Artists Statement

Hypnomart depicts the rituals of shoppers as observed by security cameras in a shopping mall. The artists have used this covert footage as source material for their own manipulations of unsuspecting consumers. In these comprehensively surveilled and clinical retail environments tiny gestures are magnified and transmit virally through the crowd. Are the shoppers in Hypnomart just buying things or are they fulfilling other, more primordial needs? Observing people as they go about their shopping often reveals an apparent state of hypnosis; malls are designed to be (or at least appear) contained and safe. The proliferation and awareness of cameras heightens the sense that one is on a set, and on display. Is this justified surveillance or authoritarian voyeurism? Whether the subjects of surveillance are shopping in a trance or enacting compulsive rituals for the cameras, sometimes they align themselves in patterns like microbes or herds, or create dances that last mere seconds. The film was commissioned by the Arts Council of England and Channel 4 Television. Characters were selected from hours of DV footage and removed from their original environments to generate loops of movement and behaviour. The mall was then re-populated to create a bizarre yet logical new environment. Sampled sounds from the mall were similarly selected, manipulated and reorganised. The film was entirely made by digital means. It was first broadcast on British national television in November of 2001.

• Alistair Gentry is a writer and artist whose work includes the novels. Their Heads Are Anonymous (1997) and Monkey Boys (1999), stage and radio plays, stones in printed and electronic form, readings, performances, installations and audio. He has been artist in residence at several UK galleries.
• Joe Magee trained as a graphic designer at London College of Printing, Glasgow School of Art and Manchester Polytechnic. He spent much of the past ten years making over a thousand published images for publications such as The Guardian, New York Times and Liberation. He has also won the Adobe Imaging Prize. Both artists live in England.