Camover

11 x 17″ | PDF

Over the last few months, friends have been playing Camover in the neighbourhood of Hochelaga. We’ve destroyed around twenty security cameras. For your pleasure (and certainly for our own as well!), here’s a photo in which we see a friend sporting a necklace of optical trophies. In response to the recent smashings of gentrifiers in the neighbourhood, and in the context of twenty-two businesses being vandalized in the last year, the city and the police have publicly announced a renewed collaboration. They’re desperately trying to reassert control, faced with people who “aren’t afraid of the police”, and their initiative to install more cameras shows it. Of course, the police know that it’s impossible to be everywhere all of the time. There will always be loopholes that allow those who are creative and well-prepared to attack. That’s where cameras come in: to make us feel powerless and watched. But our masks will continue to give us power against any camera. No face, no case. And so, to keep up morale, we’ve decided to see this increase in the presence of cameras in the neighbourhood as an occasion for more CamOver and increased sabotage of the mechanisms of control that the authorities put in place. ...

In CamOver, you play a group of humans confronted with an invasion of cameras in a gentrified neighborhood. The struggle against the cameras is important, but your own survival is essential! To win you must form teams with friends in your neighborhoods and destroy as many cameras as possible. The game takes place throughout the summer. At the end, the neighborhood with the most points wins the game. ...

During the night of February 26, inspired by the demonstrators that afternoon who attacked the police and refused to be dispersed, we used a fire extinguisher filled with paint to spray a CCTV camera and a large (A) on the walls of Cégep du Vieux Montréal. During the night of March 3, we broke a CCTV camera at Cégep Maisonneuve by dropping a slab of concrete onto it from the roof. The front entrance windows were also smashed with a hammer. ...

Now you should not only do the action as you do all the time but also make a documentation with at least a report published on german indymedia or linksunten.indymedia.org. If you have pictures, videos or other evidence for the destroyed cameras, you get extra-credits. CAMOVER.blogsport.de will give you the attention your action deserves. ...