HRTLND

The day after a massive demonstration dozens of protestors are awakened early by police officers arresting them in their beds. Investigations have taken place overnight on Facebook comparing personal profiles of the attendees of the event on the social medium with the police footage of the protest. I am in my studio, also looking at images. As I browse through the many stacks of small prints on my table I try to wrap my head around the paradox: the technology that is provided as a service to help you find and attend an event is the same one that gets you arrested the day after. That really is our predicament today. More and more it seems that the names and appearances attached to all things around us are used to distract from their actual double bind function. The more disciplined we become—the more we believe the world to be according to its appearance—the more we lose our agency in it. It suddenly strikes me that we have to undiscipline the way we understand images as representations of the world. Rather than reinventing tattered ideas about representation, my responsibility, as a photographer today, may instead be to confront the deceitful appearances of the world and venture in the very discrepancy between images and reality. From the war museum to the future training ground to everyday life, HRTLND is a work of photographs and essays that ponder the links between security, militarisation and urban life.