CCTV Blanket

‘In 2019, 15,000 surveillance cameras will be connected to the Internet to monitor Johannesburg’s streets always. This is courtesy of video surveillance service provider Vumacam’. - Heidi Swart, 2019

The digital gaze is studied in the current context of Johannesburg but it extends beyond the city, showing the extent to which it wields great control over the broader population. The installed cameras mimic a kind of ‘‘blanket’’, a system that is abruptly dropped from above, without any analysis or questioning of what it does in this place, thinking that one size fits all. 

This mapping showed the large network of cameras and while most of the city appears to be under the 'gaze' of surveillance, this seems not to be the actual case. The maps and collages represent surveillance case studies, contradictions and similarities and analyses further how all information gathered in real-time is transferred to a core termed the 'control room' previously housed in Carlton Centre, Johannesburg. The level of privatization and global input experience within this system is permitted as a result of the association of five major emerging national economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa known as BRICS, indicating that such associations have real-world consequences.

What does this control measure which the government began inserting into Johannesburg in 2008 bring about? Constant observation, to reduce crime? What was the origin of this insertion? How has the government leveraged these opportunities? or How has it been as a counter tool?

Gallery of revelation