Bill Brown, founding member of Surveillance Camera Players, a New York-based collective of cheeky performers and activists who protest the use of video surveillance cameras in public places, is in town this week as part of the Canadian Centre for Architecture's What You Can Do With the City exhibition. Since 1996, the situationist-inspired Players - ardent critics of the unchecked growth of surveillance society - have enacted plays like Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi and Orwell's 1984 directly in front of surveillance cameras. They also create maps pin-pointing the devices in cities and organize city walking tours to show the location of cameras and other surveillance devices. On Feb. 21, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., Brown will lead one of his infamous walking tours through downtown Montreal, called "Discovering the Unmonitored Underground City." Reserve a spot at 514-939-7026 and meet at the fountain in Complexe Desjardins, $10 per person (payment on arrival, exact change required). For more info, visit www.notbored.org/the-scp.html. For more on the CCA's What You Can Do With the City, visit www.cca-actions.org.
(Written by Meg Hewings and published 19 February 2009 by Hour.ca.)
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