panoptiCONS is the brainchild of two street artists from the Netherlands. Thomas voor t’Hekke and Bas van Oerle are collectively know as “Helden.” And panoptiCONS is a series of get-under-your-skin installations of CCTV-headed birds placed around the city of Utrecht.
They camera-birds are an unsettling reminder of how we’ve become numb to the fact that we’re being watched on CCTV cameras all the time. We are being observed and recorded…tracked…as we go about our daily lives and few of us stop to even think about it at all anymore. The cameras have become part of our cities hardscape and go virtually unnoticed.
But these birds you notice. They remind you to feel at least a little bit uncomfortable and perhaps even a bit outraged. References to Big Brother are all to easy to make…a bit lazy even. This bit of street art takes it to a whole new level.
panoptICONS Utrecht 2010 from Helden on Vimeo.
