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Paper short abstract

We walked and filmed the CCTV-cameras in public space in Brussels. We will reflect on our embodied practice of looking at cameras in public space and imagining how we are being looked at. The ephemerality of the embodied practice allowed us to see playfully, forging a different relation to security.

Paper long abstract

We, a filmmaker-researcher and an anthropologist, have been doing fieldwork between 2021-2024 in Brussels, Belgium. From our different disciplinary perspectives, arts and anthropology, we try to grasp the experience of security politics. While we each had our different fieldworks, we often met in public space to exchange and sometimes go for walks. In the framework of Kassem’s film, we decided to go for a walk and film the CCTV-cameras in public space. What would happen if we interacted with the security apparatus and decided to be seen? In this presentation, we will reflect upon our embodied practice of looking at cameras in public space and imagining how we are being looked at in return. What forms of noticing would occur if we willingly decided to enter the security frame? Throughout our walk, we noticed that our movement of walking from camera to camera created a trail, a different relation of looking at, and being looked by, these cameras: a triangulation between us, equipment, cameras and public space transformed our experience of looking: from hesitant and speculative to a poetic way towards an agitated and zoomed out looking. The ephemerality of the embodied practice allowed us to see playfully, forging a different relation to security, one where a film narrative was constructed/edited in the now through the trail, and that in the nature of the CCTV-accumulation of imagery (that would be erased if nothing occurs) would only be noticed, if we ever to be considered a threat, or surrounded by one.