Panopticon is a work in progress, a small effort at formulating a critical and poetic statement from within what might be called the carceral syntax of Instagram. With tiny, 6-by-6 cm, endlessly looping sequences, designed exclusively by the Smartphone and using the functional requirements of this snapshot application, the subject is indeed one of power and the narrowing range of individual and collective freedoms. The resulting project, shown for the first time at the Rencontres d’Arles, is a video installation which deflects this use of online photography. In a looping, echoing form, the scenography connects montages to rhythms that are at times ecstatic, at times frenetic. It’s a long-term study risked from the eye of a social network storm, one that lacks existential depth to its very core, producing addictive, empty coasting.

Pauline Fargue