Surveillance has become a defining feature of late modernity, shaping social interaction and fueling widespread anxieties—both personal and collective—concerning the precarious balance between the protection of democratic values and the erosion of civil liberties.
Surveillance Studies are an exceptionally broad and varied field, and interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity have become fundamental traits. Yet, despite the diversity of approaches, scholars in this field remain connected by a shared set of core concerns, which revolve around the restriction of individual freedom on the one hand, and the broader social effects on the other, both resulting from the spread of a complex and constantly evolving technological infrastructure. Out of these tensions arises a cultural space of negotiation, in which competing—and frequently contradictory—conceptions of politics, identity, and ethics are debated and re-envisioned, producing what J. MacGregor Wise has termed the “surveillant
imaginary,” emphasising the reciprocal relationship between cultural dynamics and the socio-technological transformations driven by surveillance.
In this context, cultural texts and media artifacts emerge as key objects of investigation, as they influence not only our understanding but also everyday behaviors and social interactions. Surveillance studies examine how these works inform and shape perceptions of surveillance, analysing the ways control is portrayed, internalised, and lived. In particular, audiovisual media and artistic practices play an
essential role in interrogating and interpreting the forms of control and disciplinary power offering powerful conceptual tools—whether by exposing dystopian visions and critical perspectives or by imagining speculative worlds and alternative possibilities.
The conference aims to investigate how surveillance has been represented, mediated, and contested
within the landscape of Italian audiovisual culture. It hosts scholars, artists and researchers that engage with cinema, crime and detection TV series, video art, and contemporary art practices, focusing on issues like predictive control, extrajudicial monitoring, labour surveillance, interspecificity, borders, gender, and fashion. The keynote speeches will delve into fundamental ethical and political aspects—such as cinema as a privileged site for articulating the practices and imaginaries of surveillance, the reconfiguration of human agency under data-intensive surveillance, and the emergence of a “neoliberal ear” shaped by sound-based surveillance systems—thereby providing a crucial framework for analysing the contemporary transformations of surveillance and control systems and their related counter-practices.
- Scientific
committee: Simone Arcagni, Matteo Bittanti, Laura Cesaro, Miriam De Rosa, Luisella Farinotti, Chiara Grizzaffi, Andrea Miconi, Annalisa Pellino, Federico Selvini, Deborah Toschi.
- Image: Irene Fenara, Supervision, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Galleria ZERO.
Surveillance and Control in Italian Audiovisual Culture
International Conference
Organised by Luisella Farinotti, Annalisa Pellino, and Federico Selvini
Sala dei 146 (IULM 6), IULM University, Milan
30–31 October 2025
Download the detailed program here
Download the Book of Abstracts here