Maja Funke - Dead Glitch

»Dead Glitch« is a research project and a multimedia body of work that was initiated in the forefront of the global event of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris. In addition to the economic and social damage that this megalomania will have or has already caused in the French capital, the project places the issue of comprehensive algorithmic video surveillance at the center of attention.

Higher [citius]

From July 26 to September 8, 2024, the Olympic and Paralympic Games took place in Paris and other parts of France. In preparation, the French government passed an exceptional law on March 19, 2023 that includes provisions to improve security, situational (crime) prevention and counterterrorist measures (Article 9 to 19). Among them is the »experimental [sic!]« use of algorithmic video surveillance to control crowds at sporting, leisure and cultural events. The trial will run until the end of March 2025 – 6 months after the end of the Olympics, which prompted the increased security needs.

Algorithmic Video Surveillance (AVS) consists of the installation and use of software that executes the analysis of videos to detect, identify or classify certain behaviors, situations, objects and people. The various machine-learning-based applications are mainly used by the police in conjunction with surveillance cameras: either for real-time detection of certain suspicious or risky ‘events’ or retrospectively as part of police investigations. State-owned railway operators SNCF and RATP are also authorized to use these systems. In practice, AVS aims by law to recognize objects (a suitcase, rubbish), personal characteristics (people lying on the ground, clothing) or events (line-crossing, grouping, arson). Biometric identification allows a person to be recognized in a sample of people on the basis of physical, physiological or behavioral patterns.

While a set of actions and instructions in security infrastructure (or, in new speak: protection infrastructure) sometimes falls into the category of security theatre, CCTV at least manifests the increase of state surveillance power. Even with a human in the loop, responsibility and jurisdiction are increasingly shifting from humans to machines. However, the mediated image in the security apparatus, among other tools, is meant to control bodies in cities and causes the political, social and emotional detachment of the observer.

Variations de lampadaires, Paris 2024 (L’infrastructure s’appuie sur l’infrastructure).

Urban design is updated in the Parisian gaze. What seems to be a streetlamp is no longer a distributor for romantic light, but a surveillance instance in empire green or anthracite. Some five-eyed sentries are special in their materialization of control and freedom and – other than white-bodies cuboids – may not seem dissuasive but rather belonging. A security enforcement with symbolic aesthetic, in the heritage of the penetrability of the urban space in Louis’ XIV »Ville Lumière«.

Videostill, cropped and sped up. (gif)

While walking Paris in dérive, one might sense the onset of normalization of the New Military Urbanism. Counter observation reveals the banalization of a city who is watching me.

Faster [altius]

Historically, antifascist countermovements emerge in response to a tightening of state security, which often escalates into repressive policies and police violence. While some actors adopt symbolic and sometimes destructive anti-tech resistance, others employ more strategic, system-integrated approaches. With national, legal and investigative powers, »La Quadrature du Net«, in collaboration with local »Technopolice« groups, monitors and campaigns against the expansion of surveillance infrastructure and AVS’s spreading . Both work against social control and for a Polis in the sense  of a democratic city and pluralistic space as well as freedoms in the digital world.

Anonymity and privacy are vital for freedom like demonstration, movement and expression. Yet, as states adopt surveillance and control systems designed for warfare – driven by security concerns, economic interests, and political goals – privacy violations become the norm. These measures, initially temporary, often become permanent after the state of emergency, treating all citizens as suspects and placing AVS in fundamental conflict with democratic values. The network of dataveillance veils and collective knowledge helps to deconstruct their actions and go beyond the panoptic understanding of surveillance to also include elements of governance. Investigative methods include, but are not limited to, monitoring of decrees, demandes CADA, plaintes CNIL, metadata analysis, (technical) jailbreaking, public political debates.

Surveillance video by SNCF, masking in original, cropped and sped up. (gif)

The current legal situation in Paris allows exercising rights by claiming your video data when captured during AI experiments. You must identify when and where these experiments occur to actively participate. The engagement enables the creation of a performative figure in public spaces and becoming acutely conscious of the resulting Instruments of recognition.

In »Dead Glitch«, a performative character sits with a cat on her lap, a purring robot for people with dementia. Her appearance is shaped by the essence of two literary figures.

Donald Pleasence as Blofeld in From Russia with love, 1963 and You only live twice, 1967. The Oracle, oil on canvas by Camillo Miola, 1880 and Delphic Sibyl by Michelangelo Buonarroti, ca. 1509.

First, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the criminal mastermind with ambitions of world domination and arch-enemy of the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. His white, blue-eyed Persian cat, tenderly stroked, contrasts with his brutal orders, violent actions, and imposing stature. As the head of SPECTRE, Blofeld represents the mastery of information, surveillance, and terror.

Exhibition view, Voltage! Voltage!, Westwerk, Hamburg 2024.

Second, the priestesses of Delphi’s Oracle , embodying ambiguity and foresight within the world of Ancient Greece. They provided cryptic riddles, with Cassandra cursed never to be believed. Their prophecies, shaped and delivered by priests in a structured format, conceptually mirror how modern data systems process raw information into actionable insights.

Stronger [fortius]

The title »Dead Glitch« alludes not least to the deadly potential for error entailed by trust in these technologies. »Warfare, like everything else, is being urbanized« and the boomerang of urban data surveillance is returning to state borders and war zones.

In the EU, migration is treated as a security issue, with the EU Commission intensively researching automated technologies to 'defend' the Mediterranean, one of the world's deadliest border regions, using dehumanized AI-supported methods. In the Gaza Strip, systems like Lavender target individuals for killing by disclosing their identities and locations. Concurrently, Russia and China are advancing automated weapon systems, prompting the US and EU to develop similar technologies through NATO. This digitalization of warfare is transforming the role of citizens under the Geneva Conventions.

Script excerpt for a spoken-word performance.

Promoting ethical technology use today does not guarantee that these guidelines will endure. As a comprehensive AI legislation, the European AI Act bans AI systems which exploit specific group vulnerabilities to influence behavior and cause harm, especially those that continuously assess or classify individuals based on personal or social traits over time.

»Video surveillance is not a material apparatus, but a practice.«

y/[n], ceramic prototype, Studio view at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris 2024.

By considering how systems of control are embedded in our daily lives, the research project »Dead Glitch« is working on creative practices that can actively contribute in proximity to social justice and individual autonomy in the age of surveillance. It critiques the shifting responsibility from human oversight to autonomous AI systems in surveillance practices in these expanding, extrastatecraft visions. It acknowledges surveillance images as actants emphasizing that their imaginary sphere of phantasms, superstructures, and ulterior worlds exerts a tangible, worldmaking effect on the real.

Comments

[Ruben] I really like how you describe how the concept of the city as a public space is changing. The fact that by adding cameras, the idea of the romantic city, the city of the flâneur, has shifted. Contemporary city management seems to have different expectations of what public space is and does.

Your description of how you claim CCTV data by using GDPR regulations sound like a wonderful strategy of resistance. I would love to hear more about how this is a laborious endeavour, both for you and the city; thereby slowing down the cogs of the surveillance machine. As it functions as a strong example of what "surveillance as a practice" entails, and how CCTV is so much more than mere technology, but a site of contestation.