Description
Subtitled Public consists of an empty exhibition space where visitors are detected by a computerised surveillance system. When people enter the space, the system generates a subtitle for each person and projects it onto him or her: the subtitle is chosen at random from a list of all the verbs conjugated in the third person. The only way of getting rid of a subtitle is to touch another person, which leads to the two subtitles being exchanged. The project exists in Spanish, English and French versions.

Subtitled Public invades the supposedly neutral and public space of contemplation that exists in museums, underlining the violent and asymmetrical nature of observation. The piece also attempts to highlight the arbitrariness of computerized surveillance systems now used in public and private spaces that attempt to detect suspicious individuals and classify people by ethnic group for example. Finally, the installation is an ironic statement about the era of technological personalisation, literally branding observers and turning them into “thematic individuals”.

Year of creation
2005
Technique
Projectors and computerised surveillance system.
Dimensions
Variable dimensions.
Manual

Exhibitions
• "The Fifth Floor", (curator: Peter Gorschlueter), TATE Liverpool, UK, 2008.
• "E-art" (curator: Jean Gagnon), Musée des Beaux Arts, Montréal, 2007.
• Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros (curators: Itala Schmelz, Jennifer Teets), Mexico City, April-May 2005
• Dataspace Exhibition (curator: Priamo Lozada), Conde Duque Art Center, Madrid, February-March 2005

Photos
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Conroy Badger — programming
Will Bauer, Ana Parga, Maria Parga, Tara DeSimone and Matthew Marino — production support

Commissioned by the Fundación BBVA-Bancomer in Mexico. Part of the Tate Collection, London.