Group Performance: Unit 7: Surveillance Culture

The performing group told the rest of the class to sit around the perimeter of the room.  There middle of the room was empty and the performers stood there.  The performers told the class that no one could speak, no one could make any facial expressions, etc..  At first, the performers just stared at people and if they made any kind of emotional facial expression or said anything, they were "punished" with a sticky note attached to them.  Then there was a game of "telephone" in which the performers initiated the phrase and the last person in each of three groups had to repeat the initial phrase.  The last group did change the phrase, and two people were "punished."

Another part of the performance was that the previous class, the members of the performing group had covertly surveilled their class members and noted some standout behaviors, like Wafa and Dekyi eating chips in the back of class, another student going to Las Vegas, another student picking up a flyer in Sproul Hall, etc. - eavesdropping on people's conversations and noticing their behavior.  During the performance, the performing group called out individuals for specific behaviors and "sentenced" them to various punishments. 

Then another group member showed a video of some government agency "recording" the Internet, basically violating the privacy of millions of Americans.  And she discussed her own incident with a government agency because she frequently called Israel to talk to family members.

Wafa: I remember Marie looking at me once [during the class when she was surveilling me] and I caught her and waved to her.  This performance got me thinking about how people watch you sometimes - you don't know that you are being watched, but you are.  It's weird and scary.

Evan: It's kind of creepy, right?  Even if you know you're being watched, how would you watch then?

Naomi [who changed the telephone message]: Someone ratted me out.  The message was about punishing us for something that I had on - "people will get punished who have closed-toe shoes" or something, so I changed it to something else.  I felt very vulnerable after that.

Evan: I felt powerful, b/c I got to punish people.  I was in the guard tower in the panopticon.

Wafa: It was a shocking performance.  I was like, What, you watched me do that?  When you're walking on campus and someone texts you and says I saw you walking to some place, and you think, that's so weird.

Gail: This performance was all about power.  It really hierarchized the class and made people feel almost like prisoners.  It was almost like the Stanford Prison Experiment.  It was a very instructive experience in that some people were really uncomfortable and squirming under the gaze of the "guards," and other people were ready to rebel (though notably, except for Naomi, no one outright defied the instructions of the guards).  Many people said afterwards they were eager to please the guards, to do whatever they thought would make them successful, i.e., not punished.  Very creative - but also sort of frightening!