Yellow vests functioned as a counter-surveillance protest technology

Evidence

The high-visibility yellow vests worn by protesters were a particularly distinctive protest technology. Legally required for motorists in cases of road accidents and emergencies, they became a totemic object representing the movement’s transience, urgency, and distress. Vests hence complemented the role played traditionally by masks: the veiling of protesters’ faces to protect them from security forces and safeguard their anonymity. … On closer inspection, however, the Gilets Jaunes’ hypervisual campaigns are emblematic of our own era’s counter-speculations. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 335

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Could serve ‘On Sacrifice’ or more directly relates to visibility politics — the vest as a technology of collective appearing pairs with the K-pop/iWatchDallas mention to show counter-surveillance as shared strategy.
• XREF: connects to: Activists and artists now build counter-surveillance tools to achieve invisibility — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1561; Protesters are designing anticounter-surveillance tools against surveillance capitalism — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1562