III. Visualities Florian Zappe and Andrew S. Gross - 9783631798812 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/25/2021 08:51:25AM via free access Florian Zappe and Andrew S. Gross - 9783631798812 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/25/2021 08:51:25AM via free access Hugh Davies The Art of Surveillance: Surveying the Lives and Works of Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei Abstract: This chapter explores surveillance as conceptual and creative practice in the work of American pop-artist Andy Warhol and Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei. Examining their mutual celebration of popular culture, celebrity and social media, the aesthetics of surveillance emerge as defining features of their respective oeuvres. Beginning with a literature review of the changing modes and understandings of surveillance over recent decades, this paper goes on to explore how surveillance manifests in the personal lives and creative practices of both Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei, albeit during different eras and through different cultural lenses. Warhol’s Factory studio where the eccentric and famous paraded before cameras constituted a kind of reality TV set decades before the concept would become mainstream, while Ai’s prolific social media existence that collapses together political activism with selfies-with-the-stars sees his entire life documented online. Both artists also attracted state surveillance. Warhol for his subversions of social conservatism through popular imagery, and Ai Weiwei for his antagonisms of the Chinese communist state. For both artists, surveillance develops to become a par- amount and existential concern. In tandem with this survey of the two artists is a broader discussion exploring how public perceptions of surveillance have evolved overtime. Once regarded with terror and abject horror, today, this essay argues, surveillance is no longer a state or corporate imposition, but a popular trend and artistic aesthetic embraced at political, social and cultural levels. Keywords: Ai Weiwei; Andy Warhol; conceptual art; surveillance; pop-art In the final rooms of the touring 2016 Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei retro- spective, the sculptural objects, paintings, and installations give way entirely to screens. As with much of the exhibition that precedes it, the practices of the two seemingly unrelated artists are again connected, but here links are forged between their mutual celebration of celebrity, social media, and the aesthetics of surveillance these factors give rise to. It becomes apparent that American pop icon Andy Warhol and Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei share a keen awareness of surveillance. Indeed, the concern emerges as a defining feature of their respective practices, albeit through different eras Florian Zappe and Andrew S. Gross - 9783631798812 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/25/2021 08:51:25AM via free access 154 Hugh Davies and cultural lenses. Ai’s social media presence resonates profoundly with Warhol’s celebrity screen imagery from the 1950s onwards. Warhol’s infa- mous “Factory” studio was already a kind of living social media three decades before such applications would hit the digital mainstream. Today, Ai’s Beijing studio, called “258 Fake,” has become China’s equivalent of Warhol’s Factory: filled with creative individuals, experimental practices, and prying cameras. Both artists also attracted state surveillance: Warhol for his subversions of social conservatism through popular imagery and Ai Weiwei for his antagonisms of the Chinese communist state. Taking inspiration from the internationally touring retrospective of their works, this essay examines the lives and practices of Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei, exploring how these artists reflect and celebrate the surveillance cultures pertinent to the very different eras in which each worked. It should be noted from the outset that the subject of surveillance art has produced several high-profile exhibitions in recent years. Among them are Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera at Tate Modern (2010), Watching You, Watching Me at the Open Society Foundation in New York (2014), and Covert Operations: Investigating the Known Unknowns at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Arts in Arizona (2015). In addition, numerous arts practitioners have taken up surveil- lance tactics and concerns in their work. Noteworthy are French artist Sophie Calle who has mapped the strange intimacy between observer and the observed and Bruce Nauman who explored the recorded self through participatory video installations. Of equal importance are the diverse array of creative practitioners who have investigated the eruption of post- 9/11 state and commercial surveillance from data tracking to drone war- fare. But in stark contrast to the majority of works addressing the art of surveillance, the works of Ai and Warhol contain an acceptance, com- plicity, and even a celebration of surveillance. Both artists embraced the new surveillance technologies of their eras (Warhol—video and Ai—the Internet); however in the work of these artists, the technologies become secondary concerns to their impact on the human psyche. In comparing their practices, separated by almost 65 years and spanning East and West, what emerges is a captivating insight into how screen technologies and cultures of surveillance have evolved since the 1950s, and how spectacu- larly society has transformed with them. Florian Zappe and Andrew S. Gross - 9783631798812 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/25/2021 08:51:25AM via free access The Art of Surveillance 155 1 Topologies of Surveillance In order to orient the reader, it is necessary to undertake a brief over- view of the topologies of surveillance explored in the following text before embarking on an analysis of the artists, their lives and work. The term surveillance derives from the French word surveiller whose etymology is located in the prefixsur : ‘over’ and the word veiller from the Latin vigilare: ‘to watch,’ as in ‘vigil.’ The word surveillance, Albrechtslund notes, “implies a spatial hierarchy” specifically that of monitoring from above (“Online Social”). This directional orientation is often reinforced by the prefix ‘under’ as in to be ‘under surveillance.’ In recent years, there has been broadening of the conceptualization of surveillance beyond the architecture of looking down upon someone, as for instance from a panopticon, to include not only senses beyond the visual, but also to recognize multiple vantage points of surveillance other than from above. Most relevant to the investigation that follows is the acknowl- edgment of social surveillance (Marwick, “Public Domain”; Tokunaga) to denote the mutual and lateral eavesdropping and gossip that constitutes information gathering by individuals about their peers, a practice also described as peer-to-peer monitoring (Andrejevic). Aspects of social sur- veillance can also include surveillance from below or upward surveillance encompassing the eavesdropping of servants on their masters during the Victorian era (McCuskey), to the fan practices toward celebrity figures that Cashmore suggests are significantly more pervasive and aggressive than state surveillance (262). Within such a framework, whole cultures of fandom and participatory culture as mapped by media scholar Henry Jenkins in his book Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers might be reinterpreted as cultures of social and upwards surveillance. Other instances of upward social surveillance include that of citizens being watchful of their leaders, often through the repurposing of surveillance equipment to watch the watchers, also called ‘sousveillance’: sous: ‘below’ and veiller: ‘to watch’ (Mann, Nolan, and Wellman). Albrechtslund and Nørgaard Glud have argued that these new constellations of surveillance should not simply be understood as “unfor- tunate side effects” of contemporary culture and technologies, but instead be recognized as an “integral and productive part of social life in the mixed Florian Zappe and Andrew S. Gross - 9783631798812 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/25/2021 08:51:25AM via free access 156 Hugh Davies space of the web and the city” bearing the potential to be subjectivity- building and playful (239). Shilton goes further to claim that social surveil- lance can be an empowering force—assuming of course that information is evenly distributed through informal communities “rather than [controlled by] governments or corporations” (131). Today, social surveillance has become normalized in the digital arena of social networking. Contemporary social surveillance technologies (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) are purposefully designed for users to con- tinually leave digital traces and investigate the traces left by others, a prac- tice conceptualized as participatory surveillance (Albrechtslund). Critical to the practice of participatory surveillance is the open sharing of personal information with full awareness that it will be surveyed by often unseen and unknown others. These recent developments in surveillance do not replace but augment traditional monitoring technologies, such as the camera, which remains the central apparatus in the development of modern surveillance. Artists were among the first to adopt and react to the radical potentialities of the camera, with the uncanny image-making device representing both an annihilation of their domination over visual representation, as well as a tool rich with creative potential. Through the early years of the 20th cen- tury, many artists experimented with the opportunities delivered by pho- tographic processes and practices.