About the Exhibition

Surveillance has become an inescapable part of daily life. Our phones record our every movement, call, and contact; cameras record our passage along the street. Collected data streams to fusion centers, and predictive policing targets specific communities for more intensive monitoring. Siri and Alexa listen in. Connected to the economy and mass surveillance, from the high-tech to the low-tech and the mundane everyday, how are artists looking back at, contesting, and revealing the systems that monitor our daily lives? Monitor: Surveillance, Data, and the New Panoptic explores the ways in which our lives are being influenced and determined by visible and invisible actions of “watching over”, allowing viewers to reflect on the prevalence of surveillance in contemporary contexts as well as its historical antecedents.

Exhibiting artists include:

• Christoper Gregory-Rivera
• Margaret Laurena Kemp + Abram Stern
• Yazan Khalili
• Kapwani Kiwanga
• Ann Messner
• Orphan Drift
• Trevor Paglen

Monitor: Surveillance, Data, and the New Panoptic is funded in part by a grant from the Maine Arts Commission, an independent state agency supported by the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional generous support for the exhibition is provided by Jeremy Moser and Laura Kittle. The exhibition is organized by Julie Poitras Santos, Director of Exhibitions, ICA at MCA&D, in conversation with Sophie Hamacher, Assistant Professor of Academic Studies at Maine College of Art & Design, and Brendan McQuade, Assistant Professor of Criminology at University of Southern Maine.

The exhibition will be accompanied by visiting artist talks, a panel discussion, and a film series organized by Sophie Hamacher. See event details below.

Monitor: Surveillance, Data, and the New Panoptic is part of Freedom & Captivity, a statewide, coalition-based public humanities initiative to explore and promote abolitionist visions and organizing in Maine during fall 2021.

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