Desire/Conceal We search for authenticity in art through artifice and simulated experience. To countervail is to act against with equal force in opposition. Through the investigation of two works in video, performance and installation, the author offers a consideration of the term counterv(e)illance as an interplay of readings premised on selected critical theories which conjure associations of veiling and masking while merging these concepts under the banner of a type of surveillance, concealment and revealing. To counterv(e)il is to effect an intervention, and also a counter-action, an act of agency and equality. The power of objects to generate feelings of anxiety, to question our preconceptions and construct new associations, allows the exploration of new territories of desire and remembrance. As we interact with them these objects of desire meld into each other, lose and reform their identity, take on new meanings and relationships, to be imagined, experienced, remembered and forgotten. Through the private transformation of public spaces, heterotopias such as Counterv(e)il perform an apostatic gesture, bringing into question our perceptions of what is real and what is fiction.