Between Surveillance and Self-Surveillance: Feminist (Re)Visions of the Closed Circuit

This chapter proposes a feminist media-ar(t)chaeological investigation of contemporary telepresence in its facet of surveillance and control. It traces how the home—traditionally conceived as a private, feminine, and protective space—has long operated as a surveillant dispositif anticipating the current mediatization of domestic life. Excavating feminist video practices from the 1970s to the 1990s, it examines how artists used the electronic circuit of video to expose the circuital logic of discipline. The chapter argues that, by reappropriating horror’s audiovisual conventions, these works revealed the domestic sphere as a site of gendered aggression, prefiguring the contemporary logics of tracking, monitoring, and (self-)governance.