3-16-16 Experience Drone Surveillance Bed Down Location: Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, United States |
By Debra Sweet This is a call for everyone who can possibly make it to The Whitney museum in NYC to view Astro Noise, the installation by Laura Poitras. She made the film Citizenfour, responsible for connecting Edward Snowden to international news media. But well before that, she was an artist exploring the U.S. global "war on terror" in film, and in life. I liked the exhibition very much for its internationalism, and artisttry. I plan to go back, and will share more with you. Brooklyn Rail Chloe Wyma writes that in "Bed Down Location, viewers recline on a cushioned platform, gazing overhead at a video of velvety, star-filled skies over Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia. The installation, Poitras explains in the exhibition catalog, is designed to evoke the constant fear of living under drone surveillance. “By asking people to lie down in Bed Down Location,” she says, “I want them to enter an empathic space […] and imagine that there’s a machine flying above you that can end of your life at any moment.” The overall effect, however, is less frightening than ambient. In a twist ending that almost lands, a surveillance monitor at the terminus of the exhibition reveals that an infrared camera concealed in the ceiling has been secretly recording the installation, turning museumgoers into literal objects of surveillance."
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