SECURITY AESTHETIC = SYSTEMS PANIC
Brian Holmes
Where does security end, and insecurity begin? Systems analysts recognise this
as a classic boundary question. Its answer determines the precise deployment
of any security system. But as we shall see, this particular boundary question
cannot be answered under present conditions, except through the definition of
a second system, a specifically interrogatory one. Drawing on the work of an
American art critic of the 1960s, I ll call this second kind of bounded entity an
 aesthetic system .
First we should consider how security systems are installed in reality. Attention is
focused on every point where an environment, conceived as  secure , comes into
contact with its outer edges. Typically, these edges are doors, windows, property
lines, borders, coasts, air-space  every place of ingress or egress. At each of the
edges, a catalogue of known and present dangers is established. An analysis is
conducted to determine the most effective responses to these dangers; and then
locks, barriers, fences, warning devices, surveillance personnel, armed guards,
etc. are positioned at the system s boundaries to repel the threat. Further efforts
are expended to look into the crystal ball of the future, predicting all those points
where new threats could call for the definition of new boundaries. More material
and personnel can now be deployed, or at least, readied for deployment. The
security system expands dynamically, continually adjusting its relations to the
outside world, continually redefining its own boundaries as a system.
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One can easily imagine how a home, an airport or a harbour can be made  secure . For what if innocent but marginalised social groups knew the extent to which they
An initial, safe or  quiet inside space must simply be preserved from outer harm. are being spied on? Would they not then feel further alienation, and maybe even
But what happens in a complex social system, one composed of many different defect to the side of the enemy? And what if mainstream citizens themselves had
actors, some with irreconcilably diverging interests? What happens when the to be surveilled, for fear that a violent anomaly might be lurking somewhere in
space to be protected is as much linguistic and ideological as it is physical an average profile? If they knew they were being watched, wouldn t these honest
and architectural, so that a breach of legitimacy or a leak of information can citizens become angered and demand an end to the proliferation of security
be perceived as illicit ingress or egress? In short, what happens in a contested measures? Doesn t opinion control then become necessary at all levels of the
environment where threats can arise from within? The response is clear: what system? And how about educational and cultural censorship, morality brigades,
happens is vertiginous paranoia. conversation police? Where does security end, and insecurity begin?
The problem of the system s edges suddenly multiplies: the boundary to be Cybernetic Shadow-Boxing
secured is now the entire volume of the system, its width, its breadth, its depth, As you can see from the world around us, any security system is destined
its characteristics and qualities and most damnedly of of all, its human potential under stress to become an entity of uncertain contours, a veritable black hole
for change. The resulting proliferation of eyes, ears, cameras, snooping devices, in society, extending its cloak of invisibility to the exact extent that its internal
data banks, cross-checks and spiraling analytical anxiety in the face of every paranoia deepens; and at the same time generating an external paranoia about
conceivable contingency is what defines the present security panic. Under these its operations that can only provoke a redoubling of its initial drive to stealth
conditions, no form of precaution could appear superfluous. Statistical models of and invisibility. Under these conditions, what becomes necessary for the
equilibrium are checked constantly against real-time deviations. Nascent trends maintenance of democracy is a specific kind of social system, whose probing and
are examined for potentially hostile extrapolations. Endlessly ramifying if-then questioning can provide some renewed transparency. This is where art criticism
scenarios are extended preemptively into the future. An aesthetics of closure used to have great ideas.
striving toward mathematical certainty becomes the tacitly nourished ethos of
the security system. Writing in 1968, Jack Burnham predicted the coming demise of the traditional
art object, and with it, of the figure of the artist as Homo faber, or man the
Yet there is one further complication that merits our attention, particularly maker. In their place would arise  aesthetic systems shaped by Homo arbiter
in what is called a democracy, where surveillance of the state by the citizens formae, man the decider of forms. The essential reasons for this shift were
is an historical norm. This is the fact that security measures, in the face of a technological and organisational: in an age of ever-more complex and powerful
proliferating internal enemy, come rapidly to be shrouded in a veil of secrecy. information machines, constructed by ever-more sophisticated and extensive
The veil is not only cast to preserve their immediate effectiveness, though that is organisations, an art that retained the simple posture of manufacture, or hand-
obviously an issue. But there is more at stake. Secrecy, from the viewpoint of the making, would inevitably be condemned to lose all relevance in the world. Yet
security system, is required to keep the initial security measures from backfiring this declining relevance could be countered if the artist rose to the challenges
and producing greater insecurity. of the contemporary process of production. The cybernetic design of expansive
socio-technical systems could be reflected and evaluated by the deployment of
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compact aesthetic systems. As Burnham wrote: security panic with its inherent tendencies toward invisibility, concealed
intentions, censorship and even aggression? What we have is the paradoxical,
 The systems approach goes beyond a concern with staged environments yet also paradigmatic case where one systemic boundary can only be identified
and happenings; it deals in a revolutionary fashion with the larger problem by determining another. What this means is that an aesthetic system must be
of boundary concepts... Conceptual focus rather than material limits define constituted as a fully operational reality: a project, a team, an alliance or network
the system. Thus any situation, either in or outside the context of art, may that can probe the contours of the secret, dissimulating system, and at the same
be designed and judged as a system... In evaluating systems, the artist is a time, reveal those hidden outlines mimetically, through its own outer forms,
perspectivist considering goals, boundaries, structure, input, output, and related its own vocabularies and images, its characteristic modes of appearance and
activity inside and outside the system. Where the object almost always has a fixed communication. What you get then, in art, are elaborate fakes, doppelgängers,
shape and boundaries, the consistency of a system may be altered in time and double agents, fictional entities that strive to produce outbreaks of truth at
space, its behavior determined both by external conditions and its mechanisms their points of contact with the hidden system. What you get, in other words,
of control. (1968) are counter-models, the virtual outlines of rival systems. This is the principle of
some of the most advanced art of our day. Jack Burnham understood it in 1968.
Burnham s insights were far ahead of his time. In the 1960s, what he mainly had But there s just one problem: later generations of critics did not read him.1
before his eyes were sculptural environments, or what we now call installations:
relatively simple systems of interaction with the public, which no longer appeared While security systems proliferate, and while strategic reality hackers devise
as art objects, but rather as heterogeneous assemblages of parts, some of which complex and sardonic lures to ferret them out and render them visible, the
might break down and could then be replaced without in any way damaging majority of cultural commentators remain blind to the entire predicament and
the originality or authenticity of the system. Hans Haacke s early sculptures go on blithering about the tragedies of great painting or the modest pleasures of
were the classic examples  and that was already a revolution. What we have relational art. Yet there are other things under the sun, even if they are not so easy
seen emerging in the art of our time, however, particularly since computerised to see. An urgent task of cultural critique in the age of security panic is to help
communications technology became widely available in the 1990s, are subtly carve out space in democratic societies for the necessary fictions, feints, satires,
aestheticised versions of complex socio-technical systems: networks of actors, double-identities and organisational shadow-boxing of aesthetic systems.
equipment, physical sites and virtual spaces allowing for the orchestration
of highly diverse activities. In this context of spiraling interaction, the most Probing the Black World
important artistic decisions are the ones that shape the systemic boundary, A paradigmatic case is Marko Peljhan s Trust-System 15, initiated in 1995,
lending the system its degrees of recognisability and irrecognisability, and which is an attempt to build an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for civilian
thus, its potential for symbolic agency. As Burnham remarks, the systems artist counter-reconnaissance and independent media broadcasting. As noted in the
 operates as a quasi-political provocateur, though in no concrete sense is he an concept text accompanying an installation at the Moderna Galerija in Ljubljana,
ideologist or a moralist (1968). Slovenia, projects of this kind  include methods and materials which interact
directly with societal and capital systems, communicate with them, use them,
How then does a democratic systems aesthetic come into play, in the face of and cooperate with them, as well as position themselves in direct confrontation
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with them . On the wall are images of the projected drone along with letters open up situations of apparently normal collaboration, morphing into bizarre
from various military corporations  Aydin Vector, Fibersense Technology, and ambiguous confrontations when the group s satirical performances begin to
Interstate Electronics, etc.  expressing their willingness to supply Peljhan take over the scene (often through the display of outlandish accoutrements such
with all necessary information for the purchase of materials. A vitrine contains as the  Employee Visualization Appendage or the Halliburton Survivaball ).2
specialised engineering manuals and a few key components. Yet the work is not The aim is always to cut through commercial or bureaucratic rhetoric to reveal
complete with the installation of this conceptual display. The aim is to realise the the unstated but imperious drive for profit at any cost, which dictates corporate
UAV, and to expose all the conditions under which such technologies are being and governmental behaviour under neoliberalism.
deployed in present-day societies. As the artist explains in a lecture:
The more confrontational forms of tactical media all work out some variation
 The project has two objectives  tactical broadcasting of a radio programme on the systems aesthetic, in configurations that range from predominantly
over territory where broadcasting by the usual means is impossible because of symbolic display to more pragmatic forms of political intervention. In a
military actions and civil repression, and collecting of intelligence for civilian particularly impressive project, Trevor Paglen mobilised an existing network
purposes. The second objective is of course in collision with all the legislations in of amateur plane-spotters to gather information about the CIA s extraordinary
the world, but I and an entire culture are certainly interested in how to maintain rendition program, which he then published in book form with a professional
a degree of civilian control over very aggressive and self-reproducing systems of journalist (Paglan & Thompson 2006). The Institute for Applied Autonomy
social repression which use these same methods to keep us under their thumb. subsequently produced a striking visualisation of Paglen s information, with the
(1999) work Terminal Air (2007); but they have also made protest tools such as the
Graffiti Writer (1999) or the eminently practical TXTmob application (2004),
All of Peljhan s work deploys rigorously conceived socio-technical systems as which helps demonstrators to share up-to-the-minute information about police
vehicles to gather information about military and corporate technologies, even deployments via mobile-phone messaging.3 On the level of Internet activism,
while initiating their conversion to civilian uses. Today, after multiple iterations Übermorgen launches elaborate applications such as GWEI  Google Will Eat
of the tactical UAV concept under the shadow of increasing security panic, he Itself (2005), which enlists web-users to probe the obscure operational routines
has carried out the first test flights. Can anyone predict what kinds of knowledge of the tentacular search-engine portal.4 And at street level, an anonymous group
 and what levels of controversy  will be generated by the confrontation posing as the Chicago Housing Authority transformed the slogan  This is Change
between the Trust-System and the increasingly secretive military systems of our into  This is Chaos , dressing up as municipal workers to install an astonishing
supposedly democratic societies? poster series in the city s own display spaces (2005). The bright orange posters
denounced the elimination of much of Chicago s low-cost housing by the
To define the boundaries of an aesthetic system is to determine both a threshold authority charged with protecting it, deftly exposing the truth papered over by
of visibility and a potential for interaction. This has been the artistic principle an expensive Leo Burnett advertising campaign.5
of the Yes Men for over a decade, in interventions typically based on the
creation of fake websites spuriously mirroring the claims of real corporations or The list could go on and on, but in this context it clearly has to culminate
bureaucracies. Email requests for interviews or conference presentations then with Critical Art Ensemble, whose projects have typically taken the form of
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staged laboratories inviting the public to gain first-hand experience with the of the former team run the  Global Security Alliance  a satirical performance
increasingly pervasive effects of biotech. Their research into the history and festival exploring the paradoxes of security panic and  cultural peacekeeping .7
present development of biological weapons touched off a veritable security panic, Another project involves the technopolitics of information-retrieval and data-
plunging the artist Steve Kurtz and the university professor Robert Ferrell in a mining.8 And in collaboration with the group Kuda.org based in Novi Sad, they
four-year  bioterror trial that galvanised widespread support for the freedom of have just published an anthology of Netbase projects in the form of a jet-black
both artistic expression and scientific research. In this case, an aesthetic system monolith, recounting a decade of hands-on research into aesthetic systems. The
clashed directly with the US government, generating a wealth of penetrating name of the book says it all: Non Stop Future.9
insights into the control structures of authoritarian neoliberalism, but only at
the price of a long and exhausting ordeal  which fortunately ended with the
withdrawal of all charges.6
So what are the current prospects of the systems aesthetic in its most provocative
and confrontational forms? The lessons of recent years are clear: the security
obsessions of contemporary societies inevitably give rise to proliferating
zones of secrecy, both at the heart of the increasingly militarised states and
in the dispersed and labyrinthine worlds of the transnational corporations.
Two imperious justifications  the pressures of economic competition and
the demands of sovereign defence  lend a perverse legitimacy to what would
otherwise be manifestly undemocratic practices. Artistic interventions are one
way to probe these  black worlds , in order to extract information and to offer
tangible aesthetic images of what can no longer be seen. Public art institutions
should support and distribute such projects as part of their civic mandate.
But critical artists and activists will always have to work far in advance of the
institutional mainstream, adopting the formats and guises that allow them to
grapple with the invisible.
A great example is the Public Netbase of Vienna, an electronic arts centre that
initially configured itself as an Internet service provider to explore both the
potentials and the traps of the emerging information society. After twelve years
of original and challenging projects, including work with most of the artists
I ve cited here, Netbase refused to neutralise itself and was finally forced out
of operation in 2006 by pressure from the municipal authorities. Today parts
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NOTES:
1. Of course there are historicist readings, like Luke Skrebowski s  All Systems Go: Recovering
Jack Burnham s  Systems Aesthetics  (2006). Too bad they remain on the safe terrain of art
history.
2. .
3. . See herein,  Implausible Deniability .
4. . GWEI was a collaboration between UBERMORGEN.COM,
Alessandro Ludovico, and Paolo Cirio.
5. Documentation of this intervention can still be found at web/20070405175219/http://www.chicagohousingauthority.net>.
6. See the analyses of the case and its implications at html>.
7. .
8. .
9. See (Curcic & Pantelic 2008).
REFERENCES:
Jack Burnham (1968)  Systems Esthetics , in Artforum (September), online cz/horvitz/burnham/systems-esthetics.html>.
Branka Curcic & Zoran Pantelic (eds.) (2008) Public Netbase: Non Stop Future, New Practices
in Art and Media, Frankfurt: Revolver.
Trevor Paglen & A. C. Thompson (2006) Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA s Rendition Flights,
New Jersey: Melville House.
Marko Peljhan (1999)  Strategies of Minimal Resistance  Analysis of Tactical Work in
the Surveillance Society , in Saa
a Glavan (ed.) Geopolitika in umetnost / Geopolitics and
Art, Ljubljana: Open Society Institute, online 99peljhantxang.htm>.
Luke Skrebowski (2006)  All Systems Go: Recovering Jack Burnham s  Systems Aesthetics  , in
Tate Papers 5 (Spring), online skrebowski.htm>.
Brian Holmes 2009 Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0
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