Jason Lazarus. Used webcam covers. 2019-present. Live archive, archival pigment print. 40x65 inches.

Used webcam covers is a living archive of user-submitted web cam covers that has taken the form of a large-scale print, gallery takeaway, and animated gif. The archive operates in opacities wherein modest pieces of tape, paper, and cloth dam the potential flow of surveillant images to unseen actors. Each photographed cover is therefore a proxy for all that it covers. Describing webcam covers as “the world’s smallest protest signs, amongst other things,” including protection, Lazarus’s project creates a network of tangible images and reciprocal acts of generosity from these protective images.

S_D/B: How, if at all, have you used your art practice to collect or create soft(qualitative) data on a lived experience (i.e: illness, pain, grief, trauma, etc.)

JL: I run a number of archive projects that follow and eschew the normal methodologies of archiving depending on the subject matter and context. The vernacular is where I often find profound nascent meaning and embodiment. I also teach a class called Artists Collecting, Collections as Monument in order to foster this sensibility to undergraduate and graduate students.

S_D/B: Has your creative practice altered, ameliorated, or otherwise defamiliarized your relationship with this lived experience? If so, how?

JL: My practice scouts and pursues poetic surplus in all forms physical and ephemeral.