ALL EYES ON IO

Year: 2020
Thanks to: Dominique van den Burg, KOP Breda, But Filmfestival Breda, Het Hijgend Hert BredaInspiration:Zeus turned Io (his mistress) into a silver colored cow so Hera (his wife) wouldn’t notice something. Hera knew something was wrong and asked Zeus to give the cow as a present to her. So he did and Hera let Argus (a giant who had 100 eyes) to watch Io and prevent Zeus from visiting her.Argus was also a source of inspiration for Jeremy Bentham’s prison design: Panopticon. The concept of the design is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be observed by a single security guard, without the inmates being able to tell whether they are being watched.

Although it is physically impossible for the single guard to observe all the inmates’ cells at once, the fact that the inmates cannot know when they are being watched means that they are motivated to act as though they are being watched at all times. Thus, the inmates are effectively compelled to regulate their own behaviour. The architecture consists of a rotunda with an inspection house at its centre. From the centre the manager or staff of the institution are able to watch the inmates.

The Koepelgevangenis in Breda was constructed as a panopticon.