Visual Art, Corporeal Economies, and the “New Normal” of Surveillant Policing in the War on Terror

This paper is about the racial and colonial inequalities of visibility within surveillance structures that seek to monitor and regulate bodies within the contemporary Canadian context. Specifically, it addresses what and how creative projects can contribute to this discussion by focusing on a particular artwork, Thomas Kneubühler’s Access Denied (2007). This work engages surveillance through the personification of the security apparatus by centralizing the bodies of those who are positioned to enforce the policies of this structure. Using Kneubühler’s artwork as the central case study, this paper thinks through what questions this project can ask of visibilities, corporeal economies, and the racialized politics of Canadian surveillance in the context of the War on Terror.