I Want You to Watch

Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague 2026

I'm trying to make the most of this last Prague visit, as I know it'll be the last one for a while. As such, I'm doing what I do best - evading reality cozy inside, writing this. However, when I was more brave than I am now, a couple days back, I went to visit the gallery at the Rudolfinum (where I'm still astounded they let you in for free).

The name of the exhibition had intrigued me at once - DATAS: The Data and the Sovereign. Structured around three main sub-exhibitions - Spectres of the Leviathan, Islands of Insubordination and Songs of Refusal, it spans the takes of some twenty artists on what it is to be a human in this age of transient, ubiquitous, deeply unsettling data transference.

Is it fair to call it that? I think it might be.

It raised the obvious question - the perils of being permanently observed, but more importantly, how that is altering us in real time. Because we have this impression of being watched as one might watch a TV show, except we are more than watched. The act of watching is interacting with us, and we, inescapably, are interacting with our captive audience.

As one suspecting his neighbors of voyeurism might start subtly altering his behavior to seem more engaging, we are trapped in a continual farcical dance with the eye that is trained on us, digital and decidedly not-well-meaning though it may be. The murky, kinky truth about many of us is...

... we relish being perceived.

Invite, almost, the observer, and rue the days when the Eye of Sauron drifts elsewhere. It’s to do with that clever, human part of us that has identified, correctly, the most prized possession within our arsenal - attention.

Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague 2026 | (C) Photo belongs to the author.

We covet the watcher's attention, even as we suspect they may be malevolent in nature. What strange, dirty beings we are. And can there be any doubt we'll damage ourselves tremendously in so doing?

The exhibiton plays on this topic beautifully, as one particular part of the display highlights. In a certain part of the room, a gaggle of smartphones mounted on trepieds, their cameras at the ready. Via smart (though now banal) motion detecting technology, the cameras have no trouble identifying the visitor, and trailing them through the room.

And me, this cheeky, promiscuous visitor, beginning to play and engage with the monster, even as I can appreciate the artist’s warning. In simple truth, we have become used, all of us, to playing for the camera. Poking out our lips, straightening our backs, putting on our better selves. Even now, mentally engaged in the act of rightful alarmism, we can’t help playing with the camera. Altering our walk, changing our face. The magic goes on.

Oh, by now, we're all well-versed in the oughts of the 21st century. I know that to be a good girl, I should be ticking off non-essential cookies, and being incognito wherever I can. About personalized ads. I may even have a sneaking suspicion as to how my "information" is being contrabanded through AI, though of course that doesn't stay my hand whenever I have the lightest, blandest, most banal query or curiosity for Gemini.

The frightening truth nobody enunciates, however, is, we like being observed. After all, if we did not, regaining sovereignty would be that much simpler, wouldn’t it?

It's not entirely strange, on our part. After all, many of us have grown up in an age so ghastly and corrupt that we have not known, really, what it is to have someone's undivided attention for a whole day.

From my balcony, I frequently watch young mothers pushing prams while their eyes are glued to their smartphone. Woe be those children who grow up with even less attention showered on them than us, because, well, look at us.

Perplexingly, while we live in the most selfish and egocentrical age man has ever known, we're really, all of us, neglected children. (And isn't it perfectly predictable that the more a child is neglected, the more self-absorbed they will become?).

We lack proper attention, on account of too many things vying for it. We can see that easily in our own day-to-day. I've hardly woken up properly before 12 e-mails, sixteen DMs, three news stories, and no less than 43 reels spanning everything from true crime, the cooking channel and the Strait of Hormuz all elbow each other for my mental prime time.

We are losing the capacity to focus properly on one another, even if we wanted to.

And that is not a game we want to be playing. In an age where the highest value currency is attention, the biggest "flex" is knowing how to become invisible.

And I asked myself, many times, leaving the Rudolfinum, do I?

If I wanted to disappear myself today, how would I? I could leave my phone on the nightstand at home, but then what if I want to pay for something? Or take the bus? Or catch up with a friend for coffee in the city? Or keep track of that test result I’ve been waiting for? Or notify my students of our weekend class? What if I wanted to read more about one of the artists showing at this very gallery?

And even if, by some miracle, I managed to leave my phone at home for a day, I would still leave ample evidence behind, as the exhibiton reminds me. Under continuous CCTV observation, and with all my fellow life passengers expertly angling their selfie cameras, traces of me are bound to pop up, quite accurately tracing my progress across the Czech capital.

Alas, leaving my phone behind is but a small part of the question.

As anyone can tell you in our psychologically-informed age, the pivotal step in treating the issue isn't putting the Jack Daniel's down (important though that may be). It's getting to the root cause of our attention deficit and to the why we so enjoy this perilous, digital voyeurism.

Because as long as we still vye for being watched, our data and sovereignty continue to be at risk. If I ask myself today, why do I need to be watched, what happens?

I need to be watched because I need to feel like I matter. Like I have something worth showing. If I have nothing worth showing, how do I know I contribute to the highest form of sacrifice my generation engages in? If I contribute nothing, that means I am not important or beneficent to society. If I have no purpose in my current tribe, I have no purpose at all, and if so, why do I live?

Why do I live?

---

I highly recommend the gallery, and more specifically the exhibition, which runs through to the end of August 2026. After all, isn’t it the point of art to leave you dangling such meaty, over-achieving questions as the one above?

I wrote this a couple of weeks back, but I guess I'm missing Prague, which is why I'm sharing it now.