Trabalhos / Artworks

Friluftskino: Experiments in Open Air Surveillance Cinema
Car Wash screening

2007
by Michelle Teran

A documentation on a series of urban interventions throughout the city of Oslo. The city provides the source and the projection surface for an open-air urban cinema. Using a powerful video beamer and video scanner, live surveillance intercepted from wireless CCTV cameras is captured and then rebroadcasted upon the city walls. The live transmission ideally lasts as long as a feature length film and also takes it’s title from a cinematic source, according to the scene created by the surveillance camera.

The extended time of the intervention is intended to allow one to contemplate the live image which, contrary to being titillating and action-filled, is actually empty and still, a place of non-action. They are spaces to be filled, through subtle shifts that take place within the observed scene, or through the viewer’s own physical or imagined intervention.

Spatial boundary conventions of private and public, inside and outside are challenged by the reality of the radio transmission which moves beyond walls and onto the street. By accessing these images one is also offered a view into how the public depicts and represents itself through surveillance while also bringing questions of permission of access and ownership of these transmissions.

Bio:
Born in Canada, Michelle Teran explores the interaction between media and social networks in urban environments. She develops performances, with the audience often participating via the staging of urban interventions such as guided tours, walks and open-air projections, participatory installations and happenings. She is the winner of the Transmediale Award and has received numerous other grants and awards for her work including the Prix Ars Electronica honorary mention (2005, 2010) and the  Vida 8.0 Art & Artificial Life International Competition (Madrid).  Starting in  October, 2010  she will  begin a three year research fellowship at the National Academy of Art in Bergen (KHIB). She currently lives and works in Berlin.