Tu Y/Ojo POV1

Presented in the Frame of SdA – Strategien der Aufstandsbekämpfung Challange at La Papeleria, Madrid, 22.2.25

Tu Y/Ojo is a video work directed by adO/Aptive and filmed in public space. It confronts the viewer with their relationship to the technologies of image creation.
Digital recording devices are used to archive, remember, self-represent, but also to provide proof, enforce security and sanction behavior. Tu Y/Ojo explores the uses and desires that these omnipresent Ojos (digital eyes) evoke.

We have become accustomed to black irises pointing at us, both protecting and haunting the public, the private, and the intimate. The proliferation of (selfie) cameras has heightened the awareness of our appearance in the world, leading us to develop a digitally mediated and mirrored self-image. While surveillance has become an integral part of daily life. Individuals employ increasingly meticulous methods to protect and reinforce their privileges.

Tools of image creation enter the market disguised as devices for personal use. But photo- and videographic technologies stem from a long epistemological tradition that sees the world as something in need of control, explanation and categorization. In their pocket-size, they operate for a broader, more insidious agenda—one that seeks to convert behavioral patterns into data for targeted marketization and control.

An Ojo, when introduced into private spaces under the guise of security and justice, renders everything transparent. Yet, it remains uncertain whether its revelations will hold any significance in the future. This is where the counter-revolution takes place: we are the ones who ultimately transform observation into data. We rate, save, and repurpose footage according to its value—either for self-representation or as proof. By externalizing these agencies to mediated media, we subject ourselves to the subliminal pressure of the ruling system, bringing the data factory into our homes.

Tu counter-counter revolution

In this work, we employ the all-encompassing format of a 360° camera, which captures everything happening around it from a panoptical angle. We consider this camera an autonomous actor within the narrative—one that is equivalent to the viewer.

By translating the 360° video into a 2-dimensional clip, we strip the viewer of their ability to choose where to look, instead directing their gaze within this performance in public space. Tu Y/Ojo is a counter-counter-revolutionary exercise as it de-mystifies the positivist/functional façade of image mechanisms, showing their inherent contradictions with a grain of salt: personal use is not always beneficial to the other. The public has been kidnapped by Ojos of all sizes in an irreversible push from the control agenda of seriousness, but there remains hope in the form of the anti-anti-social and the comical. In line with adO/Aptive’s methodologies of artistic production, Tu Y/Ojo arose from an open invitation to artists and cultural workers to meet and discuss contemporary issues in a critical space.

After several meetings,

Tu Y/Ojo took the form of an improvised performance in public space with minimal direction, which held the viewpoints of the multiplicity of people that joined the open sessions. This format gives way to various forms of expression and experimentation by people concerned with the current state of the art, becoming, rather than a work of art; art at work.

This is where the counter-counter-revolution takes place. In a-appropriating technologies of the a-social media through the social exercises of debating and co-creating IRL. How can we foment more such exercises? In a world where technologies more and more resemble protheses of our spirit, it is pressing to question how they influence our movements and desires.



(About the performance)

Three Acts: Vanity, Vigilance, Vanish

Act 1: Vanity
In a bustling public space, a group of influencers encounters and interacts with an object resembling an eye: Ojo. They treat it as a mirror, a repository of their appearances, a silent witness to their lives. Speaking to it without hesitation, they feed it with their images, movements, stories, motives, and trust.

Act 2: Vigilance
A traditionalist couple comes across these young people and confronts them about their unforgiving behavior. Taking control of Ojo, they wield it as an instrument to maintain order in the public space, which they consider their neighborhood. They threaten the group with state force. As they patrol the area, they come across another group sitting on the ground and smoking—behavior deemed unacceptable by the policing couple.

Act 3: Vanish
In a confrontation where Ojo becomes an instrument of control and intimidation, one of the individuals filmed by the vigilant couple snatches Ojo away. Their group flees the scene, hiding Ojo in a hole in a city wall down a side street, away from the daylight of the public space—removing themselves and vanishing from Ojo’s black iris.