Surveillance, art, and psychopolitics: strategies of resistance in the age of total transparency

Abstract

The article analyzes the transformation of surveillance in the digital age, shifting from visible and coercive control to a more subtle and seductive form characteristic of neoliberal psychopolitics. According to Byung-Chul Han, this new model relies on self-surveillance and self-imposed performance, enabled by social networks and digital platforms. In this context, contemporary art emerges as a space for critical resistance, employing strategies that subvert control mechanisms. Examples such as SOMEONE by Lauren Lee McCarthy and works by !Mediengruppe Bitnik expose the implications of digital surveillance. The text also draws on Jean Baudrillard to explain how surveillance creates a simulated reality, replacing authentic experience. Thus, art does not aim to restore the real but rather to denounce the very conditions of digital control. Finally, the article traces a genealogy of surveillance from Bentham and Foucault’s panopticon to contemporary psychopolitics, where the individual becomes both self-monitoring subject and data producer in a hyper-mediated reality.
KEYWORDS: Psychopolitics, Surveillance, Transparency, Artistic Resistance, Simulacrum.