JULIA SCHER Julia Scher, Wonderland, 2018 | Page 46

MOUSSE 62
J. SCHER
52
Courtesy: the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin. Photo: Julia Scher
JS
In the mid 1980s, observation was gendered, and it was primari-
ly by and for men. By that time, I was working as a cleaning woman
in the men and women’s showers at an aerobics parlor called The
Sweatshop in Minneapolis. It’s a long and boring story why I had
this job, but it’s where I learned everything about electronics and
cameras. I was kind of a butch-looking woman and wasn’t met with
hostility by the people that came to the aerobics parlor to work out.
I crawled around, scrubbing the floor at the feet of naked people
while they were showering. I was around everyone very close, and
no one minded by the time I showed up with a camera. I began
filming them in the workout room doing aerobics. No one thought
it was intrusive; they were already comfortable with me there, so
they didn’t mind me bringing a camera into the room. They ac-
cepted that the camera was almost a natural extension of all of us.
Those were my first shots with a video camera. I wouldn’t say it
was only a presentation of dykeness that got everyone comfortable
but everyone understood what it means to share a surveilled space.
We were all complicit in that situation.
MD
Your work aims to expose the dangers and ideologies of moni-
toring systems without leaving aside the psycho-social implications
of surveillance, as well as to question if that technical device is only
as good as its owner’s intention.
JS
The root of my own work is understanding those paradigms
in relation to a domestic space that was, in my case, really under
threat. One of the first apartments I had when I moved out of my
parents’ place, I was renting from a guy that I suspected of abus-
ing his daughter. Some of the first works I did were audiotapes that
I gave to Social Services. So, the first artwork was something that
I then gave to someone else as an act of bearing witness. As in bear-
ing witness, I could get something wrong righted. And surveillance
could help with something so wrong, yet so invisible and unseen.
Brutality—the threat of being killed— is there, even if it’s not real
in my case. And what if the eye of the camera is a benevolent one?
The idea of a witnessing eye in my work goes back to films like
The Fugitive, in which after being wrongfully convicted for the
murder of his wife, Dr. Richard Kimble escapes from custody and
sets out to prove his innocence.
MD
In the last decades—especially after 9/11—surveillance tech-
nology shifted from photographic tracking of visible bodies
through (public) space to the electronic sorting of files or flows
of information. A shift from portrait to profile that was enabled
to map everyone ’s everyday actions or even to predict what steps
individuals might take next. Data of personal habits and consumer
preferences are interlinked and woven together to form a complex
profile. Avital Ronell takes up this issue in “The State of Art,” with
what she describes an almost “post-human body”—a nonphysical
46
body that is simply a record of information traces left behind.
Are you interested in this shift towards a non-image based practice
in surveillance?
JS
The concept of image has grown into something else, into
things that are micromanaged and into forms that are completely
unmanageable. Data surveillance is now done entirely by machines.
No human is needed to recognize different kinds of what you call
“portraitures.” So, when the human factor is taken out, you can
reckon all the multiplicity of machines and systems that take over.
They still present images to us—because we are human—but that
image is only an artifact for our comfort. The artifacts are used for
comfort when really graphs, notations, and data are all that is need-
ed. We are immersed in a world of post-representation, where you
don’t need to waste time with older forms of imagery. Does that
mean what Terminator sees? In many ways, sci-fi aspects are already
completely realized, but at the same time, “we” are still housed in
these containers—our analog neural network—our bodies.
MD
That shift from portrait to profile became most visible for me the
first time someone at a dinner started talking to their phone: “Siri,
please take a selfie.” For me, this shift is also indicated in the use of
voice in your work. Does the medium of the voice indicate this new
non-visual presence? Do you talk to your devices?
JS
No, I resist because it’s a way to revolt, to fight back. The mo-
ment I start talking to my devices, I will acknowledge that I am re-
liant and dependent on that object. Acknowledging our reliance on
something we cannot see or control is more of the uncanny.
It’s also jealousy: Why did Apple not hire me to be this voice?
The moment they give each of us a customized voice for our devic-
es, then I will do it. But when I am talking to Siri, it’s somehow the
feeling that I am not special; I am no more special than anyone else.
It’s this old-fashioned thing that has been addressed in my work all
the time. That none of us are addressed any differently than any
other in my installations. Everyone is seen by surveillance the same
way for now. There is a work where my voice warns you about
something that will control you, with circus music in playing in the
background. It’s a joke, but it’s also very serious.
One of the most important works in relation to that is one
that Bruce Nauman constructed in a hallway back at UCLA.
On a white wall in Dickinson Art Center, he wrote “FUCK” with
white paint—almost invisible. One could only see it from specific
angles looking at the wall. This work was so important to me be-
cause it summarized the condition of how something that could not
be seen was still there, which is the same way surveillance works.
The almost invisible “FUCK” disrupted and interrupted the room
and took over the space. This notion of “what more is there if you
could do that.”