"...what I want out of art, and the things that excite me, are things that help us see the historical moment that we live in."
- Trevor Paglen, Clarice Smith Distinguished Lecture (2015)
Trevor Paglen is an artist.
Mrs Paglen is in every fashion of the word an artist. What I mean by that is that he does literally everything. Whatever tool he needs to show the world his art - he will use, whether its a wielding iron, a camera, or a pencil. Most recently he has tackled issues such as mass surveillance and data collection. For this he won the 2016 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Price.
When I read about his project I immediately thought of our Maps & Networks project, because I feel like that in our modern world "mapping" things is very important. We want everything in the clear, and know what everyone is doing. His installation is compromised of images of restricted military and government areas, and skylines showing the flight of passing drones. Multiple ways humans are trying to "map" out the world. He goes on to talk about how he feels like we are unable to see the historical moment that we are currently living in because of all the distractions we endure. I think this fits nicely with our current project.
Another of Paglens projects is this cube that you can see to the right here -->
This project is called "Trinity Cube" and is a part of the 2015 "Don't Follow The Wind" project. This is an inaccessible art installation in the radioactive area around the power plant that exploded in Fukushima, Japan in 2011. The cubes outer layer is made of irradiated broken glass from the Fukushima Exclusion Zone, while the the cubes inner core is made from Trinitite, the mineral created on July 16, 1945 when the USA exploded the worlds first atomic bomb near Alamogordo, New Mexico. Thereby incapsulating the humans race contact with atomic power. I feel like this could also fit our project, although in a different way. When human beings discover something, we become obsessed with fully exploring it. Sometimes this leads to great discoveries that furthers our sciences, and sometimes it ends with mesmerizing destructive force. Nothing fits both these explanations better than nuclear power. Whether its for energy, like in the Fukushima Power Plant, or as a weapon in the 1945 nuclear bomb explosion. It effects everything, thus connecting it to all our lives.
The installation will become open for the public whenever the Exclusion Zone is safe to open again. This can be anytime from the next 3 years, to the next 3000.
If any of you want to read more about this, feel free to follow this link.
TJ
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