Syndicate: Berlin Wall 1989-1999

[Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck@v2.nl>]

Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 07:47:22 -0500
From: SCP <notbored@panix.com>


For immediate release
3 November 1999

To mark the 10th anniversary of the breaching of the Berlin Wall, the
Surveillance Camera Players (SCP) will perform in front of the surveillance
camera that guards a small portion of the Wall, displayed as a piece of
sculpture in the tiny "urban park" at 520 Madison Avenue, Manhattan (the
park is actually on 53rd Street between Madison and Fifth Avenues).

At noon, Wednesday 10 November 1999, the SCP will perform two plays: first
You Are Being Watched For Your Own Safety, which was recently performed for
the first time (and in Peekskill, NY); and second, a brand-new adaptation
of Wilhelm Reich's The Mass Psychology of Fascism.

Formed in NYC in November 1996, the SCP are unconditionally opposed to the
use of surveillance cameras. Like all cameras, the video or closed-circuit
television camera is a tool of social control, a tool that is used to
condition people into privileging images of life over life itself. But,
unlike the apparently neutral photographer's camera, the video or
closed-circuit television camera is explicitly a tool that helps
established authority to direct, supervise and control the behavior of
large numbers of people. Surveillance cameras violate our constitutionally
protected rights to privacy, anonymity and free assembly.

Composed of anarchists, the SCP fight against both the use of surveillance
cameras and the general fetishism of images. The group performs in places
in which the presence of surveillance cameras are particularly offensive.
The plays performed are written and adapted so that their meaning and
relevance are clear to all, not just to the cognoscenti. The SCP, despite
their hostility to the society of the capitalist spectacle, allow
themselves to be photographed, interviewed and written about by the media;
they also maintain a website at
http://www.panix.com/~notbored/the-scp.html. The group intends to explode
the myth that only those who are doing something wrong fear surveillance
cameras (i.e., that the only ones opposed to surveillance cameras are
people with something to hide).

Contact:
Art Toad, Director
notbored@panix.com


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