LOITERING THEATRE

CAROLINE CAMPBELL (IE) & NINA MCGOWAN (IE)

EXHIBIT

FRI 22.06.12 - SAT 08.09.12

Loitering Theatre uses customised helicopters (the AR.Drone) to fly beyond the normal street view to access and film previously inaccessible and unseen views of the city. The outcomes of these flights will be used to create a short film, which will be presented as part of the exhibition, along with the drones, maps and images of key sites.

Some of the most prevalent alternative vantage points on our streets are security cameras, police helicopters and traffic cameras monitoring systems, which are controlled by our authorities and associated organisations. However these different and unusual viewing points are rarely accessible to the individual citizen or in our control.

Loitering Theatre focuses on the democratisation of surveillance that drone flights afford. It instigates a simple but radical change of this view that arises from the detachment of the vantage point from the physical apparatus of the body. Loitering Theatre tries to imagine a more playful and poetic form of urban surveillance that might serve as-yet undiscovered goals outside of existing systems — which would allow the individual to imagine the questions that might need to be answered by this new form of urban surveillance and the images it gathers and displays.

BIO: Loitering Theatre is a collaboration between visual artist Nina McGowan and filmmaker and digital rights expert Caroline Campbell, both of whom live and work in Dublin city. Nina studied fine art and urban landscape architecture, while Caroline works across film and documentary. Originally trained as a lawyer, Caroline continues to lecture on the intersection between digital rights and network cultures. Working together, their collaborative practice reflects their multifaceted backgrounds and approach. Their individual and collaborative work has been exhibited in gallery contexts both in Ireland and internationally.