The Threat, The

https://art.as.virginia.edu/ruffin-gallery-exhibition-threat

I went to an exhibit today, and man, what an interesting exhibit it was. The exhibit aimed to lay bare the mechanisms and ontological foundations of “the security state,” which imposes themselves onto the built environment and the social psyche. An innovative aspect to the exhibit, at least for me, is how it was architected in a way that it necessarily involved you in the exhibit, literally the attendees is part of the exhibit. And that was part of the intentional design, as it aimed to illustrate what the boundaries of surveillance were and how it was embedded in our ourselves. On top of the existing cameras, cctvs, and public sensors observing us, the exhibit called to attention that the state has made a panopticon out of all of us: EVERYONE IS WATCHING EVERYWHERE -> BEHAVE. 

Now that I told you what the exhibit was, you might be asking, How did it work? What were the pieces? I can describe the broader descriptions no better than what they have on their website. 

“Site-responsive, public, and multimodal, The Threat, The rescripts object, action, site, sound, and text using tactics from a range of theatrical, architectural, and activist traditions to grapple with the legacies and artifacts of the security state and to disrupt popular securitarian narratives circulated as pretext for state violence.”

But what did they mean by all the different modes of interaction? How were they actually accomplished? Now that is what I can tell you. The exhibit is open to the public and contains various interactive elements, ranging from mechanical to digital pieces. The exhibit has indoor and outdoor areas productively adds on to the point that in these different environments you still could be surveilled. Then there were the actors—yes, there were hired actors!—that were reciting politically charged scripts that called for some form of social instability.

These actors walked around the exhibit and even outside the exhibit, reciting their speeches with a very intentional interruption of the public space. At one point, I was sitting on my bench pretty far away (at least I thought so), but even then an actor came by talking about how the apartment’s should burn or how the Wendy is one fire. 

Moving on to the actual structures of the exhibit. The outdoor portion on the terrace was this grass structure, with metallic objects like steel clamps, bricks, steel, and a hidden CCTV camera. As you might have guessed, the hidden CCTV camera was the more impactful part of the piece. It was only after I read the pamphlet that I realized all the other objects were collected from a western state mental asylum. There was also another interesting piece, a PA system that was playing speech using an AI-cloned politician.

The inside portion of the exhibit was hosted in the gallery room. It features a ramp where you could walk up onto a platform and walk down onto a platform. On the ramp there were objects like a mechanical contraption, riot gear, brick wall, batons, and a cylinder. Since it was a platform, you could go under, and what was found there was a TV looping a video of water catching fire. I didn’t really know what to make of the TV video, but it was nonetheless intriguing.

Seminar Notes

Actors were performing in the exhibit with a double sense. The roles as the surveilled and activists, but also embodying during their performance the histories of the archive. The archive in this case the histories of surveillance and the security state.

It critiques SIMILARLY the performance of the security state. It’s implications on political, ethics, the zoo and bios.

The built environment reifies and materializes the security state which has a lasting impact on how political futures.