“Surface Tension” by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: An Expanded Theater Work

“Surface Tension” attributed to Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is a projection work in which an eye follows a viewer around the room. While simplistic, this piece was politically relevant when it was first shown. Besides the immediate political comment, the piece continues to be pertinent in a variety of contexts today. I struggled when choosing this piece to work with because it straddles the line between “theater” and “installation,” but went ahead with it because of how it can be viewed in a theatrical context, or rather how applicable it’s statement is to many theories about  expanded theater.

The first exhibition at which “Surface Tension” was shown was in Madrid in 1992. At this time the  Gulf War (or the First Iraq War) was still very fresh in people’s minds, as was the weapons technology used. The guided bomb was not quite a new idea, but an idea that revolutionized how the war was fought. Laser guided bombs established the United State’s supremacy in the airspace around Iraq and Kuwait and allowed the United States to destroy or at least hinder command centers, supply lines, bunkers, tanks and troops at will, all while sustaining surprisingly few casualties. The impersonal nature of this destructive interaction was shocking for many.

In 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed which allowed the government access to personal information of United States citizens. Perhaps this was even more shocking because surveillance technology was now being used directly on citizens.

“Surface Tension” commented on this digital awareness in a very straightforward way. The capacity for governments to watch us (and thus to oppress us) was becoming increasingly real; the technology increasingly more ubiquitous. Hearkening back to George Orwell’s 1984, the Iraq War and the USA Patriot Act were steps towards a potentially oppressively surveillant government. In Orwell’s book, citizens are kept under constant surveillance and harshly punished for any crime, even crime that have not been fully articulated— thought crimes. The eye which follows the viewer around the room evokes the same feelings as the characters in  Orwell’s work of fiction may have felt. Even now, amidst new technologies in the capitalist realm, we must answer that question. We are constantly being bombarded with targeted advertisements and our information is being bought and sold as a commodity. Where can we draw the line between surveillance and oppression?

Having provided a sufficient context for the piece, I will now discuss the work with respect to George Simmel’s ideas in “The Metropolis and Mental Life.”  Simmel argues that the goal of urban life, or in today’s society of digital interactions and constant media,  is to retain some individuality. In certain cases that may be to specialize in a field and thus develop a codependency on others in your community. He says of this goal, “the deepest problems of modern life flow from the attempt of the individual to maintain the independence and individuality of his existence against the sovereign powers of society, against the weight of the historical heritage and the external culture and technique of life.” In Simmel’s work there is a great amount of contrast between the individual and the collective.

Today many of us try to exaggerate our personal element, to develop an identity. But what is our identity to others, or to the scrutinizing eye of our society or our government. Even in DeBord’s work which we examined in discussions, we are shaped by other’s observations of us. In a way, we become what they see. Lozano-Hemmer’s work, the human eye creates a presence, there is a vague assumption of consciousness and we see ourselves in relation to the eye. The eye which follows us around, sees us. We then relate to how the eye must perceive us. There is a lot of footage of viewers trying to walk out of sight of the eye, to crouch or to walk to the furthest peripheral vision to avoid the gaze— to avoid the expectation of what they would be. Avoiding scrutiny or detection seems to be a basic reaction to the piece.

In relation to DeBord, this piece is perhaps even more relevant. DeBord discusses his theory of the “spectacle” which is not a system of images but a social relationship mediated by images. If anything this work perfectly exemplifies this notion. The eye is an image that mediates the social relationship between the viewer and the omnipresent surveillance. It is an image that captures this idea and displayed it simply and eloquently and yet the metaphor could be almost endlessly expanded. In a world where our interactions are increasingly more visual, more representative we recognize that these images are not real— the relationships mediated by them are. This work also fits into DeBord’s instruction for escaping this pre-defined institutionalized identity of who we should be. We develop identities based on how society sees us, but according to DeBord, we can escape this in several ways. One of which is to actively break rules, to create some kind of unmediated experience. The experience the viewer has in observing this work is mediated but very self-aware. When the viewer avoids the gaze of the eye, the viewer metaphorically transcends his imposed identity.

Finally, to examine this piece with Jacques Rancière’s “The Emancipated Spectator” in mind, we can really see how the work can be viewed as an extension of theater and its components of actors and viewers, but also as a comment on the paradigm of actors and viewers.

Rancière, in his writing, rejects the notion of an enlightened master teaching a student. Instead he refers to an “ignorant schoolmaster” who does not present information in hopes of relaying it to a student but rather creates an experience or an idea which can be approached by both the teacher and the student. Because the process of transmitting information is lossy, or imperfect, the student would be learning a distorted lesson. With the “ignorant schoolmaster” process, there is room for learning in a broader sense of the word. “Surface Tension” is an interesting visualization of this process as the installation— the screen and projection itself— is informing the viewer of an idea, or rather presenting it. The artist is the ignorant schoolteacher and the viewer is the student. Although we use this template for understanding, the interaction between the work and the viewer is where the real learning experience takes place. The knowledge could not be transmitted directly from the artist to the viewer, but rather it is inherent in the interaction. Both the artist and the viewer learn from the encounter.

This project was also particularly relevant because it blurs the lines between the “audience” and the “performer.” It raises questions about who is watching who, and who the actor is. In Rancière’s work, the theater is in desperate need of reform because the notion of a passive audience is inherently bad. According to Rancière, one solution is to acknowledge that the spectator is also an actor in their own respective story as the actors are spectator in their own stories. This blurring the lines between passivity and agency, audience and spectator is a way of resolving the problem of a passive audience.

“Surface Tension” is particularly adept at this goal because the connotation of the eye is that there is a digital presence that permeates our lives that is constantly watching us. The government and various commercial enterprises monitor our existence. In this way we are the performers. If we switch perspectives though, and think about the work on a smaller, simpler scale, the performer is the artwork and the audience is the viewer that the eye follows. In both scenarios, this perfect metaphor of passive spectator breaks down. In the later, the viewer who is considered the audience is moving around in attempts to engage the eye, or the performer, in the former context, the watchful eye is interacting directly with the viewer. Or instead, the government is hardly a passive force in our lives, which is why the notion their observing of the citizens can be so horrifying. In “Surface Tension” the distance between the performer and the spectator is not merely mediated but confused and swapped. There can be no strict line that divides them.

“Surface Tension” may be an installation piece, but the content of it makes it very relevant as a comment on the relationship between a performer and an audience and in this way can be a very compelling expanded theater piece. By allowing such an unmediated experience take place between the viewer and the watchful eye in the installation, the experience is educational for all parties involved and in fact may even provide a way of escaping structurally defined systems as described by DeBord. It fosters a self awareness of watchfulness and the passivity of spectatorship that would not be otherwise possible in a direct transmission of information. This piece also speaks on the individual and collective in the way that it hearkens back to Orwellian ideas of the elite observers and enforcers of laws, and the personal, individual citizen.