individual elelctric was invited to Mexico City by organizers of the Austrian residency project, Zona Azul in the autumn of 1995. While there, the artists spied on their neighbors across the street. R U a Spy explores the surveillance of everyday life; what you wish you could see and what you cannot be bothered to look at. The installation for this sub-urban project took place in the Zona Azul space, where the picture window was covered with a sheet of black plastic. Three small holes were cut into the plastic, supplemented by binoculars, giving one a choice: to look for "real" events through a limited aperture; or to watch captured events on the screen. The computer became a mediated window on the activities across the street through recorded video sequences of TV watchers, bathers, and neighbors getting dressed - often clearly suspicious that they are being watched. When R U a Spy was shown at 450 Broadway Gallery in NY in November 1995, the gallery wall was covered with a large, tiled laser print of the picture window in Mexico City, suggesting that the "virtual" aspect of digital technology includes print. This backdrop was also part of the R U a Spy CD-ROM installation at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo in September 1996.
s i s m o i n d i v i d u a l
01:23:99