surveillance has operated as long as settler colonialism has operated in this land,” said Cahill. “I’m interested in the way in which it’s thought of as new, but actually maintains a certain historical dominance of who gets to police the lands and say whose body is safe, whose body is unsafe.”
Canadian artist Shaheer Tarar explores this idea in his 2019 installation The Jack Pine. The piece displays Canadian landscapes through live camera feeds. The feeds are combined with an artificial intelligence software to create a contemporary portrait of Canada, suggesting the country is not only shaped by its environment but also its surveillance infrastructure. The installation’s use of live, continuous monitoring also prompts viewers to consider the implications of large-scale data collection.
Another theme Cahill highlights in her book is biological surveillance, where artists question how genetic data is used to monitor individuals. American artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg does this in her 2013 project Stranger Visions. Dewey-Hagborg collected discarded materials such as chewing gum from the New York City streets and extracted the DNA from them. Using genetic analysis, she generated three-dimensional portraits predicting what the individuals who discarded the items looked like. The project was intended to raise questions about the accuracy and potential for bias when forensic DNA phenotyping is used for biological surveillance and profiling.
Some artists are also using technologies, such as artificial intelligence not only as a theme but as a production tool for their surveillance-based artworks.
“It will be easier to analyze complex topics about the numbers and types of surveillance using AI tools to synthesize and compile complex data and do a lot of the grunt background work to organize a narrative,” said Laurie Frick, an American artist who uses the tracking information gathered from an individual’s personal device to create artistic installations.
With States of Observance, Cahill aims to document a two-decade history of how Canadian artists’ have engaged with surveillance, offering a thematic breakdown of how these technologies shape contemporary artistic practice.
Featured Image: Canadian art historian Susan Cahill stands in the Department of Art and Art History office at the University of Calgary.