Screens as Masks: Counter-Visual Strategies in Surveillance Performance An Analysis of Dries Verhoeven's Alles Moet Weg (2024)

Abstract

This thesis examines how contemporary surveillance art exposes the visual logic of control systems through counter-visual strategies. Focusing on Dries Verhoeven's Alles Moet Weg (2024), a performative installation set in a replica supermarket with a masked performer under constant CCTV observation, this thesis investigates how screens and masks function as strategies of counter-visuality to prompt reflection on surveillance's visual operations. The thesis conducts dramaturgical analysis, examining the interrelations of composition, spectator positioning, and cultural context to analyse how the performance positions audiences within surveillance systems. This methodology builds on surveillance studies and counter-visuality theory to reveal the theatrical dimensions of surveillance culture. This thesis argues that screens and masks operate through similar mechanisms of simultaneous concealment and revelation, proposing the concept of screens as masks to describe how surveillance technologies function as masking devices. The analysis identifies how the performance employs four counter-visual strategies of sousveillance, self-surveillance, obfuscation, and masking, while demonstrating that technological mediation creates masks that extend beyond the performer to implicate spectators themselves. This thesis contributes to surveillance studies by theorising screens as masking devices embedded in everyday technological infrastructure and positions surveillance art as cultural analysis that reveals the performative nature of contemporary visibility. The findings demonstrate that in screen-mediated culture, resistance must operate within instead of outside surveillance systems.