Stéfy McKnight of Carleton’s Media Production and Design program is heading out on a cross-Canada road trip in an RV along with research colleague Julia Chan of the University of Calgary. The pair are taking to the road to host a series of workshops on surveillance and pleasure, part of their larger collaborative research-creation performance duo CAM HUNTERS.
CAM HUNTERS is a collaborative art/media performance and research-creation project. It seeks to reveal and interrogate the increasing presence of surveillance in our lives, in all its forms. They’ve undertaken a range of projects, such as performances, creating satirical videos, recording a podcast, and offering critical tools.
Now they’re taking the show on the road, quite literally.
The Cam-mobile parked at the Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park in Saskatchewan.
Driving across the country in an RV, Cam Hunters will stop at five different artist-run centres across four provinces. By making artwork with surveillance technologies, they are responding to the disproportionate targeting and policing of 2SLGTQIA+, BIPOC, disabled and classed peoples.
Cam Hunters will be stopping at the following locations:
Map of artist-run centres that Cam Hunters will be stopping at to give a workshop during their tour.
Through their research, McKnight and Chan ask how 2SLBGTQIA+, BIPOC, disabled, classed, and other marginalized artists can subvert and co-opt surveillance technologies to produce pleasure, empowerment, care, and radical healing through research-creation methodologies (i.e., art-making) in so-called Canada? How can pleasure itself be a methodology within surveillance studies and research-creation?
Their goal is to create a community-centred and alternative approach to research and art-making in the field of surveillance studies, through play, experiential learning, and healing practices.
In each workshop, participating artists from the ARC’s community will use pleasure as a methodology to create art using surveillance technologies and practices. Workshop participants will be encouraged to create an art piece using this equipment and technologies and/or incorporate play and experimentation into their own artistic practice.
The artwork created during these workshops may be documented and published in a pending zine.
In addition to all this fun, Cam Hunters has also curated a digital exhibition, Surveillant Pleasures, designed by Media Production and Design students Hongyi Zheng and Zedong Lin. Participating artists include Chad Wong, Cheryl Mukherji, Dani Lessnau, Kyle McDonald & Lauren Lee McCarthy, Lucas Larochelle, Pegah Tabassinejad, Sojung Bahng & Michael Lukaszuk, and Vicky McArthur.
Still image of Surveillant Pleasures digital exhibition.
Surveillant Pleasures is a research-creation project that brings together an interdisciplinary constellation of 2SLGBTQIA+, BIPOC, disabled, classed, and gendered artists, curators, and scholars in so-called Canada to engage with theories of both pleasure and surveillance — in particular, exploring how using surveillance technologies and practices in relation to “pleasure activism” may create forms of healing, care, and radical empowerment.
Surveillant Pleasures will be available for view on the Cam Hunters website from June 15 until August 30, and will be on the road as well.
You are encouraged to follow Cam Hunters along by following their Instagram account (@camhunters), checking out their website (www.camhunters.org/surveillantpleasures), and listening to season 3 of Cam Hunters: the podcast, to be released and recorded on the road.
If you see the branded Cam-mobile, Cam Hunters encourages you to take a photo and hashtag #surveillantpleasures.
Selfie of Dr. McKnight after they picked up the RV from RV Canada.
Surveillant Pleasures is funded by the New Frontiers in Research Fund (Exploration), and is supported by Carleton University, the University of Calgary, and the surveillart: care-laboratory for research-creation and disruptive exhibitionism.
Monday, June 16, 2025 in General, Journalism News
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