Sekula beyond Sekula: Film by Tyler Coburn

Tyler Coburn U, 2014–16. 39 minutes.

"U" is a fictional video loosely based on Tyler Coburn’s fieldwork in Songdo, South Korea: a massive development project advertised as "ubiquitous" or an "U-city," where smart technologies are implemented at every tier of urban design. During the summer of 2014, Coburn interviewed employees of Songdo’s Integrated Operations Center, who monitor the surveillance and sensor data generated by the city. At that time, several employees were suffering from the relentless monitoring work, and their supervisor was in the process of introducing therapy sessions. U departs from this anecdote, imagining a contemporary form of Gestalt psychotherapy designed for such workers. Eschewing any depth model, Gestalt focuses on the “here and now”: on what is apprehensible in the present moment through sense experience. The therapist is thus akin to a surveillance camera, scanning for modulations in a patient’s body, language, and tone of voice. Technology’s remaking of the world, Coburn’s video implies, extends from the scale of the built environment to the most intimate notions of self.