This week: Marc and Brian
talk to Trevor Paglen.

"Trevor Paglen is an artist, writer, and experimental geographer working
out of the Department of Geography at the University
of California, Berkeley. His work involves deliberately
blurring the lines between social science, contemporary art, and a host of even
more obscure disciplines in order to construct unfamiliar, yet meticulously
researched ways to interpret the world around us. His most recent projects
involve close examinations of state secrecy, the California prison system, and the CIA’s
practice of “extraordinary rendition.?

Paglen’s visual work has been shown in galleries and museums including MASSMOCA
(2006), the Warhol
Museum (2007), Diverse
Works (2005), in journals and magazines from Wired to The New York
Review of Books, and at numerous other arts venues, universities,
conferences, and public spaces. He has had one-person shows at Deadtech (2001),
the LAB (2005), and Bellwether Gallery (2006).

Paglen’s first book, Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA’s Rendition
Flights (co-authored with AC Thompson; Melville House, 2006) was the first
book to systematically describe the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition? program.
His second book, I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed
by Me (Melville House, 2007) an examination of the visual culture of
“black? military programs, will be published in November 2007. He is
currently completing his third book, entitled Blank Spots on a Map, which will
be published by Dutton/NAL/Penguin in late 2008/early 2009.

Paglen has received grants and commissions from Rhizome.org, the LEF
Foundation, and the Eyebeam
Center for Art and
Technology. In 2005, he was a Vectors Journal Fellow at the University of Southern
California.

Paglen holds a BA from UC Berkeley, an MFA from the School of the Art Institute
of Chicago, and is currently completing a PhD in the Department of Geography at
the University of California at Berkeley."

NEXT: Terri and Serena talk to Pate Conaway.

"Pate Conaway is an interdisciplinary artist fromChicago,
Illinois. 
Conaway sees the act of art-making as a performance in itself.  Conaway
has produced art in gallery situations, including during a five-week stint at
the Museum
of Contemporary Art
in Chicago where he
knitted a pair of nine-foot-long mittens.  The artist, whose background is
in performance and paper arts, continues to work in sculpture, installation,
and interactive performance.  Now learning to sew, Conaway is fascinated
by the idea of applying garment construction techniques to bookbinding. Pate
Conaway is a graduate of Chicago's
Second
City
Training
Center
and received his MFA from Columbia
College,
Chicago.  He has
exhibited extensively in the mid-west and his work can be found in the Artist
Book Collection at the Museum
of Contemporary Art,
Chicago."
AND Mike B. has a rant to offer.