Metka Zupanič

The project addresses some aspects of the use of identification and surveillance technologies which are today accessible on the market. It relates them to a genuine threat of armed intervention, in particular in the form of »special forces« which are becoming a part of government services professionalization »with a licence to kill«. The question posed by the project is as follows: how to manage personal information in the society of today and tomorrow, especially in the light of the repressive state apparatus which – ironically – ever more points out citizens’ safety.

In this site-specific installation, we are faced with a visual video-image of a soldier’s mirror image in slow motion; such unnatural motion is ironic due to the fact that the soldier – a symbol of strength and agility – is deprived of his primary function. Visitors find themselves in an oppressive environment where at first they aren’t even aware of the eventual danger – at a determined moment, they might themselves become a target of surveillance and potential elimination. While walking in the room, the visitor suddenly catches their own image in the »mirror« of a monitor which provides insight to other spheres. At the moment of facing themselves they realise to be in the process of analyses, scanning and identification. The software actually used by various organisations (airports, shops, banks, hospitals) namely processes their physical appearance. Thus the installation visitor is interpellated from an anonymous individual to the actual Individuum who becomes the subject of surveillance.

The project How To Kill Something In Me addresses the expanding omnipresence of both virtual and physical surveillance, as well as latent violence against the individual. Further to this, we are faced with the fact that we actually establish the possibilities for surveillance ourselves by ingenuously enter various data bases that index registered information. We should just admit that today we are obsessed with a wish to share our intimacy with others. Therefore the Big Brother makes us want – in a clever way – a complete control disguised in safety…

http://tvslo.si/predvajaj/ars360/ava2.70303718/00:00:18/0:0:0/