LABORAL - CENTRO DE ARTE Y CREACIÓN INDUSTRIAL

COUNTERMEASURES

HASAN ELAHI

Tracking Transience: A Month of Sundays (2009)

Projection, Internet. http://trackingtransience.net

Hasan Elahi began this project in 2004, as a response to the fact that he was mistakenly singled out by databases used in the US War on Terror. The artist decided to upload to the Internet in real time as complete a record as possible of his life, so that US authorities would never have to wonder where he was or what he was eating or his most recent credit card transactions. They could just look it up online. Ultimately, Tracking Transience is a commentary on the surveillance – overt, surreptitious and inadvertent – to which we are all increasingly subject and, possibly, a means of evasion by overloading the system with too much information to be intelligibly processed.

KNOWBOTIC RESEARCH + PETER SANDBICHLER

Be Prepared! Tiger! (2005-2006)

Boat, aluminium and wood: 440 x 240 x 75 cm; single-channel video: 1’ 15”

In April 2004 video footage appeared on the Internet showing two Tamil Tigers proudly patrolling Sri Lankan waters in a boat retrofitted in the shape of a US Air Force F117 Stealth Bomber. In 2006 Knowbotic Research + Peter Sandbichler reconstructed a stealth boat and launched it in the harbour of Duisburg. The polygonal contours of the boat were jarringly visible among the local boat traffic, but it proved invisible to quayside radar. While the cloak of such radar invisibility did not ultimately translate into invincibility for the Tamil liberation movement, as pointed out by writer Stefan Riekeles, the boat’s shape is a “negative blueprint of the radar-controlled space” of contemporary surveillance society.

TREVOR PAGLEN

Limit Telephotography

Morning Commute (Gold Coast Terminal) / Las Vegas, NV/ Distance ~ 1 mile/ 6:26 a.m. (2006).

C-Print. 76,2 x 91,4 cm. Courtesy: Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne and Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco;

Large Hangars and Fuel Storage / Tonopah Test Range, NV/ Distance ~ 18 miles/ 10:44 am (2005).

C-Print. 76,2 x 91,4 cm.

Courtesy: Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne and Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco.

Trevor Paglen’s photographic works critically examine the act of “seeing”, reflecting on access and transparency, what is classified and remains hidden from public view. His series Limit Telephotography employs high-powered telescopes with focal length ranges between 1,300 and 7,000 millimetres to photograph classified military bases and installations in the United States, hidden in deserts and buffered by dozens of miles of restricted land. While the images show little – what is seen may look banal – they suggest top-secret activities to
which no civilian can gain access.

Lacrosse/Onyx II Passing Through Draco (USA 69) (2007)

C-Print. 152 x 121 cm

Cortesía: Galerie Thomas Zander, Colonia y Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco;

DMSP 5B/F4 from Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation (Military Meteorological Satellite; 1973- 054A) (2009)

C-Print. 94 x 76,2 cm.

Cortesía: Galerie Thomas Zander, Colonia y Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco

The Other Night Sky series uses data compiled by amateur astronomers and hobbyist satellite observers to track and photograph classified reconnaissance satellites in earth orbit. The images of formations of stars and planets are deceptively suggestive of Romantic paintings, yet show the “other” night sky that is itself a watchful eye. Paglen’s works turn reconnaissance technologies against themselves, providing access to the classified and thereby “watching them watching us”.

NONNY DE LA PEÑA & PEGGY WEIL

Gone Gitmo (2007-present)

Virtual environment, Second Life.

Acknowledgements: BAVC (Bay Area Video Coalition) New Media Producer’s Institute and The MacArthur Foundation for incubating the project; Joi Ito for providing the first SL land; USC Annenberg School of Communication for housing the current installation; Bernard Drax for “Virtual Guantánamo” machinima and scoring the machimima installation

The artists’ simulation of Guantánamo in Second Life incorporates documentary video, scripted experiences for visitors’ avatars and live events. While Gone Gitmo does not pretend to capture the reality of life in the prison, it takes advantage of the virtual world to create an experience of the loss of control and agency that comes with imprisonment. The experience begins in a C-17 plane as the visitor’s avatar is hooded and teleported to a cell in Camp X-Ray. Here, the avatar will be confronted with documentary video of the camp and detainees and reports of practices occurring in Guantánamo, among them recordings from the collection Poems from Guantánamo and transcripts from FBI interrogations.

SYSTEM-77CCR CONSORTIUM

 All that is Solid Melts into Air! (2009)

Unmanned tactical aerobatic operation/observation installation.

Production: Zavod Projekt Atol. Coproduction: LABoral. With the support of: Ministry of Culture, Republic of Slovenia, City of Ljubljana Cultural Department. C-Astral Ltd. Bramor UAS was developed, designed and manufactured by C-Astral Ltd., Ajdovscina, Slovenia

S-77CCR is a tactical media and hardware counter-surveillance consortium, set up to develop, design, and operate Unmanned Aerial Systems in several different scenarios and settings in which the civil society can
be empowered by counter-surveillance technologies. All that is Solid Melts into Air! is a new work by the S-77CCR Consortium, which explores the potential of tactical unmanned systems for codifi ed aesthetic operations in line with the aeropittura futurista tradition. The work consists of a fl ying performance and an installation documenting the performance and presenting the history of the consortium and its different projects and platforms.