Special Operations: Deploying artists’ methods in investigative practices

This paper discusses two projects that illustrate arts research methods: 1. Doctoral research that commences with an observation at the Houses of Parliament, London, of the passage of the Investigatory Powers Act (2016), legislation that significantly extended the UK’s digital surveillance capabilities. The observation is followed by an analysis of archival film, video and photography from hidden cameras at the Stasi Records Agency, Berlin, that has failed, is sabotaged or misses its subject. Methods employ props, writing, performance-lectures, and exhibitions. Retro spyware is used covertly whilst the Investigatory Powers Bill is debated, to question what might become visible when surveillance techniques are repurposed to look at surveillance. 2. UNLAND is an exhibition and ancillary events, of photographic, video, and print works at NeMe, Cyprus (April–May 2023). This collaborative project (Kypros Kyprianou, Newcastle University / Jeremy Lee, Sheffield Hallam University) presents documented and fictional material of contested spaces within Cyprus. Sites include the UN buffer zone, restricted areas of Varosha, and British military bases. The artworks employ contemporary imaging techniques (photogrammetry, LiDar and machine learning) to query their application through the ways that artists ‘look’ or the methods employed. The geographical, military, and forensic antecedence of the technologies is unsettled and ‘visioning’ becomes warped and ‘messy’ whilst also being extended. Alternative textures, disturb the image, representation and reporting of sites of conflict. Rather than enhancing the ‘quality’ of the image, technologies expose the gaps, flaws, and missing data to present the overlooked, hidden, accidental or malfunctioning ‘visioning’. Research findings emphasise iterative, nuanced, and minor processes founded in making art that extend technique through grounded, situated and relational critique. A search for definition and considerations concerning surveillance and ethics, within both projects, is examined through image making, and arts research methods. The projects emphasise the importance of arts research within wider contexts and the potential to question established research orthodoxies.