les presses du réel

Caméra(Auto)Contrôle (+ 2 books)

 - Caméra(Auto)Contrôle (+ 2 books)
Exhibition Guide from the Triennal 50JPG 2016 – 50 Days for Photography in Geneva, accompanied by the two artist's books published on the occasion of the exhibitions, Giacomo Bianchetti – Bilderberg 2015 and Sébastien Reuzé – Indian Springs (bundle).
The exhibition “Caméra(Auto)Contrôle” takes us right into the burning issue of drones and all other monitoring systems that use photo and video cameras. We can indeed “celebrate” a quarter of century of the monitoring of public space by automated cameras worldwide. These cameras quite often bear a sticker with a smiley asking those being recorded, whether in a car park, at a supermarket check-out, or on public transport, to smile.
A number of artists, hackers and political activists have refused to smile, instead appropriating these surveillance devices momentarily. Their actions have remained isolated, because never before has a grassroot movement fought against the increasingly invasive presence of depersonalised cameras in public spaces. It has also been a quarter of a century in which street photographers, both amateur and professional, have met with hostility, or even aggression from citizens, the same citizens who submissively accept being recorded 24 hours a day, wherever they may be. This schizophrenic attitude might be interpreted as an internalisation of the passive acceptance of one's image being monitored by unknown agents. The master stroke of this internalisation might well be the Selfie, where the citizen willingly smiles in front of his smartphone and shares this image of himself on social networks, and, in doing so, subjects himself to the most obvious social monitoring.
Here we are in the era of “happy-selfexploitation” observed by philosopher Byung-Chul Han, who suggests that cognitive capitalism has brought about a paradigm shift. He replaces Michel Foucault's bio-politics with the concept of psycho-politics, in which we, the “users”, participate with our own consent, not to say enthusiasm, in our own exploitation, by giving our images and other personal informations willingly to the giants of the Internet. Our informations is what forms their capital.
With Annelore Schneider & Claude Piguet, G.R.A.M., William Anastasi, Luc Andrié, Jacob Appelbaum, Giacomo Bianchetti, Viktoria Binschtok, !Mediengruppe Bitnik, James Bridle, João Castilho, Kurt Caviezel, Jean-Marc Chapoulie, Gaëlle Cintré, Paolo Cirio, Edmund Clark, Nicolas Crispini, Heather Dewey-Harborg, Jimmie Durham, Léa Farin, Harun Farocki, Enrique Fontanilles, Guillaume Désanges, Michel François, Dan Graham, Hervé Graumann, Vincent Emmanuel Guitter, Gary Hill, Ann Hirsch, Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Véréna Paravel, Ernst Karel, Matthew Kenyon, Joakim Kocjancic, Clément Lambelet, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Jérôme Leuba, Armin Linke, Fred Lonidier, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Jill Magid, Rubens Mano, Josep Maria Martín, Adrien Missika, Gianni Motti, Warren Neidich, Christof Nüssli et Christoph Oeschger, Willem Popelier, Julien Prévieux, Catherine Radosa, Sébastien Reuzé, Franck Vigroux, Gregory Robin, Jenny Rova, Julia Scher, Manuel Schmalstieg, Sean Snyder, Jules Spinatsch, Jonas Staal, Jemima Stehli, Vangelis Vlahos, Stéphane Degoutin & Gwenola Wagon, Jan Hofer & Severin Zaugg.

Published following the eponymous exhibition, 50JPG Triennal 2016, Centre de la photographie Genève, from June 1st to July 31, 2016.
 
published in October 2016
bilingual edition (English / French)
11,8 x 16,7 cm (softcover)
254 pages (ill.)
 
ISBN : 978-2-9701014-5-1
EAN : 9782970101451
 
sold out


 top of page