LA VIGILIA DEL VIGILANTE. SUEÑOS DE AMOR, SUEÑOS ESPÚREOS.
The vigilante’s vigil. Dreams of love, spurious dreams
2005-2006, DVD, color, sound, 4’.
Camera: Xoán Anleo. Edition: Manu Paz. Colaboration: Jorge Quintana, Quique Lourido. Localition: Vigo. Premiere: DFOTO. Stand Galería Ad Hoc, Donostia-San Sebastián, 2006.
Catálogo de HAMACA. media & video art distribution from Spain, Barcelona.
For years, I have been watching the security guard post on an adjacent building site from the windows of my house. Its nearness to my house makes me feel as if I am a part of the process of security surveillance.
The 9-11 attack and 11-3 bombing in Madrid have provided the authorities with every excuse to intensify security and surveillance systems. In the face of the apparent withdrawal of notions of the Nation State resulting from Neo-liberalism, we are now implicated in the reproduction of new forms of control. A found image, which I did not have to search for, makes a reflection of the society in which we live, an inquiry into personal liberty within the Surveillance Society.
In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Foucault maintains that the libido provides the foundations for the mechanics of surveillance and discipline. Like Foucault, Butler also considers that the formation of the subject is produced in accord with the premises of power; the subject comes to embody norms which mark the boundary between individual identity and environment. Power exists prior to individual existence, and operates beyond it through mechanisms of discipline and control that produce a submissive subject.
