Currently hosting the works of multimedia creator Trevor Paglen at The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the exhibit titled Sites Unseen is composed of various forms of art that utilize science to inform.
As an award-winning artist who has the distinction of currently exhibiting his art in both the radioactive Fukushima Exclusion Zone as well as the Earth’s atmosphere, Paglen is a recipient of a Ph.D. in Geography from UC Berkley and is also the author of five books.
Fascinated with mass surveillance and infrastructures, Paglen seeks to reveal the unseen by utilizing science and technology to push the boundaries of art. Demonstrated in works such as The Fence (2010), which consists of photographs of electromagnetic waves that reveal a radar system that spans the United States, Paglen is also known for the use of limit-telephotography to see inside government-restricted areas.
Ever the explorer, underwater photographs of the fibre-optic cables that lay between continents and images of space have been captured by Paglen’s lens.
Beyond the camera, Paglen is renowned for the creation of a cube sculpture titled Trinity Cube (2015). Made from radioactive glass from Fukushima, Japan and Trinitite (which is a mineral created from New Mexico sand and the force of the first atomic bomb in 1945), the cube is currently stored in a secret location inside Fukushima Exclusion Zone, where it will remain until the Exclusion Zone is habitable again.
The Autonomy Cube (2014) is designed for galleries and contains a computer that creates an internet hotspot. Participants will be connected to Tor, a global, volunteer-run network that anonymizes data.
Famously, Paglen collaborated with Creative Times and MIT for a project entitled The Last Pictures (2012), which launched 100 black and white images attached to a satellite into the ring of machines and debris around Earth. There they may remain until the death of the sun.
With art, Paglen raises various questions regarding human beings and the relationship with Earth and what is to come for the future.
“What I want out of art are things that help us see who are now,” said Paglen.
“Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen” can also be experienced at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego from February 22nd-June 2nd.
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