In January 2001, Channel 4 in the United Kingdom broadcast an episode of Disinfo Nation that included a short segment on the Surveillance Camera Players (SCP). This was the second time in a year that the SCP have appeared on Channel 4. (The first time was in May 2000, when Spy TV ran its collection of pre-chewed sound bites.) Produced by the same company that owns and operates Disinfo.com, which has in the past spoken very highly of the SCP, Disinfo Nation typically focuses on "underground" culture. In the episode in which the SCP appears, the focus is on underground artists who deal with religious themes in a controversial fashion. Most of the half-hour episode is devoted to two American artists, Norbert Kox and Frank Bruno, who produce "sacrilegious" paintings about Jesus, Mary and other figures dear to the Catholic Church. The SCP are included because the only play that the group performed for Disinfo Nation's cameras -- God's Eyes Here on Earth -- explicitly concerns religious themes and was performed in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral. (The performance that Disinfo Nation taped was in fact the play's debut.)
Though there are a couple of weak moments -- especially the 30-second-long introduction, which takes far too long to set up the idea that each of the SCP's boards includes a simple image and a simple phrase, and thus can be easily understood, even by people who do not speak English -- Disinfo Nation's four-minute-long segment on the SCP is quite good. There is truly excellent documentation of God's Eyes Here on Earth, which hasn't been seen on TV very often. (As a matter of fact, it has only been on TV once before, unlike SCP Headline News and 1984, which have been shown almost too many times.) There are excellent interviews with Bill Brown, who describes the SCP's mission, gives a short history of the group, and distinguishes its style of activism from anarchism and traditional leftism.
Contact the Surveillance Camera Players
By e-mail SCP@notbored.org
By snail mail: SCP c/o NOT BORED! POB 1115, Stuyvesant Station, New York City 10009-9998
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