Surveillance Studies
Surveillance has evolved over time, from its origins in human intelligence to the ubiquity of public and private cameras and other technologies. Today, the camera in everyone’s pocket has helped proliferate sousveillance, while big data surrounds us with a pervasive blanket of über-veillance, intrusively probing, exploiting and monetizing our feelings and vulnerabilities.
Occulted 2006 | HD color | 19:00
Occulted immerses the viewer in the streets of London during the winter of 2006, barely six months after the traumatic subway and bus bombings of 2005, surveilling those who are already willingly surveilled and pondering what it is that is being thought, felt and lost. More about Occulted
Unspooling Time, 2010 | HD color | 24:00
The drama, narrative and mystery to be found in the everyday unfolds in threads and slices of time. Set to Les Anecdotiques (2004), the magnificent final composition of the late French composer Luc Ferrari (1929-2005), the film reflects on visual and aural perception, positing a form of cinematic storytelling that aligns disparate moments into larger patterns of mood, tone, intimacy and cognition. More about Unspooling Time
Just You, Just Me 2016 | HD Color | 12:00
As the lines between the real world and the digital world blur nearly to the point of erasure, a digital generation has grown up inhabiting virtual realms where extreme violence casually and even comfortably reside. More about Just You, Just Me
Surveillance 3 2004 | Color video | 8:30
On the final night of the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City, amid a sea of protesters and police awaiting the acceptance speech of President George W. Bush, a young worker cleans the interior of a window in preparation for the launch of a new Diesel clothing store.
this particular planet 2014 | HD color | 14:15
In from the bitter cold of mid-winter during an allotted one-hour public library computer session, a man curses and mutters at the unseen amid a dense soundscape that is periodically inflected by a manic and spellbinding rant about the heavens by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Dianetics and the Church of Scientology. More about this particular planet
Surveillance 2 2004 | Color video | 8:15
Beyond the veil of abstraction provided by the flow of data and systematic, insatiable hunger for greater and greater profits, New York Stock Exchange workers are seen outside on sidewalk cigarette breaks, alternately revealing worried looks and perhaps the petty concerns of banal interior thought, seeming all too human. More about Surveillance 2
Exchange 2003 | B&W digital video | 2003
Set to a percussive soundtrack by composer Scott Lindroth, the film visualizes the collective psyche of white-collar Wall Street workers seen on their way to work in the first summer of the post-9/11 universe, their eyes betraying an underlying disquiet. More about Exchange
American Landscape 2002 | DV color | 19:00
A streaming urban landscape, in constant motion. Shot in and around New York City shortly before and after September 11th, 2001, the images are radically slowed down and processed, paired with a rich sound design based on filtered samples of crowds, malls, highway traffic and the human voice. More about American Landscape
Surveillance 1 2004 | DvCam | 7:00
A piece about watching, which, at its core, is a documentary impulse rooted in exacting observation and voyeuristic monitoring. More about Surveillance 1