Surveillance is ancient history. Bugging is a thing of the past. Nowadays government and industry intercept and click into any private communication directly and anonymously via international data networks. They see all. They hear all. They know all. Allegedly. Or are we just paranoid? And is the idea of being under surveillance perhaps a kind of consolation? Because you know there is someone there who is interested in you? In every road you take. In each of your actions. In your personality, character, identity.

Walter Filz also subjects his audience to a media loop of pursuit – surveillance is part of the production. Stage actors and video projections create a theatre of observation and construct an interactive series of events combining low life and high tech, one that links up new spying technologies with old techniques of self-discovery.

Three people in a network of total surveillance attempt to free themselves, to hide: they cut off all links with the outside world. They remove themselves from the network. And they make themselves comfortable. Without modem and media, without monitor and mobile phone. Time at last to deal with the authentic, direct art forms, with clowns and cabaret, with critical songs from the "good old days".
But external surveillance is also a form of confirmation. I am pursued, therefore I am. If you hide, you abandon yourself, soon you're lost and can't find yourself. A pity really.

Walter Filz
studied German, philosophy and the history of art, lives in Cologne. Since 1983 author and cultural journalist, mainly for radio, since 1981 radio features and radio plays; since 1997 freelance producer for radio and television; various awards, including Kriegsblindenpreis for Pitcher (WDR 2000)

WDR/intermedium 2 2002