The Evolution of Hyper-Surveillance: Understanding the Path to Our Current Reality
### **Counter/Surveillance: Control, Privacy, Agency – An Intriguing Examination of Modern Surveillance Grappling With Past Tactics**
CULVER CITY, California — Surveillance is no longer confined to dystopian novels or Cold War espionage; it’s woven into the very fabric of contemporary society, fueling debates around privacy, control, and individual freedom. The Wende Museum’s latest exhibition, “**Counter/Surveillance: Control, Privacy, Agency**,” is a deep dive into the complicated and ongoing relationship between surveillance and society. Running through October 2025, this year-long exhibition in Culver City curates an eclectic selection of archival artifacts and contemporary artworks that interrogate the increasingly pervasive surveillance systems surrounding us today. The exhibit highlights not only historical examples but also contemporary questions, forcing us to reflect on just how far surveillance has infiltrated our day-to-day lives.
### **From the Stasi to Silicon Valley: Historical and Modern Parallels**
The exhibition at the Wende Museum sheds light on how surveillance was wielded as a weapon by powerful institutions long before digital data-tracking monopolized societal control. The **Stasi** (East Germany’s Ministry for State Security) and the **KGB** (Soviet Union’s intelligence agency) are central to this historical context, as they employed clever, often invasive tactics to spy on citizens suspected of dissidence. Archival artifacts from these secret police agencies form the backbone of the exhibition, alongside newer technologies that eerily mirror their methods.
Included in the materialscould be spy equipment, surveillance manuals, and even smelling jars used to train dogs on dissident scents — the full extent of which might require more than one visit to absorb. Combining these archival pieces with contemporary artworks, “Counter/Surveillance” places these historical moments in dialogue with our current experiences, arresting viewers’ attention on how historical precedents still inform today’s practice of mass monitoring.
One of the more striking similarities between past and present comes from surveillance artifacts like **early facial recognition technologies** used by the East German police. These rudimentary systems were prototypes of what we now see everywhere — from facial recognition apps opening our smartphones to global security networks tracking entire populations.
### **Contemporary Artworks: Creative Responses to Being Watched**
While the historical elements of the exhibition provide context, the included contemporary artworks are where complex personal reactions to surveillance come to life. One captivating piece is by **Verena Kyselka**, whose 2007 work **”Pigs Like Pigments”** is comprised of printouts of files the Stasi kept on her. Kyselka emotionally recycles the information the authorities collected and adds her own layers to it, marking the surveillance with her personal artistic touch — in red, a color often associated with urgency and censorship.
Similarly, American artist **Sadie Barnette** digs into her father’s history to reveal another facet of surveillance. Barnette adds floral elements to pages from the **500-page FBI file** compiled on her father, a Black Panther member, transforming a grim historical document into something beautiful yet laden with painful emotional history. This mixed-media piece gently explores personal and collective trauma caused by government surveillance, shining a light on the unhealed wounds these files might have left.
Then, there is **Xu Bing’s** eerie 2017 film, **”The Making of Dragonfly Eyes,”** which postulates a world where almost anything — including people — can be tracked via surveillance cameras. The film pieces together CCTV clips available to the public and, in doing so, tells the fictional story of a woman navigating modern-day China. Xu’s work particularly resonates with visitors familiar with China’s societal reality, where over **700 million CCTV cameras** constantly monitor daily life, bringing into question the individual’s right to privacy within increasingly surveilled societies.
### **Counter-Surveillance as Defiance: Tactics of Resistance**
The exhibition doesn’t just reflect on the power of surveillance; it also provides examples of clever ways people have historically resisted it. One standout example is **Merryl Goldberg**, an American musician who used **musical notation** to smuggle secret information out of Soviet Russia. Goldberg’s sheet music seems ordinary, but it was expertly designed to hide **coded locations of dissidents**. It’s resistance through creative ingenuity — highlighting the power of art not just as expression, but as a tool for survival and defiance.
Another noteworthy inclusion is a piece of **mail art** from **Miroljub Todorović** to **Robert Rehfeldt**. Mail art, a form of artistic inquiry that often transformed small, daily-cordial objects like postcards into politically subversive messages, became a method by which artists critiqued systemic state surveillance during Iron Curtain times. This subtle method of rebellion shows how individuals turned state censorship upside down, using the very tools of communication as weapons of resistance.
### **The Digital Age: Are We More or Less Free?**
“Counter/Sur