States of Observance : Contemporary Art and Surveillance Logic in Canada

In the wake of the attacks of 11 September 2001, and amid the expansion of US-led security policy, surveillance quickly insinuated itself into the fabric of everyday life in Canada. Practices once confined to military and intelligence operations now shape civilian spaces, where observation feels routine and scrutiny increasingly normalized as the cost of national and global security. Yet this apparent shift masks a deeper continuity: surveillance has long operated as a tool of settler-colonial control. Contemporary surveillance practices – often justified by the rhetoric of security and the War on Terror – extend earlier systems of classifying, managing, and extracting from populations under colonial and imperial rule.

States of Observance examines this history through the lens of contemporary art, focusing on creative projects produced and exhibited from 2001 to 2021. Treating artworks and exhibitions as generative case studies, Susan Cahill argues that surveillance is not only a technological condition but also a colonial way of seeing. The book demonstrates that artistic practice does more than reflect surveillance culture; it actively interrogates and reshapes how we understand the political, technological, and historical forces that sustain it. Cahill contends that art renders visible both the seen and unseen infrastructures that organize everyday life, challenging the normalization of surveillance and exposing its underlying logics.

Amid intensifying debates over digital rights and colonial accountability, States of Observance explores how creative and curatorial practices reveal the hidden operations of the contemporary surveillance state and their implications for social justice in Canada.