SURVEILLANCE – outsmarting the algorithm or leaving the grid?

2018: Cameras are everywhere. In each mobile device, also in lampposts, vehicles, lobbys, hallways, satellites, lenses watch us, follow our movements, perceive our features, and the focus broadens.
2020? Cameras are ubiquitous. In every mobile device – the watch, the glasses, the phone, the pad – also in bedposts, seats, walls, pillars, pillows, lenses recognize every step we make, anticipating my next decisions, so it is time to get invisible.
Currently living in Singapore, I feel like having become transparent, from the moment the fully automated border control opens the gate. Everytime I order my coffee, I wonder again why the barista asks for my wishes, for she should already know. The public transport system tracks my journeys, the telephone company my calls and my internet requests, my loyalty cards, my online shopping and my Uber habits leave even more dots to connect, from which to draw a picture of me. And my instagrams, my tweets, all the data I collect for the purpose of self-tracking and auto-quantification flesh out this image of me I never get to see.
To tackle this dilemma that the future, which was promised to me in the canon of the Western cinematic mythology, looks and feels exactly like many of those Science-Fiction-movies rolled into one, like »Star Wars« and »Blade Runner«, like »Star Trek« and »Alien«, like »2001« and »Matrix« simultaneously, I approach my paper like handling a double-edged lightsaber: exploring strategies to outsmart the algorithms, to bug the system from outside and, at the same time, investigating into different modes of existence, withdrawing from the world of electricity and its manifold constraints. When secretaries of the interior speak the same language as the Borg, something feels wrong: “Resistance is futile” and “there is no alternative“ sound not only similar, both are a diminution of basic human rights.
My inquiry will address artistic perspectives and procedures to handle the upcoming total control of the surveillance state, but concurrently the option, to leave the grid, to become a media artist without a palette, without any current.
The meshes in the network are drawn nearer and tighter, ready to strangle everyone.