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INFO
Urban Surveillance Bureau
A Sequence of work in process
By Yelta Köm
Exhibition on view 02.02.22 – 09.02.22
Urban Surveillance Bureau is initiated by Yelta Köm and mimics bureaucratic gestures to offer dissident urban imaginaries through archiving, sharing and counter-mapping. It consisted of an assemblage of different surveillance tools, antennas, screens, and camouflage surfaces. The bureau performs as a mock-up of a governmental info point to ask how it is possible to hide within the system and what we should do to empower dissident movements.
The Bureau makes visible the infrastructures of digital extraction concealed within the topography of the city and reveals how corporations and governmental structures access peoples data. Throughout the transmediale vorspiel, the Bureau will show a sequence from its work in process, with drawings, speculations, videos and objects at TOP e.V. | Transdisciplinary Project Space. This presentation will provide the groundwork for the series of gatherings and panels during the exhibition period.
This work was partially developed during the Forecast Platform Mentorship Programme in 2020.
Installation Excutive : Elif Çak
Project Assistant : Serap Kaçmaz
With the support of Forecast Platform, Versus Art Project, A. Mehtap Köm, Özcan Köm
Special thanks Tuçe Erel, Başak Tüsüz, Leyla Ünsal, Mert Ünsal, Dilara Hadroviç, Mindaugas Gapševičius
www.urban-surveillance.com
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
I'm in a black box; I've got a life I've lived through a grain of dust. While floating here and there, my digital body sometimes makes me tired; I am about to give up my physical existence. Besides, who needs a body? Am I not what I "seem to be"?
—Amara Agiated, Advisee of Urban Surveillance Bureau
Welcome to the Urban Surveillance Bureau; our working hours are not fixed. We are everywhere and not; we work with archives and collect and produce new images and narratives. Our faces become anonymous; everything we miss shapes the city and our environment.
What kind of city do we live in today? Urban surveillance constantly stares at us and manifests itself in different situations. It could be sound like a daunted observation or a part of a conspiracy theory, but it is the situation. Today's profit-oriented surveillance systems categorize any human subject as a consumer within the framework of the attention economy in cities. The tools and algorithms that we carry in our pockets are getting to know us more and more each day.
Urban Surveillance Bureau is a mobile office, a workplace, where the research files, reports, records are presented alongside drawing(s) and quoted sentence(s). All the terms and conditions that we unknowingly accepted during the day are part of it.
This bureau was not set up for a futuristic scenario; it has a darkening cycle that turns into when you think about the future. The city is consumed and experienced as entertainment by those who can afford it, and space becomes the privileged instrument for capital to unfold, to happen through the social realm. In turn, we are becoming the "privileged instrument" of capital by using "smart" tools' and allowing data extraction. Smartphones and smart cities are new conquerors of the urban space, feeding capitalism through the hidden scripts in digital platforms' "Terms & Conditions".
"I agree to terms and conditions."
The applications that claim to offer a 'better' more 'comfortable' life are turning into priority units that change the city. The imaginary situations, which are created by the applications, are beneficial to the central administrations that are empowered in their backyards. Neoliberal urbanisation policies promote the free market and privatise the global and local doing and undoing of cities. The state governs the city through a managerial model and administers it as a corporation. The market becomes the most influential institution in promoting life quality from a financial perspective through the delusion of "the good life".
The present needs a new language to be built in. Is it possible to create a structure to collect its imaginaries? The service area of the bureau encompasses these, sometimes their surrender that we are not sure of, and sometimes they're a break that becomes more and more uncertain day by day.
This discussion that the bureau initiated is more important than what it says, it's not progress, it's a process. We paid the price of all narratives established for advancement. Everything is a project, everything is planned. USB is trying to open the door to a new opposition channel with its scattered organizational structure and companions.
These images are blurred, these images are familiar.
What is behind the image? Where is the viewer? Where is the space? Where is the camera? Where is the lens?
Every produced image is special and unique to that moment, and nowadays, all of them are financialised.
Even though the cities are created by power and capital, one can still find resistance points that are created by solidarity actions and practices. However, the question is whether we will live in cities that are increasingly isolated and withdrawn.
Is it not possible for our living spaces to change without social changes?
INTRO
We live in cities as commodities; cities are, therefore, contemporary tools of securitisation and surveillance systems. Understanding the city image as an observer requires an active role on behalf of the citizen, who perceives the world around them and has a creative part in developing the image of the city . Nowadays, however, citizens are not independent in their perceptions, with other actors working to change their behaviour by using technological and spatial tools. Knowing this, it is possible to see how governmental structures display similarities to tech companies in that they treat people not only as citizens, but also as individuals defined by numbers and digital representations.
You are looking at the plan of the exhibition. We are not showing all the materials we have, we are a mobile bureau and sometimes emerge when it is need it. Please follow the explanations as you were agreegin all the time terms and conditions.
Fateful Serendipity
The image next to the exhibition info text on the entrance shows an antenna from a mountain. Technological tools occupies all the nature. This is the future of territorial heritage. Our bureau took this picture in 2019, this is Fateful Serendipity.
Moodboard of the Bureau
We used to use this one in our office as a moodboard, sometimes we are collecting data from the other sources, taking pictures of the streets. We aim to empower the dissident movements, if you have any other example please get in touch with us.
Sleepless
What a blurry image right? This is when you look at the city from corporate companies eyes. We need to blur the cities to protect our environments from the unauthourized monetaziton. Through it, the perception model of the physical environment constantly changes and the physical environment's visual landscape is controlled, monitored, and digitally monetised, becoming a spatial entity acquired by states or protected through counter-strategies.
Welcome to Urban Surveillance Bureu, video
When you visit us, this video welcomes you. Please do not be afradi but to understand our motivation we need to mention about this issues. Neoliberal urbanism surrounded us, sometimes it is like trap and competition is everywhere, even in your daily life. USB would like to explore different modes of living.
Lines from Bureau
There is no sound in this exhibition, but the narrative is here. You can read the lines, they are pieces from our working environment, sometimes a reminder sometimes a piece of a poem and sometimes just a silence outcry.
Earth
We believe that materials are important for our investigations. Becaus our relationship with nature, not only through recreational activities and technological developments, are bonded very strongly. Elements became the most prominent components of nature; this started so early. There were laying pipes in ancient cities made by lead, which we are using lead for batteries nowadays. This poured lead is maybe beginning of everything who knows.
Pile
Unfortunately you cannot browse this materials, they are historical components of the bureau. It is a stack of archive still waiting for to get in order and archived. Drawings, images are from different times.
This video consisted of a collage of raw footage from our archive. You can see the faces and operations of the bureau in fragments.