The BLACK SITE SERIES project is both an architectural research endeavor and a series of full-scale prototypes focused on sound, surveillance, displacement and the body. Based upon public-record evidence gathered in "War on Terror" depositions and trials, the project begins with an interpretation of CIA rendition cells at one-to-one scale. Hence the title: the BLACK SITE SERIES. The project involves many levels of play on the word black - referencing both the signification of Black identity, as well as the CIA terminology for a specific network of facilities. Ultimately, the project deploys architecture to investigate the role of language and performance in the interplay between normative civil society and military operations and technology.
I have begun developing the BLACK SITE SERIES this summer as two gallery installations and recently been awarded a New York State Council of the Arts Independent Project grant for further research, prototyoping and installations. The first BLACK SITE #1, built in Los Angeles at SUPERFRONT LA, emphasized the specifics of placement and geographic alignment. The second installation, BLACK SITE #2, inspired by the CIA's documented use of rap music as an element of sleep deprivation torture, consists of a multi-media installation that hybridizes ad hoc detention with ad hoc performance. Two microphones are fed into sound exciters and surface transducers that turn wall and furniture elements into speakers. That prototype has been commissioned for installation in a curated exhibit at the Old Police Station gallery for the Deptford X festival in London this September.
Research begins with the legal deposition of Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, a Yemeni man who was first detained when he traveled to Jordan in the fall of 2003. The smallest of the facilities in which Bashmilah was detained measures only 3 meters by 2 meters. Such a scale can be interpreted as either a space or an object.
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