Project 19: Looking, observation or surveillance? (Michel Foucault)

This project was to read to read chapter five from the course reader, Panopticism by Michel Foucault, and make notes from it.  This is extracted from  Foucault’s book Discipline and Punish (1977), about the criminal justice system and power, has been influential to post-structuralist and postmodern art theory thus having implications for visual culture. For example, from an online article, Shannon Leigh O’ Neil writes:

“What does the panoptic schema have to do with art? There are several applications for this concept: from the way we receive information in the Digital Age, to issues concerning individual rights in society, to the display / manipulation of images, to the ways museums are set up, and so on. Reality television, webcams, and digital cameras are more popular than ever, while traffic light surveillance and national identity cards are controversial threats to our privacy... what are we seeing and who is manipulating the images? Since the advent of photography, film, television, and other media, the voyeur is the third entity within the realm of the seer and the seen” (Leigh O’Neil, S.)

Harou-Romain, N.  (1840) Plan for a Penitentiary. From: (1840) N.P. Project de Penitencier.

Foucault reconceptualised Jeremy Bentham’s idea of the panopticon so for Foucault panopticism becomes a metaphor.  According to Foucault modern societies are structured around relationship between power and knowledge; power relations are structured to produce citizens who will actively participate in self-regulatory behaviour.  The systems that are in place encourage us to self-regulate do so without any active threat of punishment makes us behaviour and conform; this is the nature of panopticism. It is not active surveillance that can affect behaviour, it is the structure of the surveillance itself, whether active or not, that produces conforming behaviour through an internalisation of the concept.

Task One: Video Artists and the Panopticism

As well as reading and making notes from Foucault’s Panopticism we have been asked to consider Foucault’s argument in regard to video artists. This was concerning the practice of using themselves as their subjects and this relationship to panopticism.  

The example given was the video artist Lindsay Seers. After considering Seers work I can see a relation between the work of a video artist and the panopticism.  The use of themselves as subjects could be seen as a representation of the power dynamic central to modern society: they are externally represented the internalised oversight which we enact in a self-regulatory manner. Ultimately, it is the imagined visible presence of an inspecting gaze that has the potential affect on our behaviour. 

Personally, I would align this with the Freudian notion of the super-ego. More significantly I believe the artist becoming of the subject of his own artwork has a greater relationship with Lacan’s concept of the mirror phase.

Task Two: Looking, Observation and Surveillance

I was then asked find six images: two of which are the result of looking, two of observing and two of surveillance. I will be explaining the examples and be accrediting the images over the next few days.

Looking

‘Looking’ example one:
Still from Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, Paramount Pictures/Patron Inc., USA, 1954).

‘Looking’ example two:

Weegee (1941) Their First Murder. [Gelatin Silver Print] Los Angeles: The John Paul Getty Museum.

The photograph, Their First Murder, emphasises the process of looking because it makes the observers of the murder – we do not see their subject – the subjects of the photograph. The photograph is macabre as it focuses on the crowd’s reaction to the dead body of the murder victim. Consequently, it leaves in the mind of the viewer questions of the sight in which the photographed spectators are witness too.

I’ve chosen the image form Rear Window as it a film about looking. Scopohilia is a theme in the film. The film progresses from looking, observation and surveillance into active participation.

  

Observation

‘Observation’ example one:

Muybridge, E. (1887) Plate 187 (Dancing, Fancy)

‘Observation’ example two:

Evans, W. (1938) Subway Passengers [Gelatin Silver Print] San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The image by Muybridge was chosen as it is an observation of a woman dancing. It’s sequential arrangement represents movement. The camera is objective.

The camera also takes an objective stance in Walker Evan’s Subway Passengers. The photographer is unseen so the subjects don not artificially pose for the camera; they are captured unaware.

Surveillance

‘Surveillance’ example one

Olley J.  (1988) Grosvenor Road RUC Police Station, Grosvenor Road, Central Belfast.

‘Surveillance’ example two:

Long, L. (1998) Compact from The Dating Surveillance Project. [Video Tape] San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Jonathan Olley’s Grosvenor Road RUC Police Station takes surveillance as its subject. The security camera is prevalent and thus, by turning the camera upon itself; become self-reflexive. This also reinforces the meaning created by this image being captured in Northern Ireland. 

Lisa Long’s image concerns direct surveillance of one’s own actions.

Further Reading

Foucault, M. (1970) The order of things: an archaeology of the human sciences, London: Routledge, pp78-92.

Tagg, J. (1987) Evidence, truth, and order: a means of surveillance. In: Evans, J. and Hall, S. (eds.) Visual culture: a reader. (1999) London: Sage Publications, pp. 244-273.

Reference List

Foucault, M. (1977) Panopticism. In: Evans, J. and Hall, S. (eds.) Visual culture: a reader. (1999) London: Sage Publicationsm pp. 61-70.

Bibliography

Burgoyne, R., Flitterman-Lewis, S. & Stam, R. (eds.) New vocabularies in film semiotics. (1992)  London: Routledge.

Cartwright, L., Sturken, M. (2001) Practices of looking: an introduction to visual culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.