Just You Watch

Performer and Audience in the Work of Nicoline van Harskamp & Jill Magid

Threats and enemies—real and imagined, visible and concealed—have led to a pervasive global culture of anxiety. Security in all its forms has grown exponentially and evolved to incorporate progressively sophisticated and ingenious strategies of surveillance. As long as there has been anything to protect, there have been guards, spies, and informants. The watchtower allowed a single soldier to monitor potential attacks against the village. This notion of an all seeing eye was updated in Jeremy Bentham’s (1748 - 1832) plan for his model prison, the ‘Panopticon,’ that featured a central observation tower with uninterrupted views of each cell but leaving the observer unseen by prisoners. Since they had no idea whether or not they were being watched at any given moment, the inmates policed themselves and self-surveillance became the desired and expected norm. As a result of the current obsession with policing, the ‘Panopticon’ architectural model has been widely applied to a variety of contemporary institutions including shopping malls, as Mike Davis observes in his unflinching examination of Los Angeles City of Quartz: “The ‘unobtrusive’ panopticon observatory is both eye and brain of this complex security system...it contains the headquarters of the shopping center manager, a substation of the LAPD, and a dispatch operator who monitors the video and audio system.” Such measures may seem extreme but are ubiquitous and, despite having led to an ever-increasing concern for basic civil rights and privacy issues, were codified by the federal government with the passing of the Patriot Act in the weeks after the destruction of the World Trade Center, in September, 2001. Domestic surveillance in the form of warrantless eavesdropping of telephone calls, internet searches, and e-mail correspondence of American citizens has amplified the debate on what is and what is not considered a transgression on one’s personal freedom, a state eerily reminiscent of the McCarthy era “witch-hunts” of the 1950s.
The most visible and recognizable forms of security in our society are police uniforms and surveillance cameras, which have the immediate effect of signifying authority and control. Providing alternative perspectives on the tactics and psychology of observation, Dutch artist Nicoline van Harskamp and US artist Jill Magid manipulate these potent symbols in unique and unexpected ways in their respective video and photographic installations. Van Harskamp continues her extensive research and documentation of uniforms focusing specifically on Californian police and security guards while Jill Magid transforms surveillance footage into romantic film-noir vignettes.
In order to sustain the illusion of authority, power, and control, uniforms must be crisp, clean, and well designed. It is a given that uniforms worn by the Third Reich—designed by Hugo Boss—played a large part in their reception as authority figures to be obeyed. Similarly, police, security personnel, and the military both use dress code to enforce systems of hierarchies and chains of command. In recent years, Nicoline van Harskamp has conducted comprehensive studies of people who wear uniforms in different cities around the globe—Amsterdam, Berlin, Glasgow, Istanbul, London and Rotterdam—in her on-going “Guide to Guards” series. Often the result of a residency, the work takes the form of human-scale photographic portraits pasted directly on the wall as well as free booklets depicting the range of uniforms worn by different guards relative to their roles and positions within the security hierarchy. Plucked out of context and arranged like specimens, the uniforms lose their power to provoke, projecting instead the air of a tourist guide of vague historical significance or interest. For van Harskamp, the free catalogues provide a public service informing citizens of how and by whom they are guarded and function as an alternative power portrait of the city.
A number of artists including van Harskamp have explored uniforms as overt signifiers of race, class, and power dynamics. In Guarded View, 1991, by Fred Wilson, four brown headless mannequins are clothed in guard uniforms from major New York museums including the Whitney, where the work was exhibited, a testament to the high percentage of black people occupying such roles. (To some extent this is culturally specific. The ethnicity of guards changes according to the racial hierarchy inherent in different countries. In Germany, the guards are

often Turkish; in England, Asian). Wilson further emphasized the point in a performative piece when asked to give a tour of the Whitney collection. Midway through the tour, he asked his group to meet him downstairs during which time he changed into a guard’s uniform but his reappearance was completely ignored by his party. In L.A.P.D. Uniform, 1993, Chris Burden exhibited 30 over-sized Los Angeles police uniforms made to fit an officer 7’ x 4” complete with badge, baton and gun. Made partially in response to the Los Angeles riots of 1992, L.A.P.D. Uniform is ambiguous: are we supposed to feel threatened or safe? Working in a similar vein, Van Harskamp hires people she meets on the street to wear uniforms and impersonate officers at public events. Van Harskamp records the changes in behavior and shift in attitude by those in dress-up who automatically assume positions of power as well as the responses by those around to the uniformed presence.
Much of van Harskamp’s research and practice over the past few years has focused on methods of surveillance and supervision of public and private space by both private and public forces. The proliferation of diverse security organizations makes it increasingly difficult to differentiate between those who have real power to act versus those who merely posture—the powers afforded to police officers are very different to those of a shopping mall guard. In an attempt to understand the motivations of the people she photographed who wear uniforms for a living, van Harskamp invited a number of guards/officers from different security organizations to take part in meetings, interviews, and workshops, allowing the guards themselves to voice their opinions on a range of subjects including the organization’s values versus their own as well as attitudes concerning their uniforms: what they liked, disliked, and wanted to change. Participation by those being photographed or filmed is a vital part of van Harskamp’s process and often results in collaborative drawings that take the form of hierarchy maps detailing an individual’s physical as well as psychological role within the organization.
In contrast to van Harskamp’s objective examination of various power structures, control of urban space, and surveillance systems, US artist Jill Magid engages intimately—even passionately—with the mechanics and technology of surveillance in her epic project “Evidence Locker” 2004, made in collaboration with the Liverpool Police Department and all 242 closed circuit television cameras that monitor the city of Liverpool. (As a result of the Jamie Bulger murder—a three-year-old abducted from a busy Liverpool shopping street and murdered by two ten-year- old boys—CCTV cameras occupy a sinister role in Liverpool’s history, which now has the largest number of cameras of any UK inner city). Seduction is a powerful tool, one that Magid used to great effect in the work’s evolution and realization. Presenting her self as a surveillance expert, Magid infiltrated the Liverpool Police command center—where the CCTV cameras are monitored 24 hours a day—and persuaded police personnel to actively film her wandering about the city for 31 days. The resulting CCTV footage, transformed into four distinct films, traces Magid’s shifting dynamic with the police, a relationship that moves from voyeuristic detachment to affectionate intimacy.
Control Room, the first in the series, is a double channel video installation that establishes the scene and introduces the narrative for the subsequent films. Close and long distance shots capture and scrutinize Magid as she navigates the city engaging in such mundane activities as drinking a coffee, smoking a cigarette, and asking for directions but also committing some dubious and suspicious acts. Magid’s attire, a bright red trench coat more appropriate in noir novel, heightens the intrigue and adds to her already ambiguous and slightly threatening identity. Subverting their traditional function, Magid transforms the apparatus of control into highly effective art making devices. In an interview she has stated, “...surveillance cameras create stages, or fixed, monitored platforms. Under their gaze there is a potential for me to act, and a potential to save this act as a recorded event.” Directly influenced by Jean-Luc Goddard’s film Le Mepris, 1963—a film concerned with the mechanics of film-making featuring Fritz Lang as the director of a modern version of the ‘Odyssey,’ Magid playfully casts herself in the leading role of Camille (played by Brigid Bardot), who is pursued by the ‘predatory’ camera. Magid, using Goddard as a model, encourages those monitoring her to imitate his camera movements and track her actions seductively. Le Mepris, is referenced again in Final Tour, the last film in the “Evidence Locker” sequence, which is accompanied by the soundtrack Camille, composed by Georges Delatour for Goddard’s film. Overtly tragic and somber in mood, the music contrasts the selfish, vain, and petty behavior of the characters. In Final Tour, Magid’s own private ‘odyssey’ comes to an end as she is filmed being driven to the outskirts of Liverpool, out of range of the 242 cameras that watch the city, on the back of Mike’s motorbike—her cameraman/policeman/ersatz lover.
In order to gain access to the surveillance tapes featuring her, Magid was required to fill out 31 evidence request forms—one for each day she was there. In keeping with the romantic cinematic narrative, Magid used the forms

to write a loving journal to the policemen—referred to as ‘observers’—that followed her around, resulting in the book: “One Cycle of Memory in the City of L,” that comprised the fifth element of “Evidence Locker,” an installation, designed as interrogation/reading room, consisting of black chairs, filing cabinets, and overhead lamps. Like the films, the diaristic accounts read like a film script moving from objective accounts to increasingly intimate descriptions of Magid’s physical and emotional state, which by the end can only be read as love letters:
“The hot water ran; the heat lamp hummed. My clothes fell to the
floor and I got in. I was supposed to be writing to you, to get these letters
to you before time runs out. Before 31 days comes. But I couldn’t”.
Mike, the unnamed ‘observer,’ subject of the letters, and bike-riding hero, is also featured in Trust. Reminiscent of a Stockholm Syndrome victim—relinquishing control to the system that has kept her captive over the 31 days—Magid places her entire trust in Mike who from the confines of the control room tenderly directs her via her earpiece as she moves with eyes closed through the crowded city.
In “Evidence Locker,” Magid is a confidence trickster using a system of surveillance to reveal itself, transforming it from intrusive impersonal device to intimate collaborator. Similarly, Nicoline van Harskamp has taken the uniform and reduced it to a suit of fragile armor barely hiding the fellow victim inside. Both artists make highly original contributions to the discussion surrounding surveillance, counter-surveillance, and self-surveillance. Their work resists the obvious and seductive urge to indulge in anti-establishment rhetoric or predictable victim-culture. Instead, they are concerned with finding new ways to talk and think about an increasingly pervasive phenomenon that will not go away.

SUPERVISION: NICOLINE VAN HARSKAMP & JILL MAGID
UCR/CALIFORNIA MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY, MAY 2006