Trevor Paglen

Trevor Paglen
Born	1974
Alma mater	School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA) University of California at Berkeley (BA, Ph.D.)
Awards	2017 MacArthur Genius Grant

Trevor Paglen (born 1974) is an American artist, geographer, and author whose work tackles mass surveillance and data collection.^[1][2]

Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian, said that Paglen, whose "ongoing grand project [is] the murky world of global state surveillance and the ethics of drone warfare", "is one of the most conceptually adventurous political artists working today, and has collaborated with scientists and human rights activists on his always ambitious multimedia projects."^[2]

In 2016, he won the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize^[3] and he has also won The Cultural Award from the German Society for Photography.^[4] In 2017, he was a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant and is nominated for the 8th Artes Mundi award.

Life and work

Paglen earned a B.A. in 1998 from the University of California at Berkeley, a Master of Fine Arts degree in 2002 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in geography in 2008 from the University of California at Berkeley,^[5] where he currently works as a researcher. While at UC Berkeley, Paglen lived in the Berkeley Student Cooperative, residing in Chateau, Rochdale, Fenwick, and Convent co-ops.

Paglen has published a number of books. Torture Taxi (2006), (co-authored with investigative journalist Adam Clay Thompson) was the first book to comprehensively describe the CIA's extraordinary rendition program. I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me (2007), is a look at the world of black projects through unit patches and memorabilia created for top-secret programs.^[6] Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World (2009) is a broader look at secrecy in the United States.^[7] The Last Pictures (2012) is a collection of 100 images to be placed on permanent media and launched into space on EchoStar XVI, as a repository available for future civilizations (alien or human) to find.^[8]

Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian, said that Paglen, whose "ongoing grand project [is] the murky world of global state surveillance and the ethics of drone warfare", "is one of the most conceptually adventurous political artists working today, and has collaborated with scientists and human rights activists on his always ambitious multimedia projects."^[2] His visual work such as his "Limit Telephotography" and "The Other Night Sky" series have received widespread attention for both his technical innovations and for his conceptual project that involves simultaneously making and negating documentary-style truth-claims.^[9]

He was an Eyebeam Commissioned Artist in 2007.

Paglen is featured in the nerd culture documentary Traceroute.

Publications

Exhibitions (selected)

Paglen has shown photography and other visual works.

• Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, Massachusetts
• Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art, Medzilaborce, Slovakia
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
• Bellwether Gallery, New York, November–December 2006.^[10]
• Still Revolution: Suspended in Time, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, May–June 2009. Group exhibition with Paglen, Barbara Astman, Walead Beshty, Mat Collishaw, Stan Douglas, Idris Khan, Martha Rosler, and Mikhael Subotzky.^[11]
• Geographies of Seeing, Lighthouse, Brighton, England, October–November 2012^{[12][13][14][15]}
• Trevor Paglen, Altman Siegel gallery, San Francisco, CA, March–May 2015^[16][17]
• Autonomy Cube, Edith-Russ-Haus, Oldenburg, Germany, October 2015 – January 2016. Sculpture by Paglen and Jacob Appelbaum.^[18][19]
• Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2016, The Photographers' Gallery, London, April–July 2016. Deutsche Börse Photography Prize shortlist with Paglen, Erik Kessels, Laura El-Tantawy, and Tobias Zielony.^[2]
• Radical Landscapes, di Rosa, Napa, February–April 2016^[20]
• A Study of Invisible Images, Metro Pictures, New York, September–October 2017^[21]

Experimental Geography

Paglen is credited with coining the term "Experimental Geography" to describe practices coupling experimental cultural production and art-making with ideas from critical human geography about the production of space, materialism, and praxis. The 2009 book Experimental Geography: Radical Approaches to Landscape, Cartography, and Urbanism is largely inspired by Paglen's work.^[22]

Awards

• 2014: Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.^[23]
• 2015: The Cultural Award from the German Society for Photography (DGPh)^[4]
• 2016: Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize^[3]
• 2017: MacArthur Fellow, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Chicago, IL^[24]

Collections

Paglen's work is held in the following public collections:

• Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH^[25][26]
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA^[27]

Works

• Free works of Trevor Paglen at Wikimedia Commons
• 
  Headquarters of the National Security Agency on Fort Meade, Maryland
• 
  Headquarters of the National Reconnaissance Office in Chantilly, Virginia
• 
  Headquarters of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in Springfield, Virginia

See also

• Orbital Reflector

Further reading

• Beckman, Karen (2007). "Telescopes, Transparency, and Torture: Trevor Paglen and the Politics of Exposure," Art Journal 66.3
• Belisle, Brooke (2014). “I See the Moon, The Moon Sees Me: Trevor Paglen’s Satellite Views," Media-N special issue on Art & Infrastructures: Hardware, vol. 10, no. 1 (Spring 2014).
• Belisle, Brooke "Artifacts: Trevor Paglen’s Frontier Photography" in Making the Geologic Now: Responses to Material Conditions of Contemporary Life edited by Jamie Kruse and Elizabeth Ellsworth (New York: Punctum Books, 2012). ISBN 0615766366
• Gustafsson, Henrick (2013). "Foresight, Hindsight and State Secrecy in the American West: The Geopolitical Aesthetics of Trevor Paglen" in Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 12, 1: pp. 148-164.
• Lind, Maria (2016). "Center Stage: Trevor Paglen," Kaleidoscope 26.
• Perini, Julie (2010). "Art as Intervention: A Guide to Today's Radical Art Practices". In Team Colors Collective. Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Movements, and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States. AK Press. ISBN 9781849350167.
• Smudge Studio "The Uneven Time of Space Debris: An Interview with Trevor Paglen" in Making the Geologic Now: Responses to Material Conditions of Contemporary Life edited by Jamie Kruse and Elizabeth Ellsworth (New York: Punctum Books, 2012). ISBN 0615766366
• Stallabrass, Julian (2011). "Negative Dialectics in the Google Era: A Conversation with Trevor Paglen," October 138.
• Thompson, Nato (ed). Experimental Geography: Radical Approaches to Landscape, Cartography, and Urbanism (Melville House Publishing, 2009, ISBN 978-0-09-163658-6
• Van Tome, Niels (2015). Visibility Machines: Harun Farocki and Trevor Paglen. ISBN 1890761192, 9781890761196
• Weiner, Jonah (2012). "Prying Eyes: Trevor Paglen Makes Art Out of Government Secrets," New Yorker, October 22, 2012.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Trevor Paglen.

• Official website
• April 2009 interview with Trevor Paglen.
• Trevor Paglen's appearance on the Colbert Report from April 7. 2008.
• Trevor Paglen and Jacob Appelbaum Bomb