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On Camouflage

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On Camouflage [ THE SEEN ] THE BATTLE OF IMAGES, photographic nothingness for the cameras representability. For Steyerl, the notion of image NOW AND THEN overhead. Artists were there in 1 91 5 at the birth of resolution becomes a crucial analytical tool, On camouflage, and in 2 01 5, they remain important because as resolution in an image increases, the public thinkers on the dangers of being visible to space in which to hide––its noise ––diminishes. The resurgence of camouflage: camo is trending, the machine eyes of corporations and the state. — “To become invisible,” a text-to-speech avatar again. As one fashion director put it, “camo is ———————————————————— intones in a robotic accent, “one has to become Camo uflage the trick birthday candle of patterns; you think Where the vulnerability of being visible was once smaller or equal to one pixel.” ——————— 1 PHOTOGRAPHY ON THE LEVEL OF THE OBJECT it’s gone out, it starts back up again.” Within a a battlefield concern in 1915, the defenselessness —————————————— Escape is only By Gan Uyeda society of complete visuality and visibility, it has of being seen has now metastasized; corporatized possible by burrowing deep down into the become more and more important to consider the social media and hyper-networked state pixelated noise. ————————————— ramifications of camo as a militarized pattern surveillance have transformed state visibility into ———————— Within this trajectory, New growing in fashionable popularity. Beyond a pervasive civilian concern. Berlin-based Hito Zealand-born and Berlin-based artist Simon thinking of camouflage as a tactical or sartorial Steyerl is one of the most significant artists Denny similarly embraces a different kind of operation, the twenty-first century begs us to look working in this vein today. Across extensive noise within his sculptural practice—one with through camo toward its underlying principles. videos, lectures, and essays, Steyerl considers the equally vast implications in the world of Developed a century ago by a group of perils of being seeable, but also the opportunities networked power. Denny creates object conscripted artists in Europe, military camouflage for resistance in a world of total visibility. Her installations that pinpoint the juncture of existed as a countermeasure to the new 2013 video installation, How Not To Be Seen: consumer electronics marketing and geopolitical intelligence technology that had begun to patrol A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File, representability. Joining Steyerl, who is the sky: aerial photography. To be visible to the provides an initial step into this territory in seven representing Germany, and exhibiting now for camera meant opening yourself to attack, so short “lessons” for escaping visibility, including New Zealand at the 2015 Venice Biennale, artists, being specially equipped to think about the “How to Make Something Invisible for a Camera” Denny’s multipart installation Secret Power relationships between objects and images, were and “How to Become Invisible by Merging into a features server rack vitrines filled with the kind of tasked with erasing the visual boundaries between World Made of Pictures.” These lessons revolve visual trash one might expect in the clip art folder thing and environment. To be clear, this was a around an understanding that the world is already of an overeager corporate consultant. In fact, the battle of images, a struggle to flatten and completely consumed by the photographic image, material is quoted directly from internal transform the material of warfare into and that the state operates on the level of Powerpoint slides and other bureaucratic material [ ON CAMOUFLAGE // PHOTOGRAPHY ON THE LEVEL OF THE OBJECT | 39 ] [ 42 | THE SEEN ] [ ON CAMOUFLAGE // PHOTOGRAPHY ON THE LEVEL OF THE OBJECT | 43 ] of the National Security Agency, as well as other the more chilling. ———————————— flying at the far reaches of the visible––that mars We see the ideologies of power––Manifest TITLE PAGE: 1 Jake Gallagher. “Why Men Can’t Stop Buying global intelligence actors, available for artistic ————————— The relationship between Simon Denny, Secret Power , installation view with the beautiful image and flips the nostalgia into a Destiny, American colonialism, Cold War Camouflage Prints .” The Wall Street Journal . interpretation thanks to the leaks of Edward visibility, intelligence, and violence is likewise at Modded Server-Rack Display with Some Interpretations of representation of how secret and pseudo-secret individualism and so on––that informed their 1 Jan. 2 015. Web. 20 Jul. 2 015. 2 Judith Butler. “Torture and Ethics of Photography.” Snowden. ——————————————— the core of American artist Trevor Paglen’s Imagery from NSA MYSTIC, FOXACID, QUANTUMTHEORY, state programs evade proper visualization. ——— production in the first place. ———————— and Other SSO/TAO Slides , 2 015. Photo: Nick Ash. Observant States: Geopolitics and Visual Culture , ed. —————— Denny’s practice here makes for practice. Using pictorial codes that have informed Courtesy New Zealand Pavilion, Venice Biennale. —————————————————— ————————————— From the Fraser McDonald, Rachel Hughes, and Klaus Dodds. an anti-camouflage, a revelation of the banality past notions of beauty in American art—including Where Hito Steyerl valorizes the poor image as a beginning, human camouflage––distinguished (New York: IB Tauris&Co. Ltd., 2 010), 43. OPPOSITE TITLE PAGE: 3 David Foster Wallace. The Pale King (New York: that informs the visual organization of sublime landscapes, photography of the West, Hito Steyerl, How Not To Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic potential “third space” for the global citizen to from animal camouflage in its correspondence to Little, Brown and Company, 2 011), 83. geopolitical action. In parallel to this work, Judith American modernism and Abstract Educational .MOV File , 2013. Video (color, sound). 14 min. recoup power, Paglen’s high gloss, high- technological imaging––revolves around the 4 Roger Caillois. “Mimesis and Legendary Committee on Media and Performance Art Funds © 2 014 Psychasthenia,” , Vol. 31 (Winter, 1984): 17- 32 Butler has noted that the field of state visuality is Expressionism—Paglen channels attention resolution production of rich images acts as a relationship between image and object. Roger October Hito Steyerl. Courtesy Museum of Modern Art, New York. (first published in Minotaur , vol. 7, 1935), 23. highly controlled and regulated by state through his images toward the invisible pathways demand for daylight in state activity. The Caillois, a sociologist running in the Surrealist 5 Hito Steyerl. “Photography and Political Agency?” — permission, “constituted fundamentally by what is of the security state. His ongoing photo series, preparation and research that lead to Paglen’s circles of 1930s Paris, declared camouflage a Conference proceedings, “The Photographic PREVIOUS SPREAD: Universe II,” April 10, 2 013. The New School, New York. cast out and maintained outside the frame .” Untitled (Drones), embodies this ethos. The series Hito Steyerl, Installation View, Andrew Kreps Gallery, images, including deep dives into public records, “photography on the level of the object,” 6 Ayesha Siddiqi. Conference proceedings, 2 Ultimately the secrecy of being outside the is made of sumptuous pastel skyscapes, tinged 2014. How Not To Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational Freedom of Information Act requests, and presaging the increasing transformation of life “Superscript ,” May 2 9, 2 015. The Walker Art .MOV File , 2 013, HD video, single screen in architectural 4 Cente r, Minneapolis. public frame is what gives this imagery its with a feeling of pre-packaged nostalgia and environment. 14 min. Image courtesy of the Artist and massive online databases, are decidedly anti- into an image. This transformation is central to operational power; under the blaring LEDs of his prettiness. Yet the works bear titles like Untitled Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York. visual; the process is boring in its onslaught of the work of Hito Styeral, Simon Denny, Trevor presentation, Denny underscores both the (Predator Drone) and Reaper in the Sun , giving data and paperwork wending through legalistic Paglen and a host of other politically engaged goofiness and the real effectiveness of the NSA the viewer pause to inspect more closely. Each labyrinths. Paglen makes use of a truth observed artists working today. We are in a world where graphics, their cartoony diagrams becoming all picture contains a tiny black speck––a drone by David Foster Wallace, that “abstruse dullness images cross back and forth across the screen, is actually a much more effective shield than is suffering new thwacks and bruises each time they secrecy. For the great disadvantage of secrecy is emerge and recede. “This is why,” Steyerl said in that it’s interesting.” 3 By inserting the abstrusely a recent talk, “I think the reality we live in dull into the visual coordinates of the Beautiful consists of the wreckage of images, of half- “To become invisible, one has to American Image, Paglen allows the electricity to destroyed images littering our reality. ” 5 Living in flow both ways: the contemporary clandestine is this contemporary condition, it is important to become smaller or equal to one pixel .” made visible and made visibly interesting, while remember some recent words by cultural critic at the same time, there is a kind of historical Ayesha Siddiqi: “Visibility in a surveillance state –Hito Steyerl critique of the Beautiful American Image itself. is not power. ” 6 LEFT: Simon Denny, Modded Server-Rack Display with Some Interpretations of David Darchicourt Designs for NSA Defense Intelligence , 2 015. Photo: Nick Ash. Courtesy New Zealand Pavilion, Venice Biennale. RIGHT: Hito Steyerl, How Not To Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File , 2 013 (Still), HD video, single screen in architectural environment. 14 min. Image CC 4.0 Hito Steyerl. Image courtesy of the Artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York. — FOLLOWING SPREAD: Reaper in the Sun , 2 013. C-print, 68 x 81.5 inches (172.7 x 207 cm). .
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