Julia Scher began her art practice as a painter, but growing up in southern California, surrounded by the television and film industry, she was drawn to the moving image in a critical way. In the mid-1980s, TV monitors began appearing in her landscape paintings, and by the late '80s she was creating video works involving surveillance. Early on her work anticipated the surveillance-crazed world we now inhabit. Vigilance, 1991, is representative of Scher's elaborate involvement with security systems as both social critique and material for art. In this installation for the Centre Pompidou, she installed several black-and-white surveillance cameras in unpredictable, empty spaces in the museum. Visitors are taped, and, as they proceed through the museum, they can see their own image on monitors in other rooms. But they also see pre-taped images of other people in the same spaces performing often aggressive actions, but they are unaware that the footage had been taped earlier. They think it is live and they can become very anxious. They might see people fighting or lying naked on the floor, but they are not sure where they are or if they are in need. Potentially, a certain panic could erupt; panic propelled by the very “security” systems that are supposed to offer solace and safety. For Scher, security systems are anything but secure. They are instruments of power and symbols of control. In speaking of this work, Scher says, “I want to explore the different emotional textures hidden beneath the false sweetness of high-tech's self-presentation. I want to understand… how to apply ourselves to living without numbing out as we negotiate our way through a seemingly cool electronic arena that masks disorders, anxieties, and phobias.” Scher's use of surveillance is a pronouncement of the end of innocence initiated by surveillance cameras. When we think we are alone, moving through a city or any space, and we are being watched, we are robbed of that private moment. Just when we feel our most unselfconscious, when we imagine that some passing thought or impression can spill from our mouth (talking to ourselves) unashamedly, we blush to think that we are being watched. We no longer allow ourselves to be alone with ourselves in public, for we realize we are not alone. In Scher's installation we also, perversely, become part of surveillance's web of paranoia and voyeurism. Scher allows visitors to watch other people as well as themselves. Though her work is suffused with humor and parody, it has taken on a new seriousness since the threat of worldwide terror has made surveillance an everyday event in most of our lives. Scher, who has made us laugh at ourselves on camera and joke with an obviously fictitious security guard dressed in pink, is not so sure she can keep smiling.

Michael Rush