Mass Observation (UK) 1937-1960's The Archive results from the work of the social research organisation, Mass Observation, founded in 1937 by three young men, who aimed to create an 'anthropology of ourselves'. They recruited a team of observers and a panel of volunteer writers to study the everyday lives of ordinary people in Britain. This original work continued until the early 1950s, and was revived in 1981, with newer material being collected continuously ever since then.
Prison Images Harun Farocki, 2000 A film composed of images from prisons, quotes from fiction films and documentaries as well as footage from surveillance cameras. A look at the new control technologies, at personal identification devices, electronic ankle bracelets, electronic tracking devices. The cinema has always been attracted to prisons. Today's prisons are full of video surveillance cameras. These images are unedited and monotonous; as neither time nor space is compressed, they are particularly well-suited to conveying the state of inactivity into which prisoners are placed as a punitive measure.
Resources
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Necropolítica Achille Mbembe 2011, Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Ed. Melusina
Tapologo Gabriela & Sally Gutiérrez, 88 min., 2008, In Freedom Park, a squatter settlement in South Africa, a group of HIV-infected former sex-workers created a network called Tapologo. They learn to be Home Based Carers for their community, transforming degradation into solidarity and squalor into hope. Catholic bishop Kevin Dowling participates in Tapologo, and raises doubts on the official doctrine of the Catholic Church regarding AIDS and sexuality in the African context.
Bureau d’Études. , The Paris-based artists Léonore Bonaccini and Xavier Fourt form the artist-duo Bureau d´études. Working at the intersection between art, theory and militant research, in recent years they have been producing detailed cartographies of contemporary political, social and economic systems, presented in the form of large-sized murals that visualize the mutual involvements and dependencies within global power structures, revealing what normally remains invisible and contextualising apparently separate elements within a bigger whole.
Videography by /de Marina Gržinić & Aina Šmid , The video-essay format as a medium for political intervention allows these artists to reflect on how global capitalism shapes both the processes of cultural and socio-political transformation in Eastern Europe and their representation.
