Trevor Paglen's installation at London's Gloucester
Road tube features idyllic landscape with monitoring station in background
- Maev Kennedy
- theguardian.com, Monday
16 June 2014 07.00 BST
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'If we look in the right places at the right times, we
can begin to glimpse America’s vast intelligence infrastructure,' says Trevor
Paglen of his latest work. Photo: PR
A shimmering image of a Yorkshire landscape,
lush green fields spread out under a pinky grey sky, will be installed along
the entire 62-metre length of the platform wall at Gloucester Road tube station
in London this
week. Those with time between their trains may start to wonder about the
strange white buildings in the distance and gradually realise that the scene is
not the rural idyll it first appears.
The creator of the image, US artist and author Trevor
Paglen, describes it as in the tradition of landscape painting by artists such
as Constable, Turner and Gainsborough – but there's more to it than homage to
the Old Masters.
Titled An English Landscape (American Surveillance Base near Harrogate, Yorkshire), the giant
photograph shows Menwith Hill, an RAF base, which has become a huge monitoring station supplying
intelligence to the UK and the US.
Paglen, whose book Blank Spots on the Map: the Dark
Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World, looked at the world of state
intelligence-gathering, was struck by how little visual evidence there was of
the international web of security surveillance uncovered by Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers.
He has created a
series of seductively beautiful images that attempt to document it including night-time images of the US National
Security Agency headquarters and other security bases taken from a hired
helicopter. The Central Intelligence Agency, not surprisingly, refused his
repeated requests to photograph its headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
Theirs need not be an invisible world, Paglen writes:
"Digital surveillance programs require concrete data centres; intelligence
agencies are based in real buildings; surveillance systems ultimately consist
of technologies, people, and the vast network of material resources that
supports them. If we look in the right places at the right times, we can begin
to glimpse America's vast intelligence infrastructure."
The London installation was an unusual commission for
the Art on the Underground programme, which has in the past commissioned brilliantly
colourful works to cheer up the wall of the disused platform.
Louise Coysh, the programme manager, said: "Art
on the Underground is delighted to bring an artist of Trevor Paglen's standing
and importance to our flagship site. I've no doubt this work will stimulate
thought and debate during the rush-hour commute."
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