There are always more streets, plazas and buildings being watched by video. This means more security and surveillance as well as something else: more security guards who spend long boring hours in front of their monitors. At least in New York there are exciting things to watch: the Surveillance Camera Players, a group of action-artists that presents a varied program for the cameras. Active for the last three years, the group only performs in front of City cameras. Because films of the performances are now on-line, it isn't just security guards who can watch such pearls of theater as "Waiting for Godot in the Subway Station." The groups uses these plays to protest against the increasing surveillance of public life. Whether an over-worked security guard can recognize the antics of a few actors with name-tags as social criticism remains to be seen. But the actors can tell all their friends that they appeared on (police) television.
[Originally published 26 November 1999 by the AME netNewsletter and re-posted by Cool Web and Unipress]
[Translated from the German by Bill Not Bored June 2000.]
Contact the Surveillance Camera Players
By e-mail e-mail:notbored@NOSPAMoptonline.net
By snail mail: SCP c/o NOT BORED! POB 1115, Stuyvesant Station, New York City 10009-9998
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