A Surveillance Meditation, 2017, single-channel video.

During the COVID-19 stay at home period, Gallery 400 presents a series of online screenings featuring work by artists who have previously exhibited at the Gallery. Each work will stream on the Gallery 400 website for two weeks.

“In October of 2019, I noticed the NYPD installed floodlights in my neighborhood. I noticed how the floodlights bled into the windows of neighbors, even as it was nearing bedtime. They had no say in the light and noise pollution of these machines.

I was curious about all the ways that surveillance manifests itself, and the residual effects of it. On a micro-level, I was thinking about how I surveil myself, framing my face in the phone camera and where that information is sent. On a macro-level, I wondered about how “public utilities” such as free WiFi hotspots––like LinkNYC––track and provide demographic data, perhaps leading to the installation of police floodlights.

The essay I read was a meditation on how I surveil and self-edit myself, and I was deeply interested in how that interacts with the frameworks of companies that depend on surveillance economics.”

James T. Green is an audio documentarian and artist who currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. Alongside working for various podcasting and tech companies, Green is also a visiting lecturer at the NYU School of Journalism and the MADE in NY Podcast Certification Program. He has attended residencies at ACRE, Chicago Artists Coalition, the University of Chicago, and Third Coast and exhibited at Mass MoCA, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, University of Chicago, and Columbia College Chicago. His art practice builds upon an interest in how we interact with one another within our culture. Through object making, performance, and video, Green’s work gravitates towards our relationship with technology and navigating life through the black experience.

James T. Green exhibited at Gallery 400 as part of the 2016 show our duty to fight, organized by Black Lives Matter Chicago and allied movement organizations and projects. This exhibition sought to hold space for survivors and families bereft of justice and healing under anti-Black state violence while offering a living testament to the specific and shared struggles that have been at the core of radical, visionary world-making in Chicago organizing.

James T. Green

Support for Portal: online screenings is provided by the School of Art & Art History, the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts, University of Illinois at Chicago; the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; and a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.