The cameras are watching. The postcards are now available.
TL;DR: Paint the Cameras Dead (read more) asks people to notice the surveillance infrastructure disappearing into the background of our cities. Look up. Find the cameras. Ask who placed them there and what they see. Map them, but do not stop there. Respond with something of your own. A drawing. A sticker. A message. An intervention we have not imagined yet.
The postcards are now available.
Looking is only the beginning
A camera watches.
You can watch it back.
But two objects staring at each other will not change much.
The point of noticing a camera is not to stand beneath it forever, looking suspiciously upwards.
The point is to break the spell that makes it invisible.
Once you see it, you can ask questions.
Who installed it?
What is it recording?
Where does the recording go?
Why does this wall have eyes?
You can map the camera. Correct an existing entry. Help someone else notice it.
And then you can do something more creative.
Make a drawing.
Write a message.
Design a sticker.
Create a new postcard.
Turn the camera into a character, a question, a joke or a public conversation.
The tool is not important.
The interruption is.
The postcards are ready
The postcards show people where to look and how to recognize the cameras hiding above doors, on poles and inside dark plastic bubbles.
You can read more about the campaign, download the print-ready files, or contact us to get some printed cards.
But we prefer that you print your own.
Not because we do not want to send them.
Because the campaign becomes more interesting when it stops belonging to us.
Print five.
Print fifty.
Translate them.
Change the images.
Rewrite the instructions.
Make a version for your own street, neighborhood or city.
Leave them in cafés, libraries, universities, community spaces and unexpected places where people might pause for a moment.
Do more than watch
Surveillance likes passive people.
People who walk underneath it.
People who never notice.
People who notice but decide there is nothing to be done.
The postcards are not the final action.
They are an invitation.
Look up.
Map what you find.
Then answer it with something the camera cannot produce by itself:
An idea.
Some imagination.
A small act of creative disobedience.
Some people will say nothing will change.
Make something anyway.