The Threat, The
I went to an exhibit today and it was interesting. 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 of 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 are 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 ourselves. On top of the existing cameras, CCTV, 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 have described the exhibit, you might ask, “How did it work?” “What were the pieces?” I can describe the broader details 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, which productively adds to the point that in these different environments, you still could be surveilled. Then there were the actors—yes, there were hired actors!—who were reciting politically charged scripts that called for some form of social instability.
These actors walked around the exhibit and even outside it, reciting their speeches intentionally interrupting 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 apartments should burn or how Wendy is on 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 can walk up onto a platform and walk down onto a platform. On the ramp, there were objects like a mechanical contraption, riot gear, a 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.