CTRL [SPACE] is an impressive book, made up of roughly
100 chapters, 600 pages and almost a thousand pictures. Each of the essays and
projects that are contained in the book engage with specific aspects of
surveillance technologies and practices. The book arose out of an exhibition at
the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, and in many ways it
reads like an exhibition catalog. But the book’s value extends well beyond its
relationship to a specific art exhibition. The book is also an impressive
exhibition in its own right.

Building on the conceptual space created
by Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, but evoking a wide range of other
artistic and theoretical sources, the book is an encyclopedia of ways of
thinking through surveillance systems. Andy Warhol, Gilles Deleuze and a large
collection of people with more obscure names are all called up to speak.
Graphics designers, movie directors, and academics are all given a place in the
book. The subtitle, while evocative, is misleading. The book has nothing to do
with the "rhetorics" of anything. Also, while Bentham is discussed in
one chapter and invoked from time to time throughout, the book actually begins
with an essay on late Medieval images of God’s eye as an image of surveillance.
Finally, not only are images of Big Brother (and any concern for Orwell’s
writings) virtually absent in the book, most of the chapters are far too
focused on specific examples to really offer a large-scale account of the
surveillant society.

The key strength of the book is the sheer
number of its examples. The effect of all these perspectives itself turns into
a panoptic presentation, as if the book is intended to say: here is all that
can be typically said about the topic of panopticism. Certainly, it is
difficult to imagine a perspective that was left out of the book. All of the
typical intellectual concerns are there: surveillance, punishment, tracking
systems, architecture, video cameras, and the connection between pleasure and
surveillance. The typical conclusion is also provided: after seven chapters of
surveillance as control, the book concludes with a discussion of surveillance
and subversion.

However, while the book ends with a
discussion of subversion, the overall goal of the book, if there is one, is not
obvious. Beyond a weak classification system that is used to organize the
chapters, there is no grand theoretical clarity in the book, and the reasons
why some articles and projects are included while other ones are not are left
unreported. Of course, some kind of clarity can also emerge from the structure
of the presentation itself. However, such an approach limits the overall impact
of the book and the overall sense of diversity overpowers any sense of purpose
that the book may have. The book ends up being a menagerie —a very impressive
menagerie —but a menagerie that still lacks a coherent sense of the whole. The
book is panoptic (offering varieties of perspectives), but lacks the clarity
that makes such a panoptic arrangement effective or, taken as a whole,
interesting.

There is a lot that is valuable and
useful in CTRL [SPACE]. As a reference book on the contemporary
intersection between technology, surveillance, art and politics, CTRL
[SPACE] provides the reader much to think about. And to someone teaching a
class, there would be plenty of articles that would be appropriate to photocopy
and hand out to students. But as a whole the book is overwhelmed by the number
and variety of examples that it includes. Most readers will simply flip through
the book, jumping from page to page, trying to find something to fix their
gaze. Maybe some of the chapters will be read, but probably most will not.

© 2003 Brian Richardson

Brian Richardson recently completed his
Political Science dissertation at the University of Hawaii, on the voyages of
Captain Cook and 19th century understandings of empire. He is now researching
the morality of reading in a digitizing world, focusing in particular on key
moral arguments from the history of western philosophy.

Categories: Philosophical