Loving Big Brother: Surveillance Culture and Performance Space Book

From George Orwell to reality TV - is surveillance to be feared or embraced? Constant scrutiny by surveillance cameras is usually seen as - at best - an invasion of privacy, and at worst an infringement of human rights. But in this radical new account of the uses of surveillance in art, performance and popular culture, John E McGrath sets out a surprising alternative: a world where we have much to gain from being the experience of being watched. In Loving Big Brother, the author tackles head on the overstated claims of the crime-prevention and ant-terrorism lobbies. But he also argues that we can, and do, desire and enjoy surveillance, and that, if we can understand why this is, we may transform the effect that the experience has on our lives. Loving Big Brother looks at a wide range of performance and visual artists, at popular TV shows and movies, and at our day to day encounters with surveillance, rooting its arguments in an accessible reading of cultural theory. This iconoclastic book develops a notion of surveillance space - somewhere beyond the public and private, somewhere we will all soon live. It's a place we're just beginning to understand.