Existing comment:
Trevor Paglen
Sites Unseen
Trevor Paglen blurs the lines between art, science, and investigative journalism to construct unfamiliar and at times unsettling ways to see and interpret the world around us. Paglen, who holds a Ph.D. in geography from the University of California at Berkeley, approaches his work with a scientist's sense of inquiry. He employs a range of techniques and technologies to ask questions and probe for answers about surveillance, secrecy, privacy, and democracy. Paglen refers to his art-making as "experimental geography," a hybrid discipline that uses ideas from the field of geography to extend our understanding of where and how we live.
Paglen was born in Camp Springs, Maryland, in 1974. A childhood spent on military bases made him familiar with and empathetic to its culture. Now based in Berlin, Germany, he has traveled the world over the past fifteen years collecting visual and material evidence of things we are not meant to see. Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen surveys Paglen's career and examines how he interrogates public records and spaces to create images, artifacts, and sculptural objects that reveal a covert world operating just out of view. Inspired by the history of American landscape photography, Paglen's photographs explore the land, sea, sky, and heavens to show the physical infrastructure of secrecy, from classified military installations and spy satellites to communications cables and artificial intelligence (AI). His artifacts show the systems -- logos, patches, and code names -- that help maintain a cloak of invisibility. His sculptures act in opposition to what his images and artifacts expose, by offering alternative uses for military and intelligence technologies. With these objects, Paglen invites us to imagine a future in which "new forms of freedom and democracy can emerge." |