WTBS: Unseen Mundane is an ongoing collection of the mundane moments which go unseen, but contain moments of quiet drama. The full title “While the Ballerinas Smoke: Unseen Mundane” reflects the moment of unobserved drama behind the stage, waiting for everyone’s gaze.
The images were collected from security cameras around the world that, through some inadvertent action of the person who installed them, captured beautiful scenes of the quiet world. They exist purely for our eyes and these are the in-between moments that happen backstage.
I began aggregating these images at the end of 2020, while locked like everyone else. I was fresh out of grad school and all of my shows for the coming year had been cancelled. So I needed a way to see the world outside my room. Being a digital artist I started finding ways to access unsecured cameras. Digital eyes that could see the world for me. It became a bit of an obsession and I spent the entirety of 2021 sifting through these cameras for scenes that were inadvertently beautiful.
Initially I was tentative and thought I would see swarms of criminal activity; the sort of activity we are culturally trained to believe these cameras were installed to capture. But I hardly saw a person. I saw a world locked down and asleep. Even in the daylight many of the cameras were watching quiet places, just in case they are ever needed, with bated breath.
