The Re-enchantment of a Technologically Disenchanted World: An Affirmative Critique of Anti-surveillance Art

Abstract Focussing on anti-surveillance art, this article makes the case that the arts have the unique capacity to induce and energize hope and caring in the otherwise hopeless context of a technologically disenchanted world of surveillance capitalism, characterised by a wholesale loss of privacy due to ubiquitous data capture, and an algorithmically powered exacerbation of social inequalities and discrimination. Drawing on theories of enchantment from literary studies, art history, philosophy and political thought, I theorize anti-surveillance art as an art-full means of enchantment generating an ‘ethical energetics’ that is capable, however momentarily or imperfectly, of dissolving the constraints of our imagination and moving people to act hopefully and caringly in spite of technology-induced malaise. Through an affirmative critique of anti-surveillance art practices, I illustrate the processual mechanisms and dynamics of activist art (artivism), showing how these art forms not only critique and subvert entrenched imaginaries of surveillance capitalism but also enact the ethical imperative of re-imagining better future worlds even in the face of present technological toxicity and breakdown. This article contributes knowledge on the ethico-political import of the arts in troubled social, business and organisational contexts.