STARE is a video that consists entirely of visuals captured from wireless surveillance camera’s in Brussels. Made in 2010, in collaboration with the Human Rights League (LDH), the initial idea was to produce a visual document that would embed the debate about privacy sensitive images in existing situations. Often legal discourse is fed with imaginations of how technology works in the public realm. In reality available equipment and urban surroundings put constraints on how laws can be put into practice.

The speaker in voice over is lawyer Franck Dumortier (CRID Namur), who is specialised in intellectual property and privacy issues. During a talk that he made on the occasion of the 2010 thematic week ‘Technologie mon amour’ that was organised by the LDH, he explained the legal framework that surrounds camera surveillance as it is written in the Belgian ‘surveillance camera law’. The actual images of the video were the core material on which his story is based. Later we edited this video that combines his lecture with the footage.

In the framework of the prject, we organised walks in which technical and legal aspects involved in showing and capturing privacy sensitive visual material in public space were discussed. This small news item explains well some of the aims and methods used. (French only)

STARE (burned in English subtitles) can be downloaded here:
http://video.constantvzw.org/Surveillance/STARE-en-subs.ogv

Or you can download a French spoken version with separate subtitle file here:
ENG .srt file +
NLD .srt file +
.ogv video file

3 channel video installation, 3 x 12 m, 2007

A school is moving house. The way the students deal with each other, their daily routines change accordingly.
Rooms Roles Rules is a collaborative film made with students and tutors from the International School the Hague, and was commissioned by arts center Stroom, Den Haag.

http://www.archive.org/details/Rooms_Rules_Roles

Super 8 / 2.30 minutes / colour / stereo / no dialogue / 2005

Siesta time. A dog barking. Deserted modernist outskirts of Mallorcan city Andratx. Asphalt roads steam under a scorching sun. A man walks down the pavement carrying bags with lemons.

http://www.archive.org/details/LemonsFall

16 mm / 4.30 minutes / B+W / stereo / no dialogue / production: de Filmwerkplaats / 2003

A women enclosed in her apartment, coming to terms with her place in the world. Experimental narrative incorporating notions of silent film, repetitive acts of housekeeping and grey city skies.

DV / 1 minute / 2001 / stereo / no dialogue

A nervous visual trip through my apartment. Personal images meet members of the IKEA family.

Betacam / 4 minutes / 2001 / stereo / English spoken

A found footage film glueing together the global rhetoric CNN video report Desert Storm; the victory and a seventies pirate movie. Starring George Bush senior, Michael Caine, Peter Arnett and Sadam Hussein.

DV/ 16 minutes / 2001 / stereo / Dutch spoken

A road movie full of desire, nostalgia and sublime landscapes. Based on a travel report written in 1972 by my grandfather. The photo’s in the film were made by my father between 1963 and 1997.

DV / 35 minutes / 2002 / stereo / dutch spoken, in collaboration with Kirsten Leenaars

This documentary browses through photo albums of different families who are neighbours in the same flatbuilding.

DV / 18 minutes / 2001 / stereo / english spoken

Short talking head documentary featuring a Vietnam veteran who’s personal history mix with iconic American historic moments. A disturbed narrative mixing fiction, facts, convictions, paranoia, the death of young rockstars and conspiracy theories.