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Bridle's "The Glomar Response", showing this month at the
newly opened Nome gallery in Berlin, resonates in a country
where revelations by former U.S. National Security Agency
contractor Edward Snowden caused widespread outrage.
The 34-year-old artist, who exhibited in London's Victoria and
Albert Museum this year, named his first German solo show after
the Cold War-era CIA rebuttal that it could "neither confirm nor
deny" sensitive information leaked to a journalist. The
exhibition is a mix of computer-generated prints, a looped film
screening and collages of maps and classified documents.
"It symbolizes the way military technologies, espionage and
surveillance have trickled down to all aspects of everyday
life," Bridle told Reuters.
"We're operating in this unknown zone. You can now hear that
response from your local council."
Bridle unveiled his previously unseen Berlin work as news broke
that Germany's chief prosecutor had been investigating
journalists on treason charges after they published plans to
step up state surveillance of online communications.
The charges were eventually dropped. But the incident brought to
the surface lingering German sensibilities over press freedom
and surveillance, along with memories of the communist-era East
German Stasi and the Nazi Gestapo.
In his series "Fraunhofer Lines", blocks of color and shadow are
set against heavily censored government reports, such as that by
the U.S Senate into torture allegations at the base in
Guantanamo Bay. In this fashion, Bridle explores the fraught
relationship between states and whistleblowers.
"It's the politics of light," he said. "Who is permitted to see
what, why and how? Documents are released, which is a
metaphorical illumination. But then there are all these black
spots, these redactions."
Bridle's mark is visible elsewhere in Berlin in the form of a
life-size outline of a military attack drone chalked onto the
concrete in the central Mitte district. With his "Drone Shadow",
he aims to shed light on the mysterious weapons.
"These weapons have a dark glamour to them, but are also
resonant of so many things," Bridle said. "When I first drew one
to scale it clicked why they were so interesting: their physical
and political invisibility."
Bridle's "The Glomar Response" runs at Nome Gallery, Berlin from
July 24 to Sept 5.
(Editing by Michael Roddy and Digby Lidstone)
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