SuperVision
2011
CCTV camera, stop-motion animation, collage, Youtube videos, 10:06 minutes
Credits: members of Bored Stiff Productions
CCTV camera, stop-motion animation, collage, Youtube videos, 10:06 minutes
Credits: members of Bored Stiff Productions
The film is an expression of fear and skepticism towards surveillance. It draws parallels between the politics of CCTV surveillance and the cultural notion of the Evil Eye set against the discussions and debates around the UID.
The UID, first initiated by the Indian government in 2006, is a unique identification card for all residents across India. While throwing up questions about identity and nationality, my particular interest in the UID veered towards the controversies around its role in surveillance as a repository of private data and biometric information.
Playing with the ideas of watching and being watched the film is constructed as a collage with newspaper clippings, Youtube videos and footage from a performance for a CCTV camera. For this performance I set up a CCTV camera in a room and invited members of the student theatre group Bored Stiff Productions to participate in this make-believe world where I instructed them to direct fear and anxiety towards the CCTV camera as if it were an Evil Eye. All instructions and text for the performance were drawn from Alan Dunde’s The Evil Eye: A Casebook, published in 1981.