Simone Browne

“Art on Surveillance” attends to the analytical work and interventions made by artists and creative technologists whose works grapple with, and also undo, the surveillance of Black life—from predictive policing, home security and workplace monitoring, to the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program and artificial intelligence. Each chapter explores some aspects of the materials that the artists in this study work with, for example, plexiglass, glitter, synthetic hair, electronic waste, asphalt, and generative AI chatbots. Through archival research, interviews, and interdisciplinary analytical work, this book project investigates the ways that Black artists employ strategies of invention, disruption, refusal and care when it comes to troubling surveillance and its methodologies. Drawing on the insights made by theorists of visual culture, as well as performance studies, and humanities scholarship, this book project contributes to the emerging body of literature that studies surveillance, privacy, and security, and how these technologies of capture are critiqued through contemporary art. As such, this book project distills the possibilities of creative innovation and of imagining life beyond the surveillance state.