Photo credit: Nadine Fraczkowski
In Foucault’s landmark 1975 book Discipline and Punish, he introduced the metaphor of the ‘panopticon,’ a hypothetical prison in which the prisoners are being surveilled at all times while the guards remain unseen in a central tower. Foucault writes, “The panopticon exemplifies the power dynamics present in modern institutions, where individuals are subjected to surveillance and discipline, leading to self-regulation and conformity.” With the advent of smart phones, social media, the sale of personal data, and large language models, the panopticon has endured as a metaphor for our times when it feels as though nothing is ever truly private.
Marie Davidson is throwing a rave in the panopticon’s tower.
With her new record City of Clowns, out today on Soulwax’s Deewee imprint, Davidson shifts her sardonic satire away from the club and towards Big Tech. Inspired by Shoshana Zuboff’s 2019 book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Davidson brings her signature hypnotic deadpan to ten songs skewering tech’s encroachment into our daily lives.
There’s “Demolition” where she appropriates the voice of tech companies that extract personal data for profit. She sounds like a hungry vampire when she sings, “I’ve got to know you / inside and out” and, more directly, “I don’t want your cash anymore / all I want is you / I want your data, baby.” In “Statistical Modeling,” a robotic drone intones calmly over a cold electro beat. Then there’s “Y.A.A.M.” (that’s short for “your asses are mine” for all those following at home.) Inspired by a condescending email Davidson received regarding the business side of the music industry, she penned the propulsive club track to get it through our thick skulls and stiff bodies that it’s not about a brand or a sponsored post – it’s about the music. “Entrepreneurs and producers and freelancers to managers / the whole wide world of bravados, upset liars, and insiders / Give me passion, give me more, I want your asses on the floor,” she sings.
Picking up where her sweat-it-out anthem and previous Soulwax collaboration “Work It” left off, Davidson’s music is never overwrought or heavy handed. Her writing is terse, the beats tensely coiled. She’s cool headed and funny. The artist, she says, is a “sexy clown,” at once meant to entertain and critique. Perhaps it’s no surprise then that she is ambivalent to technology (Davidson didn’t own a laptop until 2016.) She’s part harbinger, part siren, here to remind us of that most important rule of online life: if you’re getting it for free, you are the product. Read more.
