Shijia Zhang
I am Watching
Starting in 2018, my first artwork’s topic was related to surveillance. Surveillance technology seems to be improving every minute, but for some civil libertarians, this development is like a runaway high-speed train. Whether people like it or not, accept this reality seems to be the only choice. Secrets are no longer secrets, websites track your interests and purchases, mobile phones and monitors give away your location.
Do we still have privacy in the real world? Perhaps privacy is becoming a human memory. The use of personal monitoring equipment is also surging, photographs of unsuspecting citizens are captured and stored in private databases. So this work simply expresses my point of view - the discomfort of being watched by multiple eyes.
My inspiration is come from Xu Bing’s directorial debut Dragonfly Eyes, everything is gleaned entirely from surveillance cameras and live streaming sites in China. To me, the content of the movie is not important. Because in real life, the world is turning into a giant studio, each of us is the protagonist, our face is captured more than 300 times a day by various cameras. I like how Xu Bing named his movie, because dragonflies have two large compound eyes, each with thousands of lenses, and three eyes with simple lenses. It implies the diversity of surveillance cameras.
