2014 alumnus Leo Selvaggio just received a Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) grant to take his URME Surveillance project (first developed as his MFA thesis) to ISEA 2015 – Disruption conference in Vancouver in August. At the conference he will present his paper “URME Surveillance: Analyzing Viral Face-Crime”, as well as exhibiting the URME Surveillance Identity Prosthetic and URME Paper Masks at the Vancouver Art Gallery. States Selvaggio in his paper: “The URME Surveillance Prosthetic, if undetected, allows for an individual to temporarily experience and consequently perform White male privilege in public space, while at the same time drawing attention to the very nature of privilege as a component of a patriarchal power structure that excludes the majority of Americans.”
Over the last few months URME Surveillance has exhibited internationally and literally achieved celebrity status by being featured (with the artist’s permission) on the April 22, 2015 “Selfie 2.0” episode of CSI: Cyber. On the festival circuit, URME Surveillance was part of the Art Souterrain Festival in Montreal in February, and the Saint Etienne Design Bienniale in France in March. It will be exhibiting in Michigan at the Ann Arbor Art Center as part of the Tech + Art Exhibit to open July 24th, at the Museum of Design and Contemporary Applied Arts in Lausanne France in late 2016, and Selvaggio has been invited to consult with the curator of the Wende Museum in California on an upcoming exhibition on Facial Recognition. Locally, Selvaggio contributed the URME Surveillance Hack Me kit as part of People’s Pamphlets at the Printer’s Ball hosted by Spudnik Press in June.
URME Surveillance has been written up in several magazines within the last three months including Society Magazine in France and Makeshift Magazine. Furthermore, Selvaggio is the midst of procuring funding to start a URME Surveillance Micro-Grant, which will support artists working at the intersection of surveillance, identity, and systemic oppression through a small stipend, marketing and logistical support, as well as exhibition opportunities.
