Faceless

Images of Fear, against Fear. Fear blots out the present. It feeds on a past that spills uncontrollably into the present and takes possession of the future. Vanquishing this fear by eliminating past and future is the promise of the Big Brother state. This promise is contrived to legitimise the constant observation of public space, which turns the dream of a carefree existence and an isolated present into a nightmare reality.Manu Luksch employs the vocabulary of science-fiction film to draw us into this nightmare. Crucially, she uses only images obtained from the operators of CCTV video-surveillance systems in London, under the terms of a British law governing access to data. In a mirror image of the failed act of liberation that the trauma of this realization incites, Faceless succeeds in traumatizing its viewers by means of an equally atmospheric and weirdly illuminated metanarrative - that of a society whose self-understanding is occluded by its dazzling media hyperpresence.