The Challenge Coins are wall-mounted sculptures whose designs are inspired by various military and law-enforcement “challenge coins.” These are awarded to the participants of special operations successfully undertaking aspects of particular missions. These tokens serve as both a competitive incentive for high levels of performance and a manifest form of symbolic currency, marking the acquisitionContinue reading “Challenge Coins”
Author Archives: paglenstudio
The Fence
In 1979, astronomer W. T. “Woody” Sullivan worked with two undergraduates at the University of Washington to publish a now-classic paper entitled “Eavesdropping: The Radio Signature of Earth.” Sullivan et al. found that the brightest continuous signals emanating from earth came from military radar systems designed to detect ballistic missiles and track satellites in earth orbit,Continue reading “The Fence”
Rendition Flights
In the early 2000s, I did a lot of work investigating the CIA’s so-called “extraordinary rendition” program. This was a program to kidnap, disappear, and torture people that the agency accused of terrorism. Done mostly in collaboration with investigative journalist AC Thompson, the work involved tracking airplanes that we knew the CIA was using forContinue reading “Rendition Flights”
Black Sites
With the beginning of the so-called War on Terror in the early 2000s, the CIA set up a network of secret prisons in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world. Hundreds of “ghost prisoners” went through this system of extrajudicial disappearance and imprisonment. The black sites became synonymous with torture. The locations of the secret prisonsContinue reading “Black Sites”
Image Operations
Shot in Berlin’s historic Funkhaus, Image Operations. Op.10 is a video installation that highlights emerging forms of computer vision and machine learning. A string quartet performs Debussy’s String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 10. As the video evolves, the perspective of the view slowly changes from that of a camera, to that of an arrayContinue reading “Image Operations”
Symbology
Military culture is filled with a totemic visual language consisting of symbols and insignia that signify everything from various unit and command affiliations to significant events, and noteworthy programs. A typical uniform will sport patches identifying its wearer’s job, program affiliation, achievements and place within the military hierarchy. These markers of identity and program heraldryContinue reading “Symbology”
Everyday Landscapes & Seventeen Letters from the Deep State
Everyday Landscape: Sportsflight Airways, Richmor Aviation, Dyncorp, Central Intelligence Agency, 1996-2006 is a sustained investigation into a network of aviation companies, private intelligence firms, state officials, and monied interests behind several covert government actions, including aspects of the CIA’s rendition program. Created from years of research into legal documents coupled with painstaking, paparazzi-like photographic work,Continue reading “Everyday Landscapes & Seventeen Letters from the Deep State”
Limit Telephotography
Much of the history of surveillance, secrecy, and militarism can be found deep in the American deserts, where classified military bases and weapon ranges litter the remotest landscapes. Tucked away within massive restricted military ranges and buffered by dozens of miles of restricted land, there is often nowhere on Earth where a civilian might beContinue reading “Limit Telephotography”
Color Studies
In the early 2000s I spent a number of years volunteering as an anti-prison activist, mostly producing media to assist in grassroots organizing campaigns against the construction of new prisons in California. Over the course of this work, I spent time with people in rural communities where the majority of prisons were being constructed. California’sContinue reading “Color Studies”
Code Names of the Surveillance State
I think of this endlessly scrolling video installation – composed from more than 4,000 National Security Agency (NSA) and Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) surveillance program code names – as a kind of found poem crafted from the deliberately nonsensical names used for NSA surveillance programs. The project was first presented to coincide with the openingContinue reading “Code Names of the Surveillance State”