All Along the Bell Tower: An Analysis of Surveillance and Affect on the Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus
Abstract
Black and Brown students at JHU were, and continue to be, disproportionately impacted by surveillance architecture and security technology built into the campus environment. Protest messaging including “shut down the plantation, cancel the Hopkins private police!” and “surveillance won’t give us safety” touch on the impact of these small forms of violence experienced by marginalized students, yet frequently disregarded by the perpetrating institution. By exploring affect theory, architectural history, and art-making practices, this project analyzes objects that produce everyday forms of surveillance on JHU’s Homewood campus and the representational objects that can emerge from them. Through the production of mixed media photographs centering the campus’s architectural elements as subjects, I propose an alternative way of seeing without spectacle to work through these weighted affectual experiences.