Eyewitness

Justice must always question itself, just as society can exist only by means of the work it does on itself and on its institutions. (Michel Foucault)

Not so long ago, at the beginning of the 21st century, a flurry of radical changes in technology ushered in a new era of civil rights activism. Powerful new technologies brought unprecedented opportunities to gather, analyze and report out to a global audience. The notion of citizen reporting or citizen journalism; the ability to capture raw, new perspectives; gained new significance.

From cell phone and CCTV content, to forensic analysis, to creative coding, the artists and activists in this exhibition gain access to missing, hidden or difficult-to-retrieve information. Each work deconstructs selected events, times and places, offering us a range of eyewitness perspectives, interpretations and testimony.

Forensic Architecture, based in the UK, publishes the results of their rigorous forensic process into the killing of a black man by police. Indian collective CAMP, pulls together diaristic CCTV film and audio documentation in the day to day life of Jerusalem neighbourhoods & the neighbours who live in low-key, permanent crisis. Belgium artist Dries Depoorter connects publicly available emergency police calls in Seattle with the city-wide system of CCTV cameras.

This is not conventional surveillance. Instead these works turn the panoptic eye of surveillance on the institution or state itself, prompting a different set of ethical and moral questions. Each of the works centres the plight of the human subject, while the architectural surroundings and built environment become key, defining elements.

New technologies hold both the promise and threat of greater accuracy, control and discovery. These are not fictional narratives: they are complicated, uncomfortable, and challenging real world events. The ways in which new technologies and citizen-reporting are used by artist/activist groups, in the pursuit of justice, transparency and disclosure…to challenge narratives, opinion and law, will persist and continue to evolve.