A street artist known as the “Spanish Banksy” installed 150 cameras on the side of a building in Madrid to start a conversation about the surveillance state. Zach Sokol praises Cameras as “less obnoxious than any street art by Banksy”:
Yes, this public art could be called “obvious” as well, but the choice to put the cameras on the plain wall of a plain building on a side street makes this work more interesting than when Banksy put a truck full of “screaming” stuffed farm animals in the Meatpacking District. It’s melodramatic and trite to put the USDA Organic x Build-A-Bear work in the area of Manhattan that includes both the literal meat packers and the luxury brands and upper echelon of material and consumer culture. The installation was one huge wink that ended in an even bigger sigh. The smoke and mirrors spectacle was enthralling for all of five minutes–a bottle rocket, disguised a 4th of July fireworks extravaganza.
SpY, on the other hand, picked a spot where no one might notice his work. It’d be one thing if he put the cameras in Madrid’s Plaza Mayor, or another place with heavy foot traffic, but this tucked-away side street adds more layers to his work: Who exactly would be watched on this side street? Do places and urban spaces suddenly become “important” if they are being watched? Could the information gathered by the NSA and privacy-invading groups actually be useless and nothing to sweat over? Maybe our tracked phone calls and emails are about as relevant as a dusty side street in a slow-paced city. Cameras also complements other manipulations of security cameras, including the Insecurity Camera built at the School for Poetic Computation.
The Dish 