Paglen: The Last Pictures

Experimental geographer and artist Trevor Paglen’s most experimental project (so far) must be this new thing called “The Last Pictures” (video below) and it’s about to debut in New York. The itinerary of events in the U.S. and Europe are posted online. “The Last Pictures” was commissioned by Creative Time and involves a “collection of ultra-archival images attached to a communications satellite, headed for a very stable geostationary orbit, where they will remain for billions of years.” Right?!? Since it’s sort of something you have to see to believe, and since we’re not yet routine outer-space travelers, he also wrote a book about the project with the same title co-published by Creative Time and University of California Press. It’s well worth checking out the project’s site and reading the book description on the UC Press site to get a sense of the project, which is both crazy and cool.  Our satellites will out live humanity for billions of years to come so the book critically examines the 100 photographs Trevor is shooting into space. The choice of photographs, says UC Press,   was “influenced by four years of interviews with leading scientists, philosophers, anthropologists, and artists about the contradictions that characterize contemporary civilizations.” Check out his other works on the Pentagon’s “Dark Geographies.”

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