Documenting the Invisible Political Agency in Trevor Paglen ’ s Limit Telephotography

Taken from up to forty miles away, Trevor Paglen's limit telephotography images of covert military bases in the American Southwest are blurred by dense atmopshere, dust and debris. In effect, his photographs are highly illegible, and thus the military bases escape any sort of revelation. Following this logic, if one cannot see these top secret locations, then these images are in fact not politically effective at disclosing confidential federal information. Rather, Paglen asserts that the political agency of his can be located not in the image, but in the practice of performing limit telephotography—standing on public land and excercising the right to photograph. In turn, Paglen relocates the documentarian potential of his images into an agency formulated by a relational aesthetic, one in which the communal effects of creating the image and interpreting it generate the possibilities of enacting further practices of political resistance.


About the Author
Gary Kafer is PhD student in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the Univer sity of Chicago, where he received his MA in 2015.His research examines issues of surveillanc e art practices in our post-privacy culture, as well as questions surrounding digital media aesthetics and contemporary visuality.He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the Univ er s ity o f Pennsylvania in 2014 with a BA in Cinema Studies and Visual Studies, wherein he concentrated in visual neuroscience and perceptual psychology.His honors BA thesis examined Stan Brakhage's plastic montage by using models of motion perception to understand how he generates a type of cinematic illusionism.
One might question, then, the possibilities for political agency in Paglen's documentation, and whether or not it is belied by the representational limits o f his im a gemaking practice.If one cannot legibly read the spaces that Paglen attempts to doc ument in his work, are these photographs in fact resistive, in the sense that they might e x p os e t opsecret military operations?Further, even if one is able to detect such bases and hangar bay s in his photographs, are these images revealing any information that might jeop ar d ize s uch federal activities?And perhaps more generally, is it the case that r ather than contributing to his political agenda, Paglen's aesthetic register in fact neutralizes it?However, such questions narrow the agential possibilities in Paglen's work by reinforcing the binary between aesthetics and evidence in the documentary tr aditionnamely, that highly aestheticized objects have difficulty serving as forms of evidence.Rather, Paglen remarks that it is his practice of limit-telephotography that constitutes a form of resistance: "I have always conceived of this photography in terms of performance.The act of taking a photograph of a black site is just as important, if not more, than the photo gr ap h itself.To take a photograph is to insist on the right to photograph." 4 P ag len thus no t o nly locates the political agency of his limit-telephotography in the images, but also in their production.Here, the process of creating his work, from collaborating with amateur astronomers to turning his camera on classified terrain, becomes inflecte d with a p o litic al intonation.By emphasizing the practice of limit-telephotography, it may be possible to conceive of a model of resistance that operates through a visual aesthetic, as well as a relational one.
In order to advance this claim, I will consider the potential for limit-telephotography to mobilize resistive agency through conversations around the politics of relational art practices between Nicolas Bourriaud and Jacques Rancière.At the intersection o f the two , a tte ntio n will be given to the ways in which the dialectics of political demonstration can be understood as a spatial discourse, which for Paglen registers his work as an "experimental geograp hy ." 5 Such a practice rearticulates the documentation of material space along alternative perceptual systems, while also gesturing to a spatial understanding of knowledge production.In this way, Paglen's Limit Telephotography series attempts to understand how political effects can be located at the site of production, rather than purely in the image.At the same time, as a relational aesthetic, limit-telephotography reconsiders ho w d o cume nta tio n c a n contribute to political agency at the site of encounter with the imag e. Und er sta nding ho w collaborative art practice can function as a form of documentation relieves the im a ge f r om political responsibility, and gestures outwards to the ways in which limit-telephotography can mobilize different processes of civic engagement against the black world.

The Black World: Democracy, Visibility, and Secrecy
Targeting confidential military facilities, Paglen's limit-telephotography emerges within a set of concerted discourses crystallized upon the power and violence of secrecy in the federal system.In her introductory essay to Paglen's photographic m onog r ap h I nv isib le: Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes, Rebecca Solnit observes how Paglen 4 Trevor P aglen, "T he E xpeditions: L andscape as P erformance," TDR: The Drama Review 5 5 , no. 2 (2 0 1 1): 3.
5 T revor P aglen, "E xperimental G eography: From C ultural P roduction to the P roduction of Spac e," Experimental Geography: Radical Approaches to Lands cape, Cartography, and Urbanis m, ed.N ato T homps on and I ndependent C urators I nternational (Brooklyn, N Y : M elville H ouse P ublishing, 2 0 08), 3 1 .interrogates the precarious necessity for invisibility within democratic regimes, particularly as a defense mechanism, or "shield," for military procedures. 6Not only does invisibility preve nt outsider access to top-secret information, thus rendering foreign o r ga niza tions una b le to predict actions and plan counterattacks, but it also protects such classified knowledge, placing it beyond the scope of popular criticism and dissent.Invisibility and secrecy then, a s Solnit concludes, are not only a "strategy or a mode of operation for the military and the CIA for the past six decades; they have been its essence."7T revor P aglen (N ew Y ork: A perture, 2 0 10), 1 0. I nvisible not only explores P aglen's limit telephotography, but als o his work trac king top s ecret s atellites (The Other Night Sky s eries), manipulating the passports and alias es of C IA operatives, and c ollecting uniform patc h es affiliated with c lassified military programs and intelligence-industry activities (Symbology s eries).
Ironically, the military can be said to violate the very fundamental values of democratic discourse and rhetoric-freedom, transparency, and security-that it claims to protect.S uc h a hypocrisy has only been magnified in the wake of the terrorist attacks o f S ep te mb er 11, 2001, wherein new policies in surveillance, military technologies, and intelligence p r o g ra ms have opened up space for what it known as the 'safety state,' an agenda of public policy and cultural production centered upon information and communication management.Within this context, the development of post-9/11 military and intelligence operations resolves to maintain standard levels of public security while at the same time protecting classified federal interests.Whereas civilians are becoming increasingly transparent under state surveillance and military espionage, the executive branch of government ha s e xte nd ed its claims to power with top secret programs and agencies, many of which a r e no t s ub j ec t to democratic regulation. 8onsequently, contemporary procedures of state security ironically generate f o r ms o f insecurity, which David Lyon notes is "an insecurity felt keenly by the very people that security measures are supposed to protect."9Despite the fact that the public has grown increasingly wary of domestic surveillance programs, it is precisely these feelings of insecurity that justify the classified status of military and federal operations.For Rancière, in the post-9/11 era, maintaining a community of feeling constellated around f e a r g e ner ate s productive modes of civic participation in the state of advanced plutocratic consensus."Insecurity is not a set of facts," as he claims, but rather "it is a m o d e o f m anag em ent o f collective life; and one that is likely to persist even if our polities and institutions end up agreeing on an acceptable mode of life-in-common." 10Importantly, insecurity is an imagined horizon of affects that the military-industrial complex mobilizes in or d er to d e te rm ine the qualities of civic experience.Reversing the message proclaimed by media outlets and officia l federal sources concerning the ostensive weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003, Rancière contends that "imagined feelings of insecurity did not necessitate the war; ins tea d the war was necessary to impose feelings of insecurity." 11Former Vice President Dick Cheney gestured to such a paradox in his remarks on p ost-9/11 federal activities during an interview with NBC's Tim Russert on September 16, 2001: W e also have to work , though, sort of the dark side, if you will.W e've got to spe nd time in the shadows in the intelligence world.A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and m ethods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we 're going to be succe ssful.That's the world these folks operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our obje ctive. 12re, invisibility in the "dark side" is not only a method for democratic policy, but rather it is an essential component to the legal and economic dimensions of the federal infra str uctur e, as the standard level of national security.And because this dark side -which includes anything funded by Congress' "black budget,"13 such as planes, space, shuttle s, s a tellite s, and drones, as well as radioactive, biological, and chemical technolog ies -lie s b e yo nd the limits of common knowledge, it is largely unacknowledged and unconteste d b y the p ub lic , despite the obvious issue that such measures of invisibility contradict what many would declare to be democratic values.The feelings of insecurity produced by s uch classified activities thus override and make possible any feelings of thre at tha t m ig ht b e p r o duc ed were this dark side not in place. 14As Solnit observes: "On purely theoretic al g r o und s, y o u can argue that invisibility is . . .undemocratic; practically, it is ferociously so, again and again." 15 his Limit Telephotography series, Paglen attempts to render visible geographic locations associated with the dark side of federal activity, terrain and facilities known a s the "black world" or "black sites" of classified defense activity.These facilities are d e d ica ted to anything from Special Force and CIA combat training centers to testing grounds for missiles , manned aircraft, drones, and electronic warfare systems.C ertainly such black sites are present as actual locations, yet they are simultaneously absent from official forms of documentation and public discourse, thus forming what Paglen terms in the title of his 2009 book "blank spots on the map."16It is Paglen's project to make visible precisely these locations that resist visibility and in fact require invisibility to maintain s ta nd ar d o pe ra ting procedures.Through his limit-telephotography, Paglen not only gestures to the limits of trying to make these sites visible, but also to the limits of translating their presence into forms of knowledge which can then circulate in public discourse.

An Image with Limits
This translation performed by Paglen's camera is mired by noise from the surrounding atmosphere, as the high degree of magnification on Paglen's unique camera le ns s tr e tches the limitations of the photographic index to a point of abstraction.His practice of limittelephotography thus turns the representational potential of his images, as well as their appeals as documentary evidence, into nonfigura tive fields of color, form, and line.Associations between Paglen's work and the visual register of Abstract Expressionism are no doubt apparent.Yet, certainly while Paglen's images are abstract, one might question if they are intentionally expressive in the same manner as the layered drips of Joan Mitchell's landscapes or Mark Rothko's meditative color fields.When encountering surveillance images, blurriness, pixilation, low resolution, scan lines, and glitches are often inflected as markers of a realist aesthetic.Specifically in Paglen's work, the hazy veneer that obscures and obliterates representational forms into grainy pastel swaths denotes a partic ular d ista nce , geography, and climate, which Paglen typically articulates in the p r e cis e, a lm os t c lini ca l, titles reading with the exactitude expected of scientific inquiry and archival re s ear c h -s uc h as Chemical and Biological Proving Ground #2 (2006) and Detachment 3, A ir Fo r ce Flig ht Test Center (2008).Such titles insist on the veracity of the photographs and their fidelity to the surrounding environment and photographic conditions, despite the fact that such a degree of veracity is belied by the representational limits of limit-telephotography.Perhaps then the visual abstraction emergent from Paglen's image-making pra ctic e is less expressive than it is indexical.In this sense, it is possible to reconsider the aesthetic o f Paglen's limit-telephotography as necessarily indexing the very practice o f p hoto g ra phing black sites from extreme distances.Here, the visual register of these images do not preclude documentation, but rather makes it possible, thus constituting his images as forms of evidence of the process of limit-telephotography itself.The "limit" in Paglen's photography is negotiated through the unavoidable visual abstraction, which sets boundaries and restrictions on how his practice is able to perform a documentarian function under the guise of a surveillance aesthetic.
With abstraction invited into his images, Paglen's practice of limit-telephotography crystallizes a paradox of using photography to reveal certain types of truth about the government's dark side; he constructs a dual signification of what pr ec ise ly is 'lim ited ' in these images.On the one hand, Paglen's interests lie in making visible those spaces that are invisible to the naked eye, thus exposing the black sites that a r e j ust b e y ond p er ce ptua l limits at extreme distances.As Paglen remarks, "these photographs capture not only image s of hidden places but images of what it looks like when the physical properties o f v is ion a r e pushed to their limit, and light itself collapses into a jumbled mess." 17 On the other hand, Paglen is also confronting the limitations of our epistemic frameworks within the documentary genre.The tension between the unintellig ib ility o f the photograph and the image's claims to indexicality reinforces the inherent paradox of documentation, one in which aesthetic modes of representation are expected to co nvey a nd analyze material realities without distortion or alteration.For Paglen, this paradox articulates "a negative dialectic" 18 in the ways in which his limit-telephotography can functio n a s b o th representation and documentation of the black world, such that his images "both make claims to represent, and at the same time dialectically undermine, the very claims they seem to put forth." 19In conversation with Julian Stallabrass regarding his ae sthetic v o ca bular y, Paglen maintains a certain fidelity to the documentary potential of his limit-telephotogr ap hy ("here's X secret satellite moving through X constellation") at the same time that he reflexively foregrounds their limitations as representational works ("your believing tha t this white streak against a starry backdrop is actually a secret satellite instead of a scratch on the film negative is a matter of belief"). 20The dialectic nature of this aesthetic system is not o ne that inevitably produces truth claims, but rather one that internally challenges, des tabilize s, and contradicts its own appeals to knowledge production.Paglen's apparent failure of visualizing these sites due to certain abstractions via environmental mediation then simultaneously gestures to the impossibility of acquiring unequivocal truth from documentary practices, as well as the material and immaterial barriers that prevent access to informatio n about the black world.
Here, Paglen extends such skepticism about his limit-telephotography within the documentary genre to certain discourses that have shaped contemporary U.S. invo lvem ent in militarized espionage, drone bombing, and war crimes.Concerning the infamous vide o o f the Apache helicopter airstrike on Iraqi civilians that C helsea Manning shared with WikiLeak s on July 6, 2010, Paglen states in his interview with Stallabrass: "I definitely agree with y o u that the WikiLeaks gunship footage is as good as we could reasonably want.But if there were a wrongful death lawsuit with that video as the prime piece of evidence, I wonder whether it would hold up in a courtroom." 21Further referencing the video recording us e d in the Rodney King trial, which failed to testify as a form of evidence, and the photographs from Abu Ghraib, which Donald Rumsfeld dismissed as unrepresentative of the la r ge r m il ita ryprison system, Paglen's suspicion of representation informs his approach to the documentary image.As he claims: "Documentary media can still become social facts, reg ar d le ss o f ho w faithfully it reproduces reality [but] there's no magic image or do cu me nta tio n tha t e x is ts outside or beyond the limits of representation." 22In this sense, it is not the case that Pag len 17 T revor P aglen, "Sourc es and M ethods," I nvisible: Covert Operations and Clas s ified Lands capes , ed.
18 P aglen, "Sourc es and M ethods," 1 5 1. 19 I n c onvers ation with Stallabrass, P aglen c ontends: "I n terms of art -making, I s ympathize with a revis ed form of negative dialectics as a res ponse to an image -s aturated s ociety."J ulian Stallabrass, "N egative D ialectics in the G oogle E ra: A n I nterview with T revor P aglen," October 1 3 8 (Fall 2 011): 9 . 20I bid., 1 1 . 21I bid., 1 0 .doubts the fidelity of such declassified materials or their unique possibilities to intercept a nd mobilize political action.Rather, Paglen asserts that the horizons of knowledge that e m er ge from any such encounter with the black world is rife with questions of representation, particularly how to represent what federal powers render unrepresentable-what Stallabras s refers to as "the limits of democracy, secrecy, visibility and what can be known." 23t, for Paglen, attempting to photograph these black sites is not m e re ly a n a r tistic gesture, but also a form of resistance.His project has political concern at the same time that it invests in a particular aesthetic relationship to the black world.In conve rs atio n with the dark side of the federal infrastructure, such resistance often takes the form of visualizing the invisibility of the black world.One way that this form of political agency has historically taken shape is through revealing secret activities and disclosing classified documents -what is commonly regarded as whistleblowing, but constitutionally regarded as treason.In m a ny o f these cases, sharing top-secret intelligence constitutes a political opposition to federal power, thus resulting in violent state measures.In 1953, Ethel and Julius R o senb er g we r e executed for passing on atomic weapons secrets to the Soviet Union. 24In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg was tried under the 1917 Espionage Act for disclosing the United States Department of Defense history of the nation's involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967, known a s the Pentagon Papers.Such allegations of treason have likewise continued in response to individuals who have shared top secret information related to the increase of post-9/11 political-military activity; both whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Edward S nowd en we re tried under the Espionage Act as well for disclosing classified federal documents to the public.
Snowden's case, due to its engagement with issues of surveillance, is particularly interesting in relation to Paglen's work, as it emphasizes the paradoxical relationship of visibility and invisibility within the democratic discourse on secrecy.A m ong the m any to p secret activities that Snowden disclosed in the leak of National Security Agency (NSA) documents in June 2013 is PRISM, a program which allows the NSA to gain direct a c ce ss to the servers of the world's top telecommunications companies, including Google, Fa c eb oo k, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Apple, and Skype, among others.Despite federal concern for public security, the type of surveillance observed in PRISM was made possible by the prec ise la ws implemented in the wake of 9/11 that were designed to protect national security u nd e r the guise of democratic ideology, specifically the Patriot Act of 2001.According to journalist Glenn Greenwald, who collaborated with Snowden and documentarian Laura Poitr as o n the NSA leak, the underlying insidious nature of surveillance impinges on the r ig ht to p r iva cy , which he claims is the "core condition of being a free person." 25In this context, G r eenwald argues that Snowden's resistance should demonstrate the need to reverse the federal power structure: since the government consists of public servants working in the public sector, federal officials should be subject to complete visibility, while invisibility should be r es er ve d for the private law-abiding individual. 26However, such a position is often contested by m o r e conservative factions.As indicated in C heney's remarks on the dark side of federal activities, 23 Stallabrass, "N egative D ialectics," 3. 24 Sec tion 2 of the E s pionage Act of 1 9 17, 5 0 U .S. C ode 3 2 (now 1 8 U .S. C ode 7 94), prohibits transmitting or attempting to trans mit to foreign governments information "relating to the national defense."Like Snowden, Paglen invests himself through his limit-telephotogr ap hy in a k ind o f resistance based on seeking out and exposing information embedded deep within the network of federal invisibility.For Solnit, Paglen situates his work as a form of resistanc e b y locating his practice within a critical discourse that maintains the camera as a technology fo r revealing hidden realities.Drawing upon a rich history of photographic journalism , s uc h a s Robert Frank's The Americans and Richard Misrach's photographs of remote a nd c la ss ifi e d military sites in the 1980s and 1990s, she underscores the camera as an agent for illuminating unknown phenomena, making familiar those things that are otherwise "uns ee n in plain view."27While photojournalism does not de facto constitute a f o rm o f r es ista nce , within the context of the dark side of federal and military activity, Paglen's artistic p r ac tic e articulates a potential to expose certain forms of knowledge that are otherwise invis ible to the public eye.For Solnit, Paglen's work underscores the inherent paradox of the surveillance paradigm: "To see and to make visible is itself often a protracted process of education, research, investigation, and often trespassing and lawbreaking, a counter -spying on the intelligence complex."28At close distances, Paglen does indeed capture certain kinds of informatio n.Y e t a s a negative dialectic, this kind of resistance upends itself.Rather than actually revealing hidden realities, Paglen instead metaphorizes the veils of secrecy surrounding the b la ck wo rld b y pushing the visual index to its abstracted limits.At extreme lengths, Paglen's images mir r or the discourse of federal invisibility; through the index of surveillance aesthetics, informa tion is not disclosed, but made more obscure.As Jonah Weiner of The New Yorker writes, "Paglen welcomes distortion in his images because his aim is not to expose and edify so muc h a s to confound and unsettle." 29 this regard, Paglen understands the truth-telling function of the camera merely as a pretense for examining the double-edged sword of counter-intelligence p r o duc tion, o ne in which surveillance can be used against itself in order to reconfigure the perceptual ho r izo ns of federal invisibility.By using advanced lens technologies to capture classified territory from miles away, Paglen introduces a diametric practice of enacting surveillance on precisely those black sites which themselves exercise espionage under a veil of invisibility, thus engaging in his own form of surveillance to observe sites of military espionage.His limit-telephotography thus turns military technologies of surveillance against themselves, exposing surveillance a t the same time that it reproduces it.And as surveillance images, Paglen's work enacts a critique of surveillance by way of its own rhetoric.In this sense, the telescope lens, as Nie ls Van Tomme observes, "becomes a device embedded within the v er y v io lence it s e ek s to investigate, as such tools of vision are inextricably entwined with the history o f , a s well a s ongoing standard developments within, the military industrial comp lex ."

The Politics of Relational Aesthetics
Yet such a critique of surveillance does not automatically register a resistance to surveillance.If limit-telephotography does not disclose declassified inf o rm atio n o r r e ve al hidden realities, then the question for Paglen becomes: "How do I situate [a given] project in a productive situation, a political situation, and a discursive situation.O r, m o re ta c tica lly, how can I position [it] closely to a site of instability in power as possible suc h tha t [it] ha s real effects?" 31As opposed to the type of materials leaked by whistleblowers, it is doubtful as to whether or not Paglen's images could be used as evidence to mobilize politica l a ctio n o r legislative response.However, while Paglen makes explicit that his photographs are "useles s as evidence," he insists that limit-telephotography maintains a specific "politics of production." 32He develops this term, emphasizing the various important practices that contribute to the production of his images: In the vast majority of my artwork , the re search, methods, and processes happening "outside the frame" are just as important (and often more ) a s what e nds up being shown in a particular image or installation.All of [my] work . . . is the product of countless hours spent in libraries, sifting through documents, conducting interviews, re peated site visits, careful planning and project m anagement, and personal re lations developed over ye ars of dedication to the m ate rial. 33re, Paglen suggests that beyond his images there is a politic by which meaning is produced, a meaning which might be generative of alternative modes of engag ing with the geopolitics of the black world infrastructure and its epistemic territories.
Paglen expands on this politic in a number of ways.On the one hand, he e m p ha siz es the performance of limit-telephotography as a generative site of resistance-namely, on the right to stand in public land outside of the borders of the black world and turn his camera o n the hidden realities of military activities.As Paglen argues, "[p]hotographing a secret military base means insisting on the right to do it, and enacting that right.Thus, we ha v e a s o rt o f political performance." 34Interestingly, then, Paglen's performance of limit-telepho tog r ap hy conceives of this politic as a particular relation to the black world by reversing the very leg a l terms promoted by state order.On the other hand, he also speculates on the importa nc e o f relationships and networked practices that allow for his work to confront the perceptual limits of the black world.In addition to offering expeditions each year for individuals inter es ted in exercising their right to photograph these bases 35 , he writes: 31 E mily E liza Scott, "'I nvis ible-5's ' I llumination of P eripheral G eographies," Art Journal 6 9 no.4 (Winter 2 0 1 0): 4 4. 32 Weiner, "P rying E yes"; Stallabrass, "N egative D ialectics ," 6. 33 P aglen, "Sourc es and M ethods," 1 4 4. 34 Stallabras, "N egative D ialectics," 6.
35 "I led s everal desert expeditions each year.T hese expeditions further developed the overall project, engaging partic ipants as witnesses/spectators in an enac tment of the right to s ee and to photograph.I ns tead of c reating two-dimensional landscapes for ga lleries and mus eums, I was bringing people to the ac tual landscapes."P aglen, "T he E xpeditions," 3 .I m ight be camping out on a mountaintop taking photos of a secre t military base, or determining the location of C IA "black sites" so I can go photograph the m .Maybe researching front-companies used in covert operations, or work ing with am ateur astronomers to track classified spacecraft in Earth orbit.These are all re lational practices and they all have various sorts of politics to them. 36 his emphasis on the possibilities to inspire and organize geopolitical activis m through relational practices, Paglen invokes Nicolas Bourriaud's description of relational a e sthe tics : "an art taking as its theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an independent and priva te symbolic space." 37In Bourriaud's wake, Paglen's practices can be read as relational in that such performances and relationships relocate the political agency from the image to the production process of lim ittelephotography.For Bourriaud, such practice s lie in opposition to hegemonic capitalist regimes of commodity exchange, such that the relational artwork-which is le ss a n o b je ct and more a form of social relation-essentially rejects subjugation into a market value system.The artist rather catalyzes sites of experience for collective encounters, bringing to bear new meanings and perceptual experiences as the art form.Unlike the p a ss ive o p tic encounter of an object, relational art is able to generate productive human relations, whic h, for Bourriaud, lays the seeds for political action through its emancipatory effects.Yet, it is not quite clear that any and all relational practices will lead to political potentials.In Bourriaud's writing, sites of dialogue register forms of interactivity as democratic microtopias.Here, C laire Bishop has called into question the ways in which Bourriaud ties the structure of a relational work -its form as social relation-to its ethicopolitical effects while ignoring the veils of power and exclusivity that institutional systems use to acknowledge the communal experience as aesthetically valuable. 38For Bishop, participatory art should not be judged based on ethical s ta nd ar d s o f "c o nsens ual collaboration" between artist and audience during the production process. 39Rather, the political effects of participatory art emerge from its confrontation with audience s f r e e f r om ethical fixations.Opposed to Bishop, Grant Kester in his 2004 book Conversation Pieces contends that the ethical framework is imperative to the political effec ts of participatory work, wherein dialogue between artists and non-artists constitute a c o ns ens ua l s p ac e f o r transformative experience. 40 the nexus of Bishop and Kester's writings on the political agency of relational practices lies an impasse between aesthetic autonomy and socio-political concerns.Fo r K im C harnley, such a paradox boils down to neutralization of political effects, such that both Bishop and Kester aim "to erase contradiction in order to maintain a consis tent a c c ount o f the political-and it is in the attempt to be consistent that the political is erased." 41 politics can only emerge in a critical negotiation between the exclusivity of the a r tist a lo ng supporting institutional powers and democratic forms of social relations between artis ts a nd non-artists.In advancing this claim, C harnley draws from Rancière's writings on d is se ns us, wherein if "dissensus is not viewed as the vital element of socially engaged art then even the most rigorous ethics [via Kester] or carefully guarded autonomy [via B is hop ] b ec om es a n extension of consensus." 42Important for this claim is the political nature of dissensus.According to Rancière, politics should not be thought of as the "exercise of power," but rather as an intervention in the normative relationship between actions, or ways of doing, and a possible horizon of affects, an aesthetic order that he terms the distribution of the sensible. 43This structural law delineates the general and common modes of participation in the social a nd the m o de s o f perception that shape the experience of the social order.Politics, then, is a re -distribution o f the sensible, such that political actions are those that disturb and expose gaps in the rationale underpinning the social body's implicit perceptual frameworks.P olitical demonstration then, as a dissensus, disrupts the sensible-what is visible and sayable -a nd brings about a change in the perception of social space, thus making "visible that which had no reason to be seen." 44 is important to note, however, that Rancière is not proclaiming that politics brings to bear new perceptual possibilities in the sense that materials, people, and places, which were previously hidden, are suddenly made visible.This might too easily line up with a m o d e l o f resistance to the black world based on disclosure of classified informatio n, which P a gle n's images in fact do not do.Rather, Rancière's interests rest in the ways that certain communities that had previously been denied subjectivity within the co m mon s o c ia l o r de r might emerge, be recognized, and vocalize their perspectives.In his words: that what appeared as m ere expre ssion of pleasure and pain is a shared feeling of a good or an evil. 45e core of political demonstration then is not just a reorganization of the social order's perceptual limits; it is also a question of space, of asserting that the communal experie nc es in private spaces of such unrecognized communities are valid alongside the p ub lic p o lice d space of the common social order.It is the production of new spaces in which the previously unheard and unseen are recognized, in which the sensible is redistributed to a llo w f or ne w meanings to generated and understood from previously insignificant materials, affe cts , a nd sensory experiences.
Understanding politics as a spatial discourse opens up new resistive p o ss ibilitie s f o r Paglen's limit-telephotography.It is thus not the case that Paglen's images are r e s is tive in 42 C harnley, "D issensus and the politics of c ollaborative practice," 5 0 .that they reveal information previously kept hidden by federal powers.Rather, in attempting to render the black world visible, Paglen interrogates the limits of what can be made sensible, forcing recognition of those things that federal powers hold beyond the bounda rie s of what can currently be perceived.He thus relocates the resistive agency of limittelephotography from the aesthetic register of the image to a spatial discourse of its political effects: interrogating the structural invisibility of militarized sites, the dimensiona l lim its o f representation through lens-based media, and the territories of knowledge about th e b la c k world that is continually rendered inaccessible by mechanisms of secrecy.

Resistance: Experimental Geography as Dissensus
In order to understand the production of limit-telephotography as a sp atia l p r ac tice , Paglen adopts what he refers to as a "critical geographic perspective." 46Under this framework, he examines the two main theoretical underpinnings of geographic study: Fir s t, materialism, which employs an analytic approach to the idea that the world is m a d e o ut o f spatial interactions of materials; and second, the production of space, whic h r e fe rs to the dialectical ways in which space is actively constructed by human activity, and human activity is defined by space.Geography for Paglen "is not just a method of inquiry, b ut ne c es sa rily entails the production of a space of inquiry." 47With these two theoretical bases, Paglen understands the cultural production of limit-telephotography as necessarily a spatial practice, wherein he not only attempts to represent space by visually acknowledging the materiality of the black sites, but also contributes to the production of the space of inquiry, knowledge, and discourse about covert military operations and federal secrecy. 48By incorporating this approach into his practice, Paglen works through what he terms an "experimental geography": Practice s that re cognize that cultural production and the production of space cannot be separated from e ach another, and that cultural and intellectual production is a spatial practice.Moreover, experimental geography means not only se eing the production of space as an ontological condition, but actively e x perimenting with the production of space as an integral part of one's own practice . 49 a work of experimental geography, Paglen's limit-telephotography sets into relief the two theoretical frameworks of geographic inquiry.On the one hand, Paglen complicates the fieldbased perceptions of the landscape's material dimensions through its intentional abstr ac ted 46 P aglen, "E xperimental G eography," 3 7.
47 I bid., 3 1 .P aglen c omes to this c onclusion by way of the theories of M arx and L efebvre.H ere, he accepts M arx's argument that a fundamental c haracteristic of human exis tence is "the production of material life its elf," that humans produc e their existence in a dialec tical relation to the res t of the world.L ikewis e, following L efebvre, he als o ac cepts that produc tion is a fundamentally s patial practice, that humans c reate the world around them and are in turn c reated by the world around them.T hus , in light of both of thes e arguments , P aglen c oncludes that "c ultural production (li ke all produc tion) is a s patial prac tice." 48P aglen alludes to this analysis in his interview with The Rumpus : "I t's helpful to think about s tate s ec recy as a lands cape, as a s et of ins titutions and fac ts on the ground, in addition to a s eries of bureauc ratic operations.I n traditional s ocial s ciences, the way that you think about s ec recy is in terms of bureauc racy and c ulture.I think that if you add geography to that, you c an explain how s ec recy works in a more robus t way.A nd that als o explains s ome of t he failures of overs ight visual register.On the other hand, he also aims to produce new spaces of knowledge a bo ut that black world by questioning and reconfiguring their perceptual limits.Through m a ter ial, perceptual, and epistemic spaces, he exposes gaps in the experiential horizons of the b la ck world, and brings to bear new modes of participation with the black world that are technically legal, yet certainly disapproved.
Accordingly, Paglen's experimental geography begins to gesture to the ways in whic h the space of knowledge about the black world that is opened up by limit-telephotography can be inflected with political agency.As Paglen remarks, "[i]f human activities are ine xtr ica bly spatial, then new forms of freedom and democracy can only emerge in dialectical relation to the production of new spaces." 50In framing his understanding of artistic pr o duc tion within geopolitics as a spatial discourse, particularly one that is dialectical, Paglen s e em s to e c ho Rancière's analysis of a dissensual politics.For the latter, politic demonstratio n r eg is ter s a dialectical confrontation between the perceptual space of the sensible and imperceptible space of the political body-the result of which "is the construction of a p a r ad o xica l wo rld that put together two separate worlds." 51For Paglen, such a dialectical reading of a spatialized politics allows us to locate the resistive potentials of his work neither in the physical spaces that Paglen occupies in order to take his photographs nor the spaces in which one may encounter his works, but rather in the discursive space that critically situate s the civic body against the geography of secrecy and invisibility of the black world .T his is a dialectical space that emerges from a coming together of public knowledge and federal secrecy when the imperceptible is forced into recognition through a play of spatial discourses (whether in the image, its production, or in critical encounters).As Emily Eliza Scott contends, we might then approach the resistive potential of experimental geography "no t in terms of their production of new images, objects, or experiences, but in terms of their production of potentially new spatial-political configurations." 52Alan Ingr am j o ins S co tt in chorus, arguing that geopolitical art functions "not just as a form of res ista nce , r ef usa l o r critique but . . .[as] an index of and contributor to political and spatial transformation." 53He asserts that while it cannot be assumed that such creative interventions generate critic al o r radical results, they can produce the potential to represent the wa ys in whic h d is co ur se s shaping social and political life might be reproduced, changed, or disrupte d .He r e , I ng r am grants particular emphasis to the potential for artistic practices to assume agency in mobilizing other kinds of action, rather than fully encompass the entire p os s ib le r a ng e o f critical intervention or political resistance.C iting Rancière, Ingram continues: "the (geo)political effects of any particular artistic intervention cannot be ass umed o r inf er re d, only corroborated by corresponding actions.The question then becomes less wha t s uch a r t works mean than what critical approaches to geopolitics might do with them."54Adopting a "relational way of thinking" into the spatial discourse of experimental geography insists on the ways in which Paglen negotiates and reconfigures the r e latio ns o f production involved in creating cultural work about the geography of the government's blac k world, and further how that practice of reconfiguration can reveal ne w p o litic al ho riz ons .Paglen remarks in this vein that "experimental geography takes fo r g r ante d the f a c t tha t 50 P aglen, "E xperimental G eography," 3 1.
52 Sc ott, "'I nvis ible-5's' I llumination of P eripheral G eographies," 4 4 .there can be no 'outside' of politics, because there can be no 'outside' to the p r o duc tion o f space (and the production of space is ipso facto political)." 55It is then not the case that Paglen's images contain the radical potential to subvert the discourses of secrecy o p er ativ e in the black world, but rather that his practice of limit-telephotography p r o duc es the v er y political spaces from which these aesthetic objects may emerge.And because Paglen locate s the possibilities for a resistive agency in the production of spaces for new human r ela tions , he sets into relief the material and spatial concerns of an experimental geographic approac h to the lived experience of producing limit-telephotography-from collaboration with field guides to occupying territory.Accordingly, Paglen is not attempting to breach federal secrecy by photographing black sites, nor is he exclusively concerned with negating the secrecy tha t manages black sites, as even the aesthetic re gister of his images reproduces the veil of invisibility that obscures access to seeing and understanding these s p ac es .R a ther , lim ittelephotography emerges from a new system of relationships with the black world, one tha t provokes alternative and radical perceptions of the networks and representations of p e op le, spaces, and power in the military-industrial complex.Paglen's documentary prac tice is o ne that negotiates the possibilities for rescuing material landscapes and geographic space f r o m the black world in order to inspire the potential for critical engagements in the public sphere, or as Margarida Carvalho remarks in her work on geopoetics, "to inhabit [space] and make it communal." 56

Towards a New Documentation
As a collaborative art practice of ex perimental geography, Paglen's Limit Telephotography series questions itself on the grounds of how well thes e im a ge s s e rv e a s forms of documentation of the black world.Just as Paglen is skeptical about claiming that his photographs are documents of anything, the visual abstraction likewise prevents no rma tive modes of knowledge production at work in the documentary genre.Arguably, these im a g es can only serve to index Paglen's physical presence at a particular location p r o xima l to the military facility under investigation, which perhaps is mostly attributable to the pr e c isio n o f the titles of each photograph.In this sense, one might reason that Paglen's work is not o nly invested in documenting the black world, but also the process of occupying territory, or perhaps even the politics of production of limit-telephotography.
Yet, such a thesis fails to account for the inability to read this type of documentation in the images themselves.First and foremost, Paglen photographs classified milita ry b a se s in the remotes recesses of the American Southwest, and not his own process of creating the se images in the form of photographs of expeditions and meetings with astronomer s.He d o e s not turn the camera on himself.Perhaps then the question becomes not how to documen t a collaborative art practice, but rather how a collaborative art practice can function a s a f o rm of documentation.Here, Paglen remarks that the process of creating these images -from the project planning to the expedition-opens up the critical space from which these images appear: "I try to immerse myself in the 'world' of my research to the point where the 55 P aglen, "E xperimental G eography," 3 2. materials virtually 'tell' me how they want to be expressed."57Limit-te lep ho to gr ap hy thus emerges from the politics of production, not the other way a round.
Yet, to what extent do the politics of production of limit-telephotography-o r f ur ther , the dialectical dissensus of experimental geographies-apply to other sites of encounte r?I n many ways, Paglen's consideration of that spatial discourse of relational a es thetic s s e em s bounded to the artist and his creative process rather than extend beyond the prod uctio n to the viewer who considers his work in a book, website, or exhibition.In these contexts, particular framing devices allow for these images to be located within a political agenda, such as gallery text, Paglen's artist biography, critical publications, and other kinds of paratextua l information.Yet, at the same time that these devices identify the political potentials of Paglen's experimental geography, they also nullify such effects by situating the vital dissensual properties of limit-telephotography within a consensual critical discourse-that is to say, such images are political because they are proclaimed to be so.Perhaps here we approach another 'limit' to Paglen's limit-telephotography: the limit of political agency itself.In reflecting on the relationship between dissensus and co llab o ra tive art practices, Charnley takes special note of Rancière's skepticism of collaborative works that confess themselves to be political "because it confuses the boundary b etwe en a rt a nd the social."58C harnley continues: As [R ancière ] puts it: ' . . . the more [art] goes out into the streets and profe sses to be engaging in a form of social intervention, the more it anticipates and m imics its own e ffects.Art thus risks becoming a parody of its alleged e fficacy.'There is something disappointing about th is avoidance of questions that are raised whe n art is confronted by a limit, in the moment of attempting to transgress it.At this moment the dissensus is a radical one, in as much as it is a disjuncture betwe en art's self-understanding and its social re ality. 59is limit, however, is not a deficit to Paglen's political aspirations, but rather an im po rta nt nodal point for locating the resistive possibilities for a dissensual agency, which f o r P ag len, operates through his confrontation with the documentary genre.If the photographs are forms of documentation, then they confront the limit of political demonstra tion, b ut f a il to surpass it.Because the images obscure evidence of the black world by m e tap hor izing the discourse of secrecy through the abstract visual register, they can only be political if they are labeled as such and qualified by paratextual information.
Yet, if we reconsider the collaborative art practice itself as the documentation of Paglen's encounter with the black world, then the visual regis ter of limit-telephotography, which obscures evidentiary claims of the photographic index, should prompt viewers to tur n a wa y from thinking about the images as documentation in order to consider ho w the p o litic s o f production of limit-telephotography are attended by a multiplicity of effects, both in terms of their inception and reception, which may suggest or potentiate other kinds of agency.In this case, the encounter with limit-telephotography images would be a kind o f p a rtic ip atio n in Paglen's collaborative network alongside those astronomers and fellow researchers that contributed to their production.The goal of this form of documenta tion b e co me s p o litic al when it negates the premise of its own appeals to knowledge forma tion.P a glen c e rta inly doesn't illuminate anything about the black world, but perhaps he d oe sn't ha ve to .W hen encountering his images, such sites suddenly become palpable, allowing for geographic material to enter into critical discourse.Even the most uninformed viewer who takes a sudden interest in the black world can gain political agency in seeking information, questioning sources of data, and joining others in protesting federal operations.Thus, while the political agency of Paglen's project cannot be located in the images themse lves, it is possible to rethink how certain forms of engagement with limit-telephotography can reinscribe alternative modes of civic participation with the black world into the field of s p atiopolitical meanings articulated by the official aesthetic, lega l, and constitutional forms of state power.
30 A r g ua bly the n, Paglen interrogates discourses of power in military operations of surveillance, thus prompting a reconsideration of the perceived objectivity of lens -based media within the context of C ontemporaneity: H istorical P resence in V isual C ulture http://c ontemporaneity.pitt.eduV ol 5 , N o 1 "A gency in M otion" (2 0 16) | I SSN 2 155-1162 (online) | D O I 1 0.5 195/c ontemp.2016.1 61 military operations, as well as the limitations of deploying surveillance to document our environment.

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ontemporaneity: H istorical P resence in V isual C ulture http://c ontemporaneity.pitt.eduV ol 5 , N o 1 "A gency in M otion" (2 0 16) | I SSN 2 155-1162 (online) | D O I 1 0.5 195/c ontemp.2016.1 61 Here, C ontemporaneity: H istorical P resence in V isual C ulture http://c ontemporaneity.pitt.eduV ol 5 , N o 1 "A gency in M otion" (2 0 16) | I SSN 2 155-1162 (online) | D O I 1 0.5 195/c ontemp.2016.1 61 Politics . . .consists in transforming [the policed public] space of 'moving-along', of circulation, into a space for the appearance of a subje ct: the people, the work e rs, the citizens.I t consists in re-figuring space, that is in what is to be done , to be seen and to be named in it.It is the instituting of a dispute over the distribution of the sensible . . . it consists in m aking what was unseen visible; in m ak ing what was audible as m ere noise heard as speech and in demonstrating

Figure 3 T
Figure 3 T revor P aglen, Detachment 3, Air Force Flight Tes t Center, Groom Lake, NV Dis tance approx.26 miles , from the Limit Telephotography s eries , 2 008.C -print, 4 0 x 5 0 in.C opyright T revor P aglen, c ourtesy the artis t and M etro P ictures, N ew Y ork; A ltman Siegel, San Franc isco.