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Reviewed by:
  • CTRL[SPACE], Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother
  • Stefaan Van Ryssen
Ctrl[Space], Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother edited by Thomas Y. Levin, Ursula Frohne and Peter Weibel. ZKM, Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany, and MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, U.S.A., 2002. 655 pp., illus. Trade, ISBN: 0-262-62165-7.

Beware! Someone is watching you while you are reading this review.

At times, it is difficult for this humble reviewer to avoid the kind of purple prose that usually fills the back covers of bestsellers, but in this case I am afraid I have to use them myself. Phrases like "truly magnificent" or "must read" generally put me on guard, and most of the time I wearily put a book back on the shelf or table when I see the superlatives trip over each other. Now let the reader be warned: Ctrl[Space] shall not be put back on the shelf! I will not allow you to do so! Because it is a truly magnificent book! And you must read it.

Ctrl[Space] is at once a catalog and a reader. It accompanied an exhibition (2001-2002) at the Center for Art and Media at Karlsruhe, Germany, on the theme of surveillance, the ubiquitous use of technologies for overlooking and watching, controlling and monitoring in modern society. The work of no less than 70 artists or artist groups was brought together under eight sub-themes and, in the book, each of these themes is introduced or accompanied by three to five key essays by artists, philosophers, curators or historians. I would exceed the space allotted to this review if I were to name all the artists and contributors, so, at the risk of being accused of subjectivity, I have selected one article and one artist from each sub-theme. For a full list, see <http://ctrlspace.zkm.de/e/>.

"Phenomenologies of Surveillance" has a clever and very readable essay by Christial Katti entitled "Systematically Observing Surveillance: Paradoxes of Observation according to Niklas Luhmann's Systems Theory." The title says it all, and it is a must read because it opens the sometimes difficult theoretical architecture of Luhmann's sociology to a broader readership. My favorite artwork in this section is Michael Klier's The Giant, an 82-minute video work from 1982-1983 compiled from thousands of images from public and private surveillance systems.

Read Harun Farocki's essay "Controlling Observation," under the "Surveillance and Punishment" theme, dealing with control in penitentiary establishments, and next look at Rem Koolhaas' post-anti-Benthamian reconstruction of a Panopticon prison in Arnhem, The Netherlands.

Historian Robert Darnton wrote a sad and hilarious essay, "The Stasi Files," about the kilometers of documents collected by the political secret service of the now-defunct German Democratic Republic. And read Duncan Campbell's essay on Echelon, too, both included in the "Politics of Observation" section.

Editor Ursula Frohne contributed to the "Surveillant Pleasures" theme with "Screen Tests: Media Narcissism, Theatricality, and the Internal Observer." You will never want to be on television again. Pierre Huyghe's remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window is the absolute must-see in this section. (And you will look differently at the original as well.)

Under "Controlled Space," the editors chose a text by Gilles Deleuze: "Postscript on Control Societies." For once a clear, readable and straightforward piece by the godfather of postmodern media theory and a wildly disturbing source of reflection for anyone working in an organization, whether it be a university, a company or the army. The subversive New York Civil Liberties Union's camera project nicely illustrates this topic.

Theme 6 is "Tracking Systems." McKenzie Wark delights and gives one a lot to think about when using the old GPS system in one's car in his essay "To the Vector the Spoils." His central idea is that "surveillance is only one element of an integrated form of power, vectoral power. Its other elements are the capacity to receive and transmit information, the capacity to archive and analyze information and the capacity to move resources to and from given destinations in a timely and accurate fashion." It...

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