Street Seen: Walking Tour of Surveillance
an art collective tours communication infrastructure
STREET SEEN: PITTSBURGH is a collaboration between critical technology collective coveillance and artists Wesleigh Gates and Maggie Oates, unspooling the story of smart city gentrification in Pittsburgh through a participatory performance-based navigation of Northside’s tech hub, Nova Place. Resistance to smart city gentrification in Pittsburgh has been enacted through campaigns such as PPT's campaign against the autonomous Mon-Oakland shuttle corridor, calls to end surveillance by Black activists, and calls for accountability on university complicity in creating surveillance infrastructure. However, the full extent of entanglement in Pittsburgh and other urban spaces as an urban testing bed and branding of "smart city” does not lend itself well to narrative work, particularly important for mobilizing and motivating community collective action.
In selecting Nova Place, coveillance members and artists drew upon practices of collaborative play, resistance to carceral technologies, and community-based artmaking to craft a walking tour experience of Nova Place as a representative site of Pittsburgh’s story of tech infrastructure and surveillance.
Community members, artists, and activists were invited to a convene in an [inaugural] walking tour of Nova Place. Through communal knowledge sharing, field guide artifacts, movement exchanges and immersive roleplay, the tour traced the relationships between space, technology, and community - reclaiming legibility of these infrastructures for communities to experience collectivity.
Find maps, zines, and guides on surveillance in Pittsburgh.