CCTVenus of the Rags
Camera by Jonas Mueller-Ahlheim
A CCTV screen dance quoting Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Venus of the Rags, where a contemporary Venus becomes the object of our surveillance, traversing the screen of a 16 channel security monitor on a messy shelf in the back of a resale shop.
She takes control of this objectification as she engages with the sixteen security cameras, acknowledging that she is being watched. Her performance is routine, almost as though she is a steward of the surveilling system, waking each camera up with her eye contact and a spin.
The viewer must learn how to watch the screen, how to keep up with her movement between cameras and frames, a kind of spatial-screenic logic emerges and an attentive viewer may be able to predict which camera view she will arrive in next. Tracking her movement is complicated by the motion from other employees at work in the shop, similarly repetitive motions, subject to scrutiny. In viewing this video, the eyes are asked to hunt.