Panopticonicity: Sites of Control and the Failure of Forgetting in Willie Doherty’s Re-Run (2002) and Drive (2003)

Abstract

Paula Blair argues that intensive surveillance activity and media attention throughout the Troubles not only affected psychologies but altered landscapes. She notes that the UK currently has one of the highest concentrations of monitoring activity in the world; a legacy of the conflict in Northern Ireland, which helped serve as a testing ground for observation technologies. Blair notes that surveillance activity emerged mainly in the militarised zones of Belfast and Derry and her chapter explores how video installations by Derry-born artist Willie Doherty deal with the complex representations of place and community created by these surveillance activities. Blair argues that Doherty’s videos often deal with memory and testimony, and that his installation environments challenge the passivity of the spectator and denote the invisible state control over our movements by constructing his own panopticon within the monitored gallery space, denying the spectator a return gaze. Drawing on a wide range of Doherty’s works, Blair discusses how this important contemporary visual artist confronts issues of identity in relation to space and the state.