AM I SAFE WITH YOU NOW?
StalkShow deals with privacy control and the threat of social insecurity in public spaces. It is a response to the desire to control situations and eliminate violence: 'What is rejected and refused in the symbolic order reappears in reality. Specters, ghosts and phantoms haunt the world.’ (‘CTRL SPACE’, Peter Weibel on Jacques Lacan).  Philosopher Julia Kristeva described this reality as a social environment in which the other is absent, replaced by projections. These projections represent both fear and desire for the other - they haunt the mind like a 'stalker'.
StalkShow invites the audience to ‘infiltrate’ our smart city public spaces, like train stations, museums, squares, airports; and provide the alleged threat with a personal face and space.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
A performer carries a backpack, containing a laptop with a touch screen. It is a wearable billboard, on which a webcam is attached. The webcam records the face of the user of the touch screen. Individual audience members are invited to touch the screen and navigate through an archive of statements about the threat of insecurity and isolation.
By webcam and wireless connection, the live video prtrait appears behind the statements on a large projection screen in the same public space.
The user sees himself 'watching' through a text-window. He 'watches' through a visual, technically created, social-psychological frame of mind which seems to have a life of its own. The statements of other people are linked to his personally rendered image: statements about insecurity and isolation that do not seem controllable. An ‘observing' face gazes down on the observing audience.

STATEMENTS - The StalkShow’s statements derive from agora-phobia-digitalis.org  where Lancel and Maat invite people living isolated, like a prisoner, a nun, an asylum seeker, a digipersona. Approached by the artists as 'specialists on unsecurity and social isolation', they make these statements about 'personal strategies to deal with social spaces’. The statements are connected within a hypertext related structure.
By touching the StalkShow screen a menu appears, through which the participant of the StalkShow can identify with the prisoner, the digipersona, or other. By navigating through their statements, the user shows a personal montage of social strategies; making these visible on the large projection screen.

CAN I TOUCH YOU NOW?

TOUCH & INTERACTION:
When touching the screen the user starts a tangible relation with the back of a stranger carrying the billboard. He enters the intimacy of the vulnerable body of the stranger. Generating alertness, attraction or repulsion, the intimacy of the body plays a compelling role in the interface. The unexpected encounter with the mobile billboard and the navigation through the texts offer a confronting relation with the surrounding audience. The resulting interactivity is location- and context- specific.

MEDIA & PUBLIC SPACE:
The StalkShow shows statements referring to slogans used in media-communication. They expose experiences and feelings of insecurity which are dominant in mainstream media, like on television and in newspapers. Through the Stalkshow Lancel and Maat aim to amplify these feelings to an extreme to be re-experienced and re-interpreted in the urban public space.

DOWNLOAD detailed description, history R&D:
Urban Screens Reader / Institute of Networkcultures

STALKSHOW SHOWS:

2008
Urbanscreens 08, Melbourne Australia, curator Mirjam Struppek
Ceac Xiamen 08 Xiamen China
2007
ArtCenter Nabi Seoul, Korea P.Art.Y festival Seoul curators Roh Soh-Yeong, Dooeun Chio
Tsing Hua University Art and Science Exhibition and Symposium Beijing, China
Science and Art Expo Shanghai, China
2006
‘Outvideo 06’ ArtInPro Moscow & Yekaterinburg, Russia, curator Arseny Sergeyev
Smart Project Space Amsterdam, Netherlands ‘Tresholding’, curator Alice Smiths
Festival ‘Stad als Film’Schiedam, Netherlands, curator Martijn Verhoeven
DasArts Amsterdam, Netherlands
2005
Hong Kong Arts Center, Hong Kong, China
IVFA Independent Video and Film Festival, curators Connie Lam, Teresa Kwong, Isaac Leung
Second new Media Arts exhibition and symposium, Millenium Museum Beijing, China, curator Alex Adriaansens
Urban Screens 05 Symposium, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, curators Geert Lovink, Mirjam Struppek, Jeroen Boomgaard
2004
ISEA 04 Helsinki, Finland
Kiasma Museum Helsinki, Finland
E culture-Fair Virtual Platform / V2_LAB for Unstable MediaRotterdam, Netherlands
2003
Smart Project Space Amsterdam, Netherlands ‘Tresholding’, curator Alice Smiths

With generous support of: Fund for Visual Art, design and Architecture (NL), Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam Fund for the Art,
Fund for Performance Art, Kiasma Museum, [Nes]theaters Amsterdam, Foundation DasArts, SSAS, Dutch Embassies in Helsinki, Hong Kong, Moscow and China.

Thanks to: Josephine Bosma, Mart van Bree, Günther Heeg, Steven Kovats, Anne Nigten, Jellichje Reijnders, Alice Smits, Robert Steijn, Alfred Rademakers.

AM I SAFE WITH YOU NOW?