Get more information at http://www.tangointervention.org/

Like all ‘Tango Intervention’ events organized by artist Robert Lawrence, “Tango Panopticon” was also be a unique participatory conceptual art performance.

May Day is known as both a sensual pagan celebration of life in spring, and as International Workers’ Day. In cities and towns around the world couples and groups of tangueros will dance in unexpected public places marking this dual celebration of the 1st day of May. The Tango Panopticon ‘twist’ is that we will do this only in public places where we are being watched by government or private surveillance cameras. Shooting video of our own, we will surveille the surveillers. Everyone everywhere is invited to participate… to be covertly watched celebrating May Day, sharing the intimate embrace of tango.

For more information about this and other Tango Intervention projects please visitwww.TangoIntervention.org

Tango is a practice already ready for struggle. It knows about taking sides, positions, risks. It has the experience of domination/resistance from within. Tango… …is a language of decolonization. So, pick and choose. Improvise. Hide away. Run after them. Stay still. Move at an astonishing speed. Shut up. Scream a rumor. Turn around. Go back without returning. Upside down. Let your feet do the thinking. Be comfortable in your restlessness. Tango.

-Marta E. Savigliano
Tango and the Political Economy of Passion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJjQg2rcFTQ

and here to see the first of several videos coming.

http://www.tangation.nl/archief/TangoPanopticon/TangoPanopticon.html

Here also are two photos from the Utrecht event:

Anna Karassik and I had some wonderful dances at Union Station in Chicago today. We danced in the main entrance, into the elevator, down to the lower level where we danced up a long passageway and into the “Great Hall”.  The surveillance cameras along the way saw a lot of great dancing and a lot of smiling. It was so much fun we did the same route 3 times! Anda shot some great video that I have pulled these few stills from.  I will post the video to youtube soon and then post links to the video here on the blog.

Thanks so much to Anna for the dances and so very very much to Anda for shooting the video!!!

I look forward to hear how other interventions went. As of this morning we had events scheduled for 16 cities!!!

It was a great day for tango intervening!!!

Abrazos,

Robert

…when will the next time be that you have a chance to be part of something like this?

We now have people busy in over a dozen cites around the world putting together their own vision of this event for their communities. Estimates of participation at individual events varies from 1 couple to 5o tangueros.  Those of you who are organizing these events, I can’t thank you enough!  Though if this is at all like my other 10 tango interventions, I suspect that most of you will feel that the excitement of the event is the thanks that really matters.

For those of you considering an action but still undecided I would like to remind you that participation can be VERY simple. And think about it… when will the next time be that you have a chance to be part of something like this?

Your version of Tango Panopticon does NOT have to be a big major event.  Yes, it would be thrilling to have 100 people dancing together somewhere to a live tango orchestra, but it is also wonderful to have just one couple dancing to music on a shared set of headphones from an ipod. And either way you are part of the first worldwide milonga! I encourage you to make an event that is simple, and doable, and that you will enjoy and remember fondly long after.

For information on events in specific cities you can go to any of the links below or to the Locations Page of this blog. 

….a Me Too How To Guide: 

One of the ideas of Tango Panopticon is that we are doing what we are doing in front of surveillance cameras – that are likely looking for something very different than the sensuality of tango.  I won’t burden you with a bunch of theories about why I think this is interesting and why surveillance is somewhat menacing; but I will say that, love it or hate it, the level of video surveillance is growing like crazy in most urban centers – and unurban centers… Lots of video surveillance in Parks too, not just city parks but National Parks in the middle of nowhere.

In any case I would really like you to do your action in a place where there are cameras, and thought I should mention a few ways of approaching this.  

Truth is that surveillance is so prevalent in cities now you can probably think of 3 public places where you would like to dance, go visit those places and chances are one or more of them are indeed scanned by a video camera, if not many. In general Government Buildings, Banks, Transit Stops and Stations, Airports, Train Stations, ATMs, Malls, Stores, Parks, Parking Garages, Schools, Universities, Private Businesses, and increasingly Private Residences, all are adding video surveillance at a furious rate.

Usually where there is a gate there is a camera.

Almost all elevators have cameras.  That would be an interesting tango intervention….up and down for an hour or so in one of those glass elevators in swanky hotel lobbies and malls….. close embrace recommended, very Milonguero……Now if you prefer open embrace you might try the 165 square foot elevator at ICA in Boston.  There are other elevators this large. The cameras are probably pretty small though, but they are almost certainly there.

Another approach is just to ask people you know.  This is interesting as it starts a conversation about surveillance, and that can’t be a bad thing.  When you tell them why you are asking they are very likely to be quite intrigued, and that is not such a bad thing either.

Or for the methodological among you, there is the research method, online of course. Googling “Video Surveillance” and the name of your city will give you more hits than you know what to do with. (100,000+ for Tampa, FL) Most of these will be businesses selling surveillance. One approach would be to call a large surveillance operation as a potential customer and ask if they could tell you the addresses of some of their larger installations in public areas. This actually might work, but it requires a certain personality to be up to it.

So you might rather go back to google and add to the previous search text “big brother”.  You will likely find a company with those words in its name or sales line (interesting), but you will also find many links to articles critical of surveillance and there you will likely find specifically mentioned surveillance locations, and in some cases very complete and accurate surveillance maps of entire cities.  The most impressive I found being that made by the NYC Surveillance Camera Project.

You will find surveillance camera maps to 16 American cities at the website for the The Surveillance Camera Players, a site well worth perusing in any case. If anyone knows similar maps of other cities -in any countries- please share that info here in the blog.

Another approach is find a webcam as Niky and her Richmond crew did.  This has the advantage that you could have somebody with a computer do a screen recording of the video of your intervention, which of course would be a nice thing to pass down to your grandchildren. Webcams can also often be found in each city by googling the city name and “webcam”.

Or an easy way out might be to set up your own webcam to point out your window and just tango intervene on the sidewalk in front of your house.  That makes it easy to provide music too….

…Ah yes, MUSIC, that by the way, is the subject of another post very soon.

If you have other ideas about locating surveilled locations for intervening please share them here on the blog.

Thanks!

-Ro