Do you remember “the dress” from 2015? For a few weeks that year, a low res image of a random dress fomented a seemingly inescapable internet debate over whether his colors were blue and black or white and gold.
It all seemed like a bit of fun. Taylor Swift weighed in; just like every uncle with a Facebook account. Peer-reviewed studies and articles eventually get to the bottom of it the science behind split interpretations, but by then most people were tired of talking about it. In the end, we ended up with a simple fact: people can look at the same object and see different things.
But what if this physiological basis phenomenon could be used as a weapon against us in the name of espionage or commerce? (The clothing debate has proven to be a big deal for social media platforms and the media – Buzzfeed even based its editorial strategy around he.)
For Trevor paglen, an artist who has made a career Looking at the clever manners in which technology To shaped our view of the world around us We, This is a matter of when, not if.
“In the extremely near future,” the entertainer said, “you and I will be watching what is apparently the same show on Netflix, but we will each see a different movie.” The streaming platform, he explained, “will generate a different movie for us based on, first, the things we want to see; and two, what he thinks is the most efficient way to extract some sort of value from us.
Trevor Paglen, UNKNOWN #85237 (Unclassified item near Eastern Veil) (2023). © Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of Pace Gallery.
The sartorial anecdote might seem like a strange place to start an article on Paglen’s new exhibition at the Pace Gallerywhich has nothing to do with clothes or Netflix and instead concerns a wide range of gripping political topics like eelectronic warfare and the effects of military influence operations on American culture. But we start here because, if there’s a central theme that ties this otherwise disparate exhibition together, it’s, in Paglen’s words, that “perception is malleable.”
“You just got fucked by PSYOPSis the name of the show. Its title is taken from a phrase frequently found on challenge coins, which are small tokens made to commemorate special military and law enforcement units that use unconventional tactics of persuasion to achieve a particular goal, also known as challenges. psychological operations or psy-ops. (Taking the form of currency, these souvenirs also make eerie metaphors for the wider military-industrial complex.)
If you’ve heard of psy-ops, chances are it’s in the context of science fiction or conspiracy theory. But the phrase is about to become much more common in our collective lexicon, Paglen said. If the past decade has been defined by “surveillance capitalism” – a term coined by researcher Shoshana Zuboff to refer to the practice of companies harvesting and selling our personal data – then we’re about to enter what Paglen calls the era of “psy-ops capitalism”. .”
Trevor Paglen, (PALLADIUM variant #4) 2023. © Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of Pace Gallery.
Sure enough, a spooky character features prominently in Paglen’s own version of a challenge piece, which is a centerpiece of the show. The sculpture, which is about 50 times the size of a coin, is made of steel, bullets and resin. in the middle is a menacing skull with glowing features. (Genuine challenge coins bear the insignia of their units, usually symbols of patriotism or violence. Skeletons and dragons are popular choices, Paglen pointed out.)
Elsewhere in the exhibit are several large-scale photographs of “unids”, or unidentified objects floating in orbit around the earth, which the artist imaged using infrared telescopes in remote locations. It can be difficult to spot these unids, however. Paglen’s prints are also full of stellar remnants, stars, and gas clouds. So much so, in fact, that the images could just as easily be read as reflections on the vast mysteries of outer space.
For Paglen, they kind of are. “I think space itself as a concept is kind of a psy-op,” he said, half-jokingly. Because of its radical unknowability, space becomes a backdrop onto which we project our fantasies, he says.
Trevor Paglen, UNKNOWN #90007 (Classified object near the Dreyer Nebula) (2023). © Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of Pace Gallery.
Think about this idea in the gallery and you’ll start to wonder: can I trust everything that’s on display, or is the artist using the same techniques he’s exploring? Do I see a deception or am I deceived?
This question becomes even trickier with the single video piece, Doty (2023). The 66-minute film features interviews with Richard Doty, a former member of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, who talks about his work in recruiting spies, surveillance operations and spreading false information within UFO communities to cover up covert work being conducted at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, where he was stationed.
Whether or not Doty is a reliable narrator is never entirely clear; neither does his schedule. For every moment that it feels like he’s whispering state secrets in our ears, there are others that feel like he’s spinning threads that are just a little too neat to be true. – an entertaining magician’s assistant on the trick.
Trevor Paglen, Doty (2023). © Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of Pace Gallery.
Hanging above the gallery is the artist’s other sculpture in the exhibition, the kite PALLADIUM Variant #4 (2023). It’s based on satellites designed by military and intelligence agencies to confuse enemy radar, but unlike these objects, which are ultra-sophisticated pieces of deception technology, Paglen’s imitation is primitive – just steel and aluminum foil. More than a weapon, it invokes the work of mid-century minimalists, for example, or light and space artists like Larry Bell.
The uselessness of the sculpture leaves its meaning unclear. This is the case of many works presented in the exhibition. Simple and sober – a printed photograph, a single-channel video – they do not exude any of the complexities of the systems they invoke. How they all fit together remains a mystery. The whole is full of ambiguity.
This, according to the artist, is intentional. The show asks viewers, “What is this ambiguity? How are we susceptible to being taken advantage of in these times? »
“Our impulse is to try to resolve this ambiguity, to make sense of it,” he continued. But for Paglen, the show is meant to remind us that our “inability to live with ambiguity could be a means by which we can be manipulated.”
“Trevor Paglen: You just got screwed by PSYOPSis on view through July 22 at Pace in New York.
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