Watching me, watching you: Reflections upon surveillance, Gare Loch duality and the #UndesiredLine

Owens, B.D.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/113425 Copy

Description

Title

Watching me, watching you: Reflections upon surveillance, Gare Loch duality and the #UndesiredLine

Author(s)

Owens, B.D.

Issue Date

2021-10-26

Keyword(s)

• lines
• Scotland
• fences
• military surveillance
• nuclear weapons
• submarines
• Twitter
• walking performance
• ecology

Geographic Coverage

Scotland

Abstract

"From my local observations, the everyday military surveillance, an ever-present panopticon, perpetuates both conscious and unconscious stress in the lives of those who endure it. In this paper I will reflect upon my experiences of a 224 mile pilgrimage that I undertook in 2018, over a period of 50 days. It was a daily walk from the front door of my house to the front door of the Faslane Nuclear Submarine Base, on the Gare Loch in Scotland. A walking performance, through which I drew an Undesired Line on the grass verge in parallel to an existing ""undesired line"" - the perimeter fence of the Base. Throughout the time the performance was in progress, I made an online text artwork using the Twitter hashtag #UndesiredLine. One year later, I reactivated the #UndesiredLine text-work in order to analyse subsequent observations and to establish a platform (and outlet) to examine the complex reality of Gare Loch ‘duality’. I will look at the potential legacy for The Undesired Line, and how I can use the documentation: video, photos, daily journal writings, field recordings, tweets and maps. In addition to appraising my own work, I will discuss surveillance focused artworks by David Rokeby, Janet Cardiff and The Surveillance Camera Players. I will also consider some of the ethical challenges of interactive art, as well as the implications and limitations of ""piggy-backing"" an online artwork onto existing online platforms such as Twitter and Google Maps."

Series/Report Name or Number

Media-N, vol. 17, issue 2

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/113425

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21900/j.median.v17i2.882

Copyright and License Information

• Copyright 2021 B.D. Owens
• This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).

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