At Art League Houston, art that watches you back
“Speak of the Devil”
The artist: Edward Kelley
Where: Art League Houston, through Saturday
Why: They hang like a mess of spiders in the corners, with blinking eyes and gazes that follow visitors around the gallery. Welcome to the age of surveillance as amusement. Would George Orwell have found this funny?
About a third of the 250 CCTV cameras Kelley has installed in the front gallery of Art League Houston are motion-activated, whirring ever so quietly as they adjust their roving eyes this way and that, like wary animals in broad daylight.
You have to look closely and listen to realize anything is happening, but the working cameras capture images that feed into a printer in the middle of the room. Visitors can keep printed images, post them on a bulletin board or shred them.
Most of the prints on the bulletin board looked almost abstract the day I visited, shot from weird angles that captured only bits of bodies, slightly out of focus. I couldn’t discern anyone I knew. There was a nice little mountain of confetti under the shredding table.
I couldn’t get the printer to work, which made me wonder if the next visitors would discover pictures of me in the machine. It was almost closing time, and I was alone. Was I leaving behind unflattering pictures of myself crouching down to take photos? And assuming I did, what would become of the evidence?
My best guess: Lacking a garbage can, whoever found my picture (if there was one), might tack it on the bulletin board or run it through the shredder for fun, just to watch the action. But, really, they’d be anxious to see the pictures of themselves.
This is the thing about our shareeverything age: Narcissism is far more powerful, apparently, than paranoia.
Weirdly enough, as I was writing this, I heard a buzzing sound outside our house that sounded like the neighbor’s Weed Eater. It was a drone, powered by a guy in a truck with a flashing yellow light. It looked like the appraisal district — even in our rural county — was preparing a response for our upcoming propertytax protest hearing.
What can one do but step outside and wave?