In Joële Walinga’s experimental and thought-provoking Self-Portrait, which premiered at SXSW 2022, one experiences the world through surveillance cameras.
Self-Portrait is self-described as “a portrait of humanity as captured by its surveillance cameras.” Seemingly paradoxical to this description, however, is the fact that very few humans are actually seen in the film. Instead, the film, which premiered at SXSW 2022, and crafted by artist and filmmaker Joële Walinga, is composed of the footage that we, humanity, point our cameras at.
The footage covers quite a lot of ground, showing blizzarding mountaintops, barren fields, bustling city centers, seals basking on rocks, overflowing landfills, standstill shipping ports, a sidewalk where a stray dog sleeps, an abandoned home on the edge of a lake, a church altar mid-service, a couple kissing in the sea. The visuals traverse the globe. It is a tedious film, at times fairly lifeless. There are enough interesting surveillance clips to keep the film going, though just barely.
There seems to be little order to the arrangement of this footage, other than to instill a seasonal passing of time. Snowy winter scenes turn to early spring rains, soon evolving to summer sun then a cooling autumn. The passage of time is confirmed during the summer sequence, as a clip of a pool that was previously shown empty and and covered for winter is now bustling with swimmers and sunbathers.
A frequent question that arises during the viewing of Self-Portrait is – why is there a surveillance camera there? What good does a surveillance camera do at the peak of an uninhabited mountain, in the middle of an ocean, submerged in a murky river, or aimed straight up at the sky? Don’t hold your breath for these answers. They never come, nor is the film’s goal to deliver them.
These cameras exist. They are recording. Humans put them there. But no one’s really watching. So what’s the point? If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If it’s captured on a video camera, then, yes, chances are it will make a sound.
This is the real essence of the film: the world is being recorded, even if no one is watching. Self-Portrait does not paint a picture of humanity. It falls short of that mighty objective. Instead it is a statement, or reminder for some, of the insurmountable extent of surveillance. While that is a slightly horrifying thought (Big Brother may not always be watching, but he certainly can if he wishes to), Self-Portrait ends on a positive note. The final surveillance shot shows a delicate rainbow developing against a grey cloud, a moment we would not have seen had it not been recorded.
