{"id":72472,"date":"2016-03-15T23:34:25","date_gmt":"2016-03-16T03:34:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=72472"},"modified":"2016-03-15T23:34:25","modified_gmt":"2016-03-16T03:34:25","slug":"whitney-exhibit-poitras-explores-art-surveillance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2016\/03\/15\/whitney-exhibit-poitras-explores-art-surveillance\/","title":{"rendered":"In Whitney exhibit, Poitras explores the art of surveillance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"ANARCHIST:<\/a>
ANARCHIST: Data Feed with Doppler Tracks from a Satellite (Intercepted May 27, 2009). Pigmented inkjet print mounted on aluminum. (Photo courtesy of Laura Poitras<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW YORK \u2013 Here\u2019s a question you’ve likely never asked yourself: Can covert surveillance be beautiful?<\/p>\n

But you might be asking it as you stroll through \u201cAstro Noise,\u201d journalist and filmmaker Laura Poitras\u2019 exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art, in which images stemming from mass government surveillance are, in a number of cases, physically striking.<\/p>\n

Take, for example, the patterns of bright greens, blues and oranges adorning the wall as one enters the exhibit. Seen from afar, they appear to be colorful modern paintings one might see in any contemporary museum. But actually, Poitras is presenting data \u2013 hacked Israeli drone feeds from a listening base in Cyprus. The original images were contained in documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.<\/p>\n

\u201cDefinitely the piece is trying to work on multiple levels,\u201d says Poitras, best known for \u201cCitizenfour,\u201d her Oscar-winning documentary about Snowden, and her news reports on the same subject, which won a Pulitzer Prize.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe found these fascinating colorful images that I was immediately compelled by. And they also have this fascinating story, so they work as news. We\u2019re looking at intercepts from hacked Israeli drone feeds. But it\u2019s not cynical. I like them as images, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Poitras is best known as a filmmaker and journalist, she says her first solo museum show has given her a chance to explore the issues important to her in a medium even more suited to her way of thinking.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt almost MORE at home,\u201d she said in a recent interview. \u201cThe creative process was really liberating. It\u2019s more abstract, which is what I like. It opened up new possibilities, and liberated me from things I\u2019m happy to be liberated from.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though covert surveillance might not, at first glance, seem like a subject for exploration at an art museum, the Whitney\u2019s director, Adam Weinberg, begs to differ.<\/p>\n

\u201cArtists reflect their times, and we are living in very complicated times,\u201d Weinberg says. \u201cIt would be very strange if people were only dealing with questions of beauty and emotion at a time when the world is in such a state.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Weinberg, one of the most valuable aspects of the exhibit, which opened last month and runs through May 1, is that \u201cit\u2019s an experiential installation. It\u2019s not just about information. One of the things that\u2019s happened in this day and age is just the absolute avalanche of information, which we could never ever hope to sift through, and in most cases we can\u2019t even understand half of. (But) we still have to make ethical and moral judgments about notions of surveillance and privacy, and this… puts the viewer at the centre of those questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

That dynamic is perhaps most powerfully explored in a room titled \u201cBed Down Location,\u201d in which visitors lie down on a square slab and gaze upward at footage of a night sky. The skies we\u2019re looking at are in places like Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. We see stars, buildings, and, what else? What is out there, Poitras asks us to wonder, that we can\u2019t see?<\/p>\n

We\u2019re left to ponder that. But later, visitors will encounter evidence that they were being watched, as they lay on that slab.<\/p>\n

Weinberg finds an irony in that piece. Yes, it makes us feel the impact of surveillance, if only for a moment, but he adds: \u201cOne of the great ironies is that any time almost anybody walks into any museum, they\u2019re on camera. So in fact, what (Poitras) is creating as an installation is in fact being surveilled at all times by museum security.\u201d In museums but also, he adds, in banks and so many other places where our images are captured.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s very powerful is that she calls attention to things that almost go unnoticed in everyday life,\u201d Weinberg says. \u201cAnd these are things that have very far-reaching moral and ethical questions attached (to them).\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hardly a surprise that the exhibit touches on the events of Sept. 11, 2001; One of the first images to greet visitors is a film of people staring at ground zero in the days after the attacks. The footage is slowed down, and the expressions are of shock, concern, confusion, horror and curiosity.<\/p>\n

But then on the other side of the screen, we watch something completely different: U.S. interrogations of prisoners captured in Afghanistan, at Guantanamo. A man is questioned repeatedly about his wife\u2019s name. He asks permission to stretch his leg. Poitras seems to be telling us that one side of the screen is inextricably linked to the other. (There is little written explanation provided throughout, something that might frustrate those not using an audio guide.)<\/p>\n

Poitras, now working on a series with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, seems to relish in shifting formats.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith long-form filmmaking you control time,\u201d she says, \u201cand it was nice to be able to hand that back to the viewer. You can decide where to enter and exit. And it\u2019s something that I’m liberated from as creator.\u201d On the other hand, she says: \u201cI loved controlling the space.\u201d<\/p>\n

One section displays a very personal experience. After filming some footage on a rooftop in Baghdad in 2004, in a neighbourhood where a U.S. soldier had been killed, Poitras discovered she was on a government watch list. She was detained and questioned every time she tried to cross a U.S. border. She moved to Berlin to escape the ordeal. She finally filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and received many pages of documents \u2013 some of which, heavily redacted, appear in the exhibit. She says the government never asked to see her footage.<\/p>\n

That personal section aside, Poitras is more interested in portraying the collective experience of our daily lives. Both she and Weinberg say they\u2019re well aware that some Americans care more about mass surveillance than others.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople do not come out with the same responses,\u201d Weinberg says. \u201cI think for a lot of people it\u2019s very haunting and creepy, and others are much more nonchalant about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

__<\/p>\n

Online:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.whitney.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2013 Here\u2019s a question you’ve likely never asked yourself: Can covert surveillance be beautiful? But you might be …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":72473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1080],"class_list":["post-72472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-art-and-culture","tag-ap","mauthors-jocelyn-noveck","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}