In 2017, a pair of grad school friends began Cam Hunters, a movement designed to shed light on surveillance, particularly in Airbnbs.
Now, the researchers are exploring how things like joy, fun and creativity can be used as tools to challenge systems of power, particularly surveillance, through their mobile lab, an RV fit with spy gear.
The RV features things like audio amplifiers, facial vacuums, spy-themed toys, voice changers, and the camera-mounted Meta Ray Bans — all designed to explore surveillance creatively, not just critique it.
Currently, they are going across Canada to many artist-run centres, having already made stops in Vancouver and Calgary.
Each stop features a four-hour workshop designed to help participants create artwork, play with toys, play with surveillance technologies and create stuff that speaks to the surveillance that they’ve felt, or witnessed, and use it in a different context.
Julia Chan and Stéfy McKnight are researchers at the University of Calgary and Carleton University, respectively.
Chan, the co-principal investigator of the project, said that the RV was funded through the New Frontiers in Research Fund, a project that funds things that are high-risk, high-reward.
What that means is projects that have the potential to fail, but then also have the potential to generate really exciting new knowledge,” she said.
The pair wanted to build a space that felt creative and safe. The plan for the workshops and the RV came directly from their imaginations.
McKnight said that being surveillance researchers, they are interested in how pleasure can act as a form of resisting surveillance, particularly surveillance that is disproportionately targeting equity-deserving, marginalized communities.
McKnight said that the history in surveillance stems from violence, targeting, coercion and forced displacement. They said that the workshops are very cognizant of surveillance’s history.
“Our participants so far have been really interested in their own relationship to surveillance, so some of them who are queer may feel as though that under the Trump (presidency), they are more likely to be stopped at the border, less likely to travel and have fun,” McKnight said.
“I give an example as someone who’s non-binary, that I love Vegas. Now I’m not going to Vegas, which is a pleasurable thing for me, but because of surveillance, that pleasure has been impacted.”
Throughout the early stages, McKnight said that many participants view their attachment to their phones and social media as day-to-day forms of surveillance through things like filters and tracking.
“We’ve been challenging them to think about surveillance that is not only operational through technology, but also from very early stages, if not the beginning, conception of colonialism and how surveillance manifests beyond technology,” they said.
Researchers say safe environment is key
McKnight said that many participants don’t know Cam Hunters until they introduce themselves and are surprised at the level at which they are being surveilled, something the researchers have found interesting.
“We spent a lot of time in surveillance studies talking about surveillance in a very grandiose kind of way, that we’re all being watched, and that we should all be concerned. But obviously people all have different backgrounds, we all have different identities, and sometimes those forms of surveillance are more difficult for communities than others,” McKnight said.
“I didn’t actually think about the fact that maybe Indigenous peoples are policed as much, or perhaps the history of the RCMP was created particularly for the displacement and policing of Indigenous folks here, and that’s been really rewarding to hear people think about surveillance beyond perhaps just the stuff that’s happening on their phones.”
Chan said that building an inclusive and safe space is needed for the project.
“Our project prioritizes equity deserving artists and studies have shown that the people most targeted by surveillance are people from racialized communities, from queer communities, disabled communities, anyone who doesn’t necessarily fit into the normative mold,” she said.
Chan said that the first two workshops were met with positive feedback, something that has been rewarding for the pair.
“We’ve had artists using the technologies in really creative ways. In general, the feedback we’ve been getting just from the workshops themselves is that we’ve created this kind of very safe, playful and explorative space that allows the artists to kind of work in creative ways,” she said.
