September 22, 1999
NY US Surveillance Camera Players on action
Surveillance Camera Players: http://www.panix.com/~notbored/the-scp.html
On Wednesday 15 September 1999, the Surveillance Camera Players (SCP)
performed SCP Headline News twice, both times in the company of and
videotaped by a crew from the Toronto-based cable show City TV. In
contrast
to every other SCP performance of 1999, neither of these two
performances
were "observed" by a lawyer from the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Despite steady rain, the first performance took place as scheduled at
noon
in Washington Square Park. This public park has recently become one of
the
SCP's favorite locations in which to perform, and not because the SCP
are
especially fond of it or the surrounding neighborhood (which is
dominated
by university students, yuppies and tourists), but because it is one of
the
few locations in Manhattan other than federally-funded housing projects
in
which surveillance cameras have been installed by the city government
(and
not by private enterprises).
Because of the rain, few people saw the performance, though one person
(a
long-time resident of the neighborhood who is active in local politics)
watched the whole show, enjoyed it very much and was interviewed
afterwards
by the TV crew. At this performance, the SCP consisted of Bill and
Miranda.
For the second time in its history, the SCP used music -- the
Ice-T/Jello
Biafra collaboration called "Shut Up, Be Happy" -- as part of one of its
performances. (The SCP plan to make a kind of "rock video" with this
song
as the soundtrack and SCP Headline News as the imagetrack.)
The second performance of SCP Headline News was given at around 10:30
p.m.
at the same subway station (14th Street and Seventh Avenue, Manhattan)
at
which the SCP performed 1984 on both 3 November 1998 and 9 November
1998.
Here it would have been good to have had the observer from the NYCLU
present, because -- half-way through their second run-through of the
play,
which is only two minutes long -- the SCP were deprived of their
constitutional rights to freedom of assembly by a total of seven police
officers from the New York Police Department (four undercovers and three
uniforms), who, without citing what ordinance
or law the SCP were violating, ordered the performers to stop. Even
though
the two players on hand (Bill and Paul) did in fact stop, one of the
cops
-- the biggest and most openly hostile -- asked, "Do we arrest them
now?"
Despite this fascist's sick desire to arrest Bill and Paul, the two
SCPers
were allowed to collect their things and go without further harassment.
This experience has convinced the SCP of at least three things: first,
that
under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, New York City has indeed become a police
state in which every and all protest or radical use of public space must
be
suppressed; second, that the SCP (whose only "weapons" are their minds,
pieces of paper and ink) pose some sort of effective threat to NYC's
police
state; and third, that the SCP must therefore continue their work until
this police state has been utterly defeated.
********
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