Hacking the Vision Machine: Farocki’s and Paglen’s detourning of control images

Abstract

This paper argues that photographer Trevor Paglen and filmmaker Harun Farocki engage in a form of hacking of control images of surveillance organizations. Paglen's photo series follow the traces of secret military bases and unregistered spy satellites, while Farocki accompanies in his films the transition of prisons from disciplinary institutions to institutions of control. Both artists expose in their works not only the process of surveillance itself, but the necessary blind spots that every attempt to survey has. This is achieved by aesthetic practices that detourn and dismantle the protocols of surveillance institutions. Engaging in the creation and maintenance of counter-knowledge Paglen’s and Farock’s works open faultlines for political imagination. Uncovering the technocratic rationality that governs control images enables them to develop new forms of counter-surveillance that undermine the principle of control.