The Schwindel der Wirklichkeit (Vertigo of Reality) exhibition at Berlin’s Akademie der Künste brings together works by around 40 artists – from the 1960s to today – in which reflections on reality take centre-stage. The show takes as its point of departure the observation that we find ourselves on a media-related threshold in which the superposition of the virtual and the real world becomes ever more impenetrable. Some works enter into a critical engagement with the question of what happens when reality seems increasingly transient and it becomes normal for technologies to grow invisible. Projects that explore the realms of invisibility and visibility appear particularly interesting here, pointing to aspects that are supposed to remain secret, to what is not addressed, to everything that is not manifested visually.
Curator Niels van Tomme establishes a productive dialogue between films by Harun Farocki and photographic work by Trevor Paglen under the title Visibility Machines.1 Both artists look critically at surveillance, espionage, warfare and weapons technology, examining how military projects and technological developments influence our relationship to images and to the realities they seem to represent.
Paglen’s photographs raise the question of how things that officially do not exist can be depicted. They bear witness to a “black world” – a world of military secrets in the USA – and disclose a highly developed doctrine of secrecy. Paglen, who holds a Ph.D. in Geography, works on the assumption “that all human undertakings, including secret programs, are spatial. In other words, even though classified programs are organized in such a way as to maximize their own invisibility, they have to happen somewhere.”2 In keeping with this, Paglen seeks out places and moments where this “black world” becomes apparent.
The photograph Chemical and Biological Weapons Proving Ground, Dugway, UT/Distance ~ 22 miles/11:17 a.m. (2006) is taken at a distance of 22 miles from its subject. It shows a blurry desert landscape, in which a dark brown strip appears between the sand and the horizon like a secret code; the test site for chemical and biological weapons cited in the title apparently lies behind this. The restricted zones around the secret military bases that Paglen turns his camera on are so enormous that he works with extreme telephoto lens that are normally used in astrophotography in order to see anything at all. With this equipment, Paglen produces ambivalent images that systematically fail to produce a decent representation of the concealed reality. “It is very telling however that one has to use a lens for this purpose that was built to photograph stars”,3 to cite Harun Farocki’s apposite comment. Brian Holmes also takes the view that Paglen is not concerned to document reality in clearly focused photographs, for commercial satellite images can do this far more effectively; instead he sees the dust, the hot, shimmering air that blurs the detail in the images “as perceptual metonyms of this resistance to democratic oversight that defines the black world and, indeed, so much of contemporary military activity”. 4
When Paglen draws the spatially remote – including satellites and drones, as well as the military bases – as close as possible by means of special technology, this form of visualization is always also concerned with drawing attention to the underlying political implications and turning the spotlight on the image’s questionable status as a form of evidence. Farocki’s iconic deployment of operational images produced for and by machines also points to a transformation in the understanding of the images as a “reconnaissance tool”. As van Tomme writes, images are “no longer envisioned to present something, they are employed as recognition and tracking tools for military use, becoming fully integrated within the fabric of war instead of the advance of knowledge”.5 In Erkennen und Verfolgen (War at a Distance) (2003), Farocki demonstrates how the camera and the bomb become identical, associated with physical and psychological distance from the actual events of war, as first observed in the 1991 Gulf War. What is shown are abstract images that block out the concrete consequences for human beings.

Visible data networks
Farocki and Paglen seem to be arguing that the subject must maintain societal control over the new military power-structures of vision. In a comparable vein, Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev work as critical engineers to exert greater influence on increasingly opaque computer systems, and spread their knowledge through workshops.6 As Men in Grey (since 2009), they demonstrate in an undercover performance that the online networks we navigate daily are highly unprotected. Two mysterious agents prowl the city, recording all the data traffic transmitted via unencrypted WLAN. There is huge consternation when a user suddenly hears her own chat conversation in a disjointed computerised voice and sees it reproduced on a portable monitor with her user name and IP address.
Oliver draws on a quotation from Bruno Latour to elucidate why a critical engagement with communication technology is so crucial for him: “When a machine runs efficiently, when a matter of fact is settled, one need focus only on its inputs and outputs and not on its internal complexity. Thus, paradoxically, the more science and technology succeed, the more opaque and obscure they become.”7 The artistic approaches described here are linked by what Latour describes as “blackboxing”. All these practices focus on introducing greater transparency into the obfuscations generated by technology.
In a similar spirit, Herman Asselberghs’ video Dear Steve (2010) delves into the realm that lies behind the user-friendly interface. A brand-new MacBook Pro is painstakingly and relentlessly disassembled as viewers watch, until, after 45 minutes, every single screw is laid out. This act literally deconstructs the digital implement and sheds light on its irreducible materiality.
As the collection of individual components from the laptop grows, a voice off-screen reads out a letter in a questioning, analytic tone, directed to Steve Jobs. Asselberghs breaks with the suggested notion of a transparent, virtual medium and addresses issues of political and economic power. “You seem to be partial to the mono-production of Foxconn. Ten to one they are the producer of my laptop, according to the plant code embedded in the serial number. Year of fabrication: 2009. Week: 42. Product number within that week: 38.594. Production Plant: Shanghai”, the speaker infers, commenting that now he understands why people always say “Designed in California. Made in China”. At the end of the letter, viewers start to suspect what deep abysses lurk behind the convenient everyday object. While those involved in manufacturing and waste disposal have to deal with huge numbers of individual components that pose a health hazard, consumers receive a sleek, functional product.

Schwindel der Wirklichkeit (Vertigo of Reality), Akademie der Künste Berlin, 17th September to 14th December 2014.

 

Translated by Helen Ferguson

 

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