M+M | Antoni Muntadas: The Construction of Fear

Interlocutor: Mary Anne Staniszewski, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Wooden fences, barbed wire, bars, walls, cameras, alarms, closed circuit TV, radars, dogs, security guards, electronic systems … are some of the devices which act within new private and public spaces supposedly for their security, surveillance and protection. Security and Surveillance is one of the fastest-growing industries and, in the end, is a subsidiary of the military industry. On a par with the design of jails, it is at the top of the list of major development projects in the construction industry. The configuration of cities has been defined and developed with urbanisation projects that expand the centre and create peripheries. At the same time, these peripheries create paradoxes between the public and the private, between the richest and the poorest. Suburb, a word from Latin origins and an Anglo-Saxon concept, is translated in a differential way depending on the context. It poses security as a reality and paranoia, and transforms gated communities into new bastions where the security and surveillance industry encounters an appropriate terrain for its development.

Access to the following video works has been kindly provided by the artist, Antoni Muntadas, for advance viewing:

__ On Translation: Fear / Miedo (https://vimeo.com/42121149) [password: fear]
__ On Translation: Miedo / Jauf ( https://vimeo.com/42118154)[password: jauf]