Reading Poems With Big Brother

New York City art gallery openings are often as much occasions for people-watching as for surveying the canvases on the walls. But at Friday night’s Postcrypt Gallery opening of the show “Who’s Watching You? Art in the Age of Surveillance,” overt voyeurism was front and center. As art enthusiasts entered the exhibition in the basement of Saint Paul’s Chapel, they were met by a live television projection of themselves broadcast from a video camera indiscreetly concealed under a cardboard box that read “I’m Watching You.” An American flag painted on the cardboard pedestal supporting the camera unambiguously signaled the political dimension of the evening’s Big Brother theme, which was conceived in collaboration with the Columbia ACLU. “For some time now, Postcrypt has wanted to work with the Columbia ACLU on free expression as it relates to the arts,” said gallery co-president Jon Cioschi, CC ’08. “We hoped that artists would use the opportunity to submit art that did not shy away from critiquing and defying recent governmental violations of civil rights.” The artworks, which considered the theme on both a local and a political scale, ranged from installations and paintings to photographs and even a live poetry performance. “I certainly had the surveillance theme in mind when I put this piece together,” Elena Megalos, CC ’08, said of her drawing on cardboard of a couple in bed layered behind a glass paned window. “The abundance of windows in New York City and the intimate snapshots of others’ lives that these urban living spaces afford has always interested me. From my dorm window alone I can catch glimpses of a dozen lives through windows and simultaneously wonder whether or not I’m on display. I wanted a piece that would implicate its viewer and suggest the degree to which we’re all voyeurs at times.” Perhaps the most politically charged piece in the exhibition was Kalayaan Sano’s, GS, installation of a charcoal portrait of President Bush propped on a chair. A portion of his face is left unrendered to suggest the as yet unknown legacy of his remaining tenure in office—one that Sano believes has been grim thus far. A string of extension cords and a path of red paper, which apparently speak to the present government’s use of warrantless wiretapping and the bloodshed of the war, link the president to a mannequin puppet in a business suit, representing the his corrupt and destructive ties to corporate interests. “I see this work as very political, very risky,” said Sano, who created the piece specifically for the show to voice her dissent against the current administration. The highlight of the evening came when Ghana-born Ishmael Adjetey Osekre, GS, performed several original poems, which ranged in scope from recognizing the genocide in Darfur and the AIDS epidemic to the ongoing war in Iraq. “I would characterize my poetry as conscious rather than political,” Osekre said. “It is an African tradition to remind people of their responsibilities through the spoken word.” While Osekre claimed to be nervous during his reading, he was unstoppable as he burst into song and verse, both in English and in his native Ga. His captive audience was seated on the floor in a semicircle around him as he stood with his eyes closed, his hands shaking, waving, and pointing as he spoke. “I came to this country with so much passion and energy,” he said, pausing between poems to collect his breath to hoots of applause. “The true artist lives the art that he creates. What he puts out there is an extension of his life. Now is such a great time to be an artist!” Indeed, personal artistic expression is one of our most important civil liberties—something that the successful marriage Friday night between Postcrypt and the Columbia ACLU made clear.