Pat Naldi and Wendy Kirkup
Search
A synchronised walk in Newcastle-upon-Tyne city centre, recorded on a 16- camera surveillance system installed recently by Northumbria Police.
The resultant edited footage consisted of 20 ten second sequences transmitted during the commercial breaks on Tyne Tees Television between 21st June and 4th July 1993. The result in an eight-minute video documenting a synchronised walk or 'enactment' undertaken by the artists throughout the city.
Through Search the artists have demonstrated and articulated two features predominant in contemporary culture, namely paranoia and voyeurism in which certain technologies of (male) power (systems of surveillance and representation eg. television) become part of the ideological social totality, which as Foucault has argued, we have created for ourselves.
I felt that by using CCTV cameras as a tool of observation could explore different narratives; social power, surveillance and a male society, voyeurism, self observance and altered perceptions of reality. The quality of CCTV has improved and isn't as grainy as it used to be. It can be used almost anywhere and hidden in the smallest of spaces, it is an easy and accessible to buy and more and more people are using it to guard and watch over their property.
Search, 1993
