Ashitha Nagesh, ‘Mishka Henner on Lies, Leaks and the Commodification of Life’, BlouinArtinfo, 22 April 2014

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by Ashitha Nagesh 22/04/14 12:49 PM EDT

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Mishka Henner

(Photo courtesy Mishka Henner)

Mishka Henner on Lies, Leaks and the

Commodification of Life

One  of  the  most  controversial  and  important  developments  to  arise  from  the  so-­called  “age  of

information”  is  just  that  –  information.  If  you  look  hard  enough,  leaks  of  governmental  and

corporate  secrets  are  now  much  easier  to  both  facilitate  and  access  than  they  had  ever  previously

been.

Certain  leaks  can  even  be  found  without  the  need  for  a  WikiLeaks-­style  operation:  in  somecases,  the  geo-­tagging  of  photographs  together  with  the  vast  survey  project  of  Google  Earth  isall  that  is  needed.

It  is  this  sharing  of  tagged  photographs  online,  together  with  the  visual  availability  of  every

location  on  earth,  that  photographer  Mishka  Henner  told  ARTINFO  UK  he  exploits  inhis  projects.

“The  internet  is  full  of  loopholes  and  leaks,”  he  said.  “I  remember  one  day  Hilary  Clinton  hadcategorically  stated:  ‘we  have  no  US  military  presence  in  Honduras.’

“However,  the  next  day  I  was  on  Panoramio  [a  sharing  site  for  geo-­tagged  photographs]  andwas  looking  around  pictures  from  Honduras  –  sure  enough  there  was  a  photograph  of  a  native

Honduran  worker  with  his  arm  around  a  sergeant  major  from  the  US  cavalry  regiment.  The

Honduran  had  even  written  to  all  his  mates  talking  about  how  happy  was  to  have  got  a  job  on

this  US  military  base.

“So  the  internet  is  full  of  these  really  simple  leaks  that  completely  contradict  statements  made  by

very  powerful  organisations.”

It  may  sound  like  a  hackneyed  assertion,  but  with  these  methods  Henner  is  constantly  pushing

the  boundaries  of  the  medium.  Last  year  he  was  a  serious  contender  for  the  Deutsche  BörsePhotography  Prize  with  No  Man’s  Land  (2012),  for  which  he  found  addresses  of  remotely

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located  sex  workers  in  southern  Italy  on  public  internet  forums,  searched  for  these  using

Google’s  “Street  View,”  and  exhibited  the  desolate,  incredibly  lonely  results.

Now  four  of  his  major  projects  are  set  to  go  on  show  at  London’s  Carroll  /  Fletcher  for  hislatest  exhibition,  “Black  Diamond.”  These  are  “Feedlots,”  “51  US  Outposts,”  “Scambaiters”  and

“Oil  Fields.”

Feedlots  are  monumental  industrial  farms  in  which  animals  are  held,  force-­fed  and  fattened

prior  to  being  sent  to  slaughter,  whilst  oil  fields  are  areas  with  numerous  oil  wells  extracting

petroleum  from  reservoirs  below  ground.

For  “51  US  Outposts,”  Henner  has  found  and  printed  satellite  photographs  of  American  military

bases  in  51  different  countries.  “Scambaiters,”  involved  a  process  of  “baiting”  online  scammers,

wasting  as  much  of  their  time  as  possible,  and  negotiating  to  get  images  of  them  –  which  are

later  reprinted.

His  images  of  feedlots  were  recently  picked  up  by  PETA  (People  for  the  Ethical  Treatmentof  Animals)  for  what  they  depicted  about  the  mass  exploitation  of  farm  animals  in  the  meatand  dairy  industries.  But  Henner  explained  that  the  series  was  not  coming  from  a  specific

animal  rights  point  of  view,  and  instead  reflects  more  poignantly  on  our  modern  valuation  (or

perhaps  it  would  be  more  apt  to  say,  devaluation)  of  human  life.

“Obviously  I  was  horrified  when  I  realised  that  these  things  were  feedlots,  and  when  I  learned

more  about  meat  production  on  an  industrial  scale  in  the  US,”  he  said.

“But  really,  I  started  thinking  about  how  the  design  of  feedlots  could  be  a  model  for  the  ways  in

which  our  society  is  designed,  and  how  it  reflects  everyday  life.  In  our  society,  every  single  life  is

reduced  to  a  productive  unit,  and  if  you’re  not  productive  in  society  then  you’re  a  waste  of  time.

That’s  very  much  the  feedlot  concept  at  work  there.”

For  the  Carroll  /  Fletcher  show,  Henner  plans  to  lie  out  the  photographs  of  US  military  bases  on

mid-­level  plinths  so  that  visitors  can  walk  amongst  them,  viewing  them  from  above  as  though

they  were  hovering  over  the  landscapes  themselves.  A  map  pointing  out  all  of  the  bases’  locations

will  be  hung  nearby.

“The  US  government  actually  continues  to  deny  the  existence  of  quite  a  few  of  these  [bases],”

Henner  explained.

“But  all  the  evidence,  along  with  the  photographs,  is  right  there.”

“Mishka  Henner:  Black  Diamond,”  Carroll  /  Fletcher,  April  25  to  May  31

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