Clinamen - Matter misprision (2018) © Youngho Lee — *Clinamen* - Matter misprision (2018) © Youngho Lee

More than half a century since George Orwell’s novel 1984 foreshadowed a dystopian, government surveilled future, a new exhibition, looks at present-day surveillance – not by a human authority, but by technology.

Observe Yourself Being Watched, a collaboration exhibition between MiA Collective Art and artist Youngho Lee, curated by Grace Noh at Brooklyn, NY’s John Doe Gallery, uses film and video installation to question how we understand the role of social media, technology, and data in our lives and how it allows our activities to be marked, followed, and traced. “The click we make to add an item to the ‘shopping cart,’ Lee says in the press release, ”may haunt us for days…how much is our own and how much of ourselves are shared with others?”

Lee and MiA Collective Art use these ideas to create a fantastical and ambiguous installation addressing the space between the analog and the digital boundaries. Various visual elements of computer graphics, three-dimensional images and composite images of chroma keys collide and overlap.

The exhibition is on view from Tuesday, November 6 to Wednesday, November 21, 2018 with the artist’s reception on Thursday, November 8 from 6 pm to 9 pm.

I spoke with the Youngho Lee and curator Grace Noh to learn more.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Youngho Lee and Grace Noh

Coorain Devin, host of the new video art talk-show web-series, Coloring Coorain, is a renaissance-hatted conceptual artist, TV star and cultural wonder producer who uses campy humor to address complex themes ranging from feminism and queer identity, to poetry, vernacular photography, and even personal health issues. Their playful, and often heartwarming approach, which credits influences spanning Candy Darling, Oscar Wilde, Dave Eggers, and John Waters, help to make these issues more accessible to a range of audiences without dilution or sacrifice of content. Corain recently collaborated with 15 photographers to produce a calendar picturing the artist as a means to to explore some of these same issues "at a time when queerness is frequently appropriated, repackaged and deployed as entertainment." Coorain's work gives agency and visibility to them, and their influence on contemporary pop culture. We interviewed Coorain to learn more.

Is Technology The New Big Brother? Youngho Lee's "Observe Yourself Being Watched" Uses Interactive Video to Address Present-Day Surveillance

(You Should Know) Who the F is Coorain Devin?