Laurie Long

Dating Surveillance Project

The Dating Surveillance Project is a collection of DVDs and DVD stills gathered by wearing a hidden camera on my dates. The DSP was inspired by the actual circumstances of my life as an artist. Like most artists, I was working another job to finance my art career. I was so busy working two jobs that I had no time in my schedule for romance, unless I made it into an art project. So I combined my desire for a love life with my long-standing interest in detective work and created the Dating Surveillance Project. Although this project was originally a way to “multi-task” art, love, and intrigue - it evolved into an investigation about romantic role-playing, self-disclosure versus privacy, and the presence of surveillance in everyday life.

Dating is an adventure and an artificially constructed social situation. Each date was a type of reconnaissance mission: my outfits were disguises, my best behavior was a persona, and my questions were interrogations. I was a spy in my own life. Armed with a secret pinhole video camera and miniature microphone, concealed in my coat, I recorded my dates. Since dating is a kind of detective assignment, using a surveillance camera is a fitting method of documentation. During each date I went into a restroom and talked into the mirror about what was happening on the date. If the bathroom didn’t have a suitable mirror, I recapped the date when I got back to my apartment. The experience of covertly filming my dates was similar to that of being a private detective - there’s a lot of waiting around for something exciting to happen. The surveillance stills transform isolated moments into furtive images and clandestine scenarios and invest commonplace events with an aura of mystery. The DVDs showcase the self-conscious atmosphere of dating, with its awkward conversations and gaping silences.

Laurie Long, born in California, is a visual artist whose work fuses together elements of humor, feminism and pop culture. Since 2000 she has been working on The Secret History of Goddess Sites documenting sites in Europe where female deities were worshipped. During this time she has had artist residencies in the Czech Republic, Austria, Portugal, Germany and most recently at Gasworks in London. Also in 2003 she was a visiting artist/educator for Whitechapel Art Gallery’s “Project Download”. Selected solo exhibitions include shows at Impressions Gallery; York, the San Jose Museum of Art, Encontros da Imagem; Braga , Portugal, Theatre Garonne; Toulouse, France, the Musee de la Photographie - Charleroi, Belgium; Fotografie Forum Frankfurt, Germany; Galerie Lichtblick - Koln, Germany; the California Museum of Photography – Riverside, CA. Collections include the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Musee de la Photographie - Charleroi, Lightwork, and the Kinsey Institute. Ms. Long lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.