Equality and erasure: Responses to subject negation in the art of Jill Magid

Abstract

This chapter engages with contemporary surveillance as it is conceived of in art and literature, responding to the contemporary media culture of ubiquitous watching. Artistic discourse and its concern with this facet of modern life is examined via a series of art works. The chapter aims to present a discussion of several of the early-career performance pieces and accompanying short writings of American multimedia artist Jill Magid. By situating Magid’s work within a theoretical frame which synthesises two crucial concepts from technocultural theory—Kevin D. Haggerty and Richard V. Ericson’s surveillant assemblage and Donna Haraway’s cyborg— this chapter proposes an alternative way of looking at the construction of a dividual self within surveillant spaces, one which rejects the dialectical limitations imposed upon our identities in the post-Orwellian, post-Foucauldian era of surveillance. In this way, the chapter opens a discussion about the practices of art as a subsystem of culture, which engages with the notions of selves and surveillance.