Visiting Curator: Niels Van Tomme

Visibility Machines explores the unique roles Harun Farocki and Trevor Paglen play as meticulous observers of the global military industrial complex. Investigating forms of military surveillance, espionage, war-making, and weaponry, Farocki and Paglen each examine the deceptive and clandestine ways in which military projects have deeply transformed, and politicized, our relationship to images and the realities they seem to represent. The exhibition initiates critical questions about the crucial part images play in revealing essential but largely concealed information, and places the oeuvres of Harun Farocki and Trevor Paglen within the broader cultural and historical developments of the media they are creatively working with, namely photography, film, and new media.

Image Caption. Captions (left to right): Harun farocki, War at a Distance, 2003, video, 54 min., Copyright Harun Farocki; Trevor Paglen, LACROSSE/ONYX V near Cepheus (Synthetic Aperture Radar Reconnaissance Satellite; USA 182), 2008, C-Print, 48 x 60 in., Courtesy of Metro Pictures, Altman Siegel Gallery, and Galerie Thomas Zander