"He is part-artist, part-journalist, part-activist." You can say that about a lot of people in the art world nowadays. Probably because the activists are repressed and the journalists are bankrupted, while the art world still has some oxygen because it's supported by the over-educated wives of over-paid corporate vice-presidents.
http://fusion.net/story/199240/trevor-paglen-art-shows-what-mass-surveillance-looks-like/
(…)
" “When we talk about the internet or mass surveillance—which are basically two sides of the same coin at this point—we use horribly mystifying metaphors to describe them: the cloud, the world wide web, the Information Superhighway, and so on,” Paglen told Vice. “But everything in the world is made of stuff, right? Where is the stuff that mass surveillance is made of, and what does it look like?”
"Paglen, 41, has been doing work revolving around this for years. Before going to sea, he documented surveillance on the ground, in the air, and even in space, taking photographs of spy satellites, drones, and governmental collection facilities, such as the NSA database in Utah. I know from experience that the government doesn’t like photographs being taken of restricted sites, but Paglen insists on his right to film and document such places from public land…."
