BEHIND THE CLOUD: INTERROGATING DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES
BEHIND THE CLOUD: INTERROGATING DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES
Adán De La Garza
Artworks
my intimate relationship with the tsa, 2016 - present
Video, Duration: 2min 49 sec.
Adán De La Garza analyzes the nature of surveillance and enacts a “subversion of authority through the aesthetics of authority.” As an act of refusal, De La Garza uses a GoPro or a mock surveillance camera to monitor and block the vantage point of ubiquitous surveillance technology that watches us passing through TSA security or on the street. In my intimate relationship with the tsa (2016-present), he places a GoPro camera in his checked baggage and records the process of airport TSA security examining and inspecting his items.. By turning the camera on this process, with specific attention towards the scan-based technology and TSA security agents, he subverts and turns the gaze of surveillance back upon itself, generating playful yet serious questions about what it means to surveil those who surveil us. De La Garza’s works break the layers of surveillance and authority by questioning who is the real one to be surveilled as well as what surveillance technology looks like behind the curtain.
Further Reading
Clint Enns, Uncontrollable Misinterpretations: An Interview with Adán De La Garza
Adán De La Garza, the burden of realized potential album
Adán De La Garza, Surveillance2 video
Artist Bio
Adán is a professional misnomer. The correct spelling of Adán De La Garza is Adán De La Garza and the correct pronunciation of Adán is here. He has participated in exhibitions at the Deluge Contemporary Art (Victoria, Canada), AS220 (Providence, RI), The New School (New York, NY), The Future Gallery (Berlin, DE), The Tucson Museum of Contemporary Art (Tucson, AZ), Casa Maauad (Mexico City, Mexico), Microscope Gallery (Brooklyn, NY) and festivals such as The Paseo (Taos, NM), PAF Festival of Film Animation (Olomouc, Olomouc, Czech Republic), Currents International New Media Festival (Santa Fe, NM), WNDX Festival of Moving Image (Winnipeg, Canada), The Denver Noise Fest (Denver, CO), and The Biennial of the Americas (Denver, CO). Adán was a founding member of the Sound, Video and Performance Art collective The Flinching Eye (2011-2020), a co-conspirator of the media arts exhibition series Nothing To See Here (2013-2016), the sole member of the anonymous art project Collective Misnomer (2016 - present), smashes a lot of buttons with Dizzy Spell (2018 - present) and if you tune your radio at the right place and moment he can be heard on SQUELCH FM. Adán holds a BFA in Photography from the University of Arizona and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Originally from Tucson Arizona, Adán is currently based in Denver, Colorado, where he hates writing in the third person.