American artist Julia Scher (b. 1954) is best known for her work investigating the myriad facets of surveillance and cybersecurity present in contemporary life, bringing to light the dancers and pitfalls that come along with systems of monitoring and coinciding ideologies. Maintaining a multi-disciplinary practice, her installation and performance works speak to Scher’s deft ability to invite and include viewers in her projects, highlighting the pervasiveness of the themes at hand.

On view November 1–30, 2024, Scher is the subject of a solo show at Esther Schipper, Berlin, “Let them know your scarlet heat, let them glisten.” Marking her seventh solo with the gallery, the title of the exhibition is drawn from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, alluding to the mutable boundaries between pleasure and pain, intimacy and estrangement. Showcasing two works from Scher’s acclaimed “Surveillance Beds” series, Mama Bed and Papa Bed (both 2003), another work from the series recently entered the collection of the Centre Pompidou, Paris, Surveillance Bed IV (1994).

Ahead of the show’s opening, we reached out to Scher to learn more about what inspired this trio of bed works, as well as what she’s working on next.

Julia Scher, Mama Bed (2003), exhibition view within “Maximum Security Society” (2022) at Kunsthalle Zurich. Courtesy of the artist, Kunsthalle Zurich, and Esther Schipper, Berlin / Paris / Seoul.

Can you describe the process, either conceptual or technically, of making the beds? What first inspired the series, and did you know immediately what you wanted to make or was there experimentation involved?

The real answer to “Why a bed and not another wall or ceiling-based surveillance system?” is that I visited the house of two collectors in Atherton, California. They had a huge collection of art of people I love, like Nayland Blake, John Miller—one of the shit pieces—and other B/D artists. As I went around the house it was beautifully coordinated with great pieces. They took me up to the bedroom and there were all of these pieces I loved. But there was no space. I turned to the bed, and asked “how about putting you in your bed under surveillance?” They lit up and so I started working on it. Some months later, I was hanging out with this guy at the Rivington School, a metalworking space, and started working on it.

When it didn’t work out with the collectors, some of the first beds were shown at Andrea Rosen as “Always There.” So, the origin story was really thinking about what would go with all of this bondage artwork and other themes the collection held.

Detail of Julia Scher, Mama Bed (2003), exhibition view within “Maximum Security Society” (2022) at Kunsthalle Zurich. Courtesy of the artist, Kunsthalle Zurich, and Esther Schipper, Berlin / Paris / Seoul.

Do you see the beds thematically evolving and having different connotations today?

Issues of the past are even more pronounced today. In the media we see more advertising for specialized beds for comfort and at the same time we see more war beds, pain beds.

At that time, the camera was the central character of surveillance. Now there is so much more involved in both voluntary and involuntary surveillance. We know now that there are—for example—spies embedded in ways that journalists won’t get embedded anymore.

In the early days, when giving lectures or showing my work people would say, “What is that?” or “What is surveillance?” When seeing the beds for the first time, people loved to see themselves doubled in the monitor. Early selfie culture. In the handling of technology, what do you do with the good and the bad stuff? My interest in surveillance came out of reading texts like International Security Journal, the Fox, Noam Chomsky, Mike Davis, Andrew Ross, Martha Rosler. It came out of reading these leftist texts. It came from things that were written in the mid-80s about our collective acceptance of things that are military-based.

I was interested in handling technology—playing with it, messing with it. My early works involved just taking apart cameras and laying all the parts on the table. The politics of data have also been a big interest of mine.

Installation view of “AT YOUR OWN RISK” (2003) at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main. Courtesy of the artist, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, and Esther Schipper, Berlin / Paris / Seoul.

The beds, like the marble sculptures, deal with the symbolic world of surveillance. But there are many ways in which my past works have moved between literal and symbolic surveillance.

The first “Toxic Tour” I did was in May 1990 and then there were many more. One at Mass College of Art in 1996. Two more with UCLA and MIT in 2006. At UCLA, for example, we went to a high-tech think-tank and some surveillance shops, and we went to closed-off oil pumps out in the landscape. Places that were dangerous and in need of surveillance. I encouraged people to wear costumes to hide their identities. In MIT some students were more tentative. In Mass College of Art, we had a great time breaking in and sliding down mountains of sand. One guy wore an anti-radiation suit and had a Geiger counter. At MIT, we wore T-shirts so that the people surveilling us would see “MIT Toxic Tour” and see that we were a harmless group. Each person could act within the group as they wanted or as they saw fit. This element of structures of participation was very important to me also in the beds, and in their original form they were also available for the audience to lie on, sit on, and touch. At this point, though, because of conservation, they are only to be looked at.

Julia Scher, Papa Bed (2003), exhibition view within “AT YOUR OWN RISK” (2003) at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main. Courtesy of the artist, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, and Esther Schipper, Berlin / Paris / Seoul.

Can you tell us a bit about what you are working on now, or planning next? Are there any themes or ideas that you find particularly intriguing that you’d like to engage with that you haven’t yet?

I am developing another lip sync about the Apple Vision Pro and the idea of real and fake eyes. Something related to Predictive Engineering and Contradiction, which mixed real and fake footage. Live camera and staged recording. By 2000 and Ameratherm, the real was just so daunting and there was already so much fake happening in the commercial world that I did not want to keep repeating it other than in works where it was already present. Also, after 9/11, it was important for me that people could understand the difference between what was real and fake. In Security by Julia XLVI (2002), I incorporated pre-recorded and internet feeds. By 2006, with the city of Wiesbaden under surveillance, I worked with the Surveillant Architectures Group at MIT to use satellite surveillance in my work.

The next thing coming up is a humorous lipsync, a Dua Lipa song. And there is a video coming out soon on Texte zur Kunst the Apple Vision Pro. And an audio piece for the Columbus Museum of Art. I want to continue with the idea of non-existent numbers. Other than that, I will be talking on Bruce Nauman at Dia in New York.

“Let them know your scarlet heat, let them glisten” is on view at Esther Schipper, Berlin, November 1–30, 2024.