Tianyi Shi
Against the backdrop of the relentless mechanism of surveillance capitalism, Watch it From Where They are surveys the undocumented immigrant experience of living under a dystopian state of surveillance control, the role of which has contribute to the erasure, deportation, discrimination, and other forms of political violence upon the individuals. The project opens up issues surrounding one’s representation mediated by digital technologies and the lack thereof. What’s the consequence that comes with visibility and vice versa? To mediate the effect of surveillance technology, a set of bodysuits is made from machine generated adversarial patches that are used against the popular object detection algorithm YOLO4, which is commonly deployed in many surveillance control systems. While the visually arresting pattern has made the subject a public spectacle, it attacks the algorithm which then renders the subject invisible. The seemingly incongruous relationship between invisibility and visibility for those whose presence is prone to subjugation of surveillance gaze is henceforth put into question. Juxtaposing the screens side by side with two clips playing simultaneously, the two channel video installation invites the audience to watch the clips in the style of a real time surveillance monitor. As soon as the viewer is engaged in the activity of watching, they become complicit in systemic renunciation of the individual as a lived reality, but coded data made ready for material gains. Under the omnipresent gaze in both private and public sectors, the immigrant body inevitably turned into a literal and symbolic data fed into the incessant classification of the illicit and racial topography in the digital landscapin Finland who works primarily in acrylic paints. She often makes portrait-like paintings where she likes to highlight the mundane parts, the small imperfections, and juxtapose them with bright colors. She uses inspiration from nature and its beauty which is not defined by symmetry and lack of imperfections.
