How Deep Is the Ocean, How High Is the Sky
Trevor Paglen
A solo show of the American artist Trevor Paglen, who works with the media of photography and film focusing on mass surveillance, the global collection of personal data, and ethics of warfare by the means of remotely controlled drones as the main subjects.
The show is named after a popular song of Irving Berlin from 1932, a year so many times compared to 2016, pierces through Paglen’s practices as a photographer, writer and activist in a never-ending quest to uncover hidden structures of the political climate of mass surveillance society. His work leads us by means of an almost romantic, impressionistic imagery to places seemingly lacking any significance, but which in reality shelter secret radar sites, data storages, underwater transcontinental internet connections, etc. Walls covered with a long list of Code Names used by US secret agencies representing their classified units, programmes and departments is overshadowed by an invisible cloud of the secured Tor network on a background of hazy drone vision photographs. Creating together a Vertical Geography, as Paglen calls it, an axis penetrating the Earth and its atmosphere, perceived with an emphasis on the omnipresence of devices which were meant to make our lives better, but in the end at the high price of losing our privacy.
Trevor Paglen, How Deep is the Ocean, How Hight is the Sky (press release) [PDF]
Trevor Paglen uncovers the invisible structures of the world today [PDF]
