p-L-ast-IC | sopova

installation
2020

sculptures, sound,
flowcharts, archival documents, texts,
found objects, stone, wax, flowers

The system of listening devices played a prominent role in the history of the investigation and elimination of the city guerrillas. In the official documents in the case of prisoners, the listening equipment introduced by the Federal Criminal Police Office to establish control over the new guerrilla corps, the listening equipment could not record «nothing but noise and separate, unrelated phrases». However, the materials that preserved audio recordings of the actual events of «German Autumn» are still classified. The facility’s external radio service used until 10:00 pm for the cell alarms and built-in wiretaps was transformed by the inmates members to develop their internal communication system between the cells. The need to use such a DIY network resulted from forced isolation and mental torture of sensory deprivation that was later called the «dead corridors» system.

The structure morphing, which was the result of actions between law enforcement agencies and guerrilla groups, became a place for the redistributions of meanings within the installation logic. «p-L-ast-IC» stands for «low-intensity conflicts» — LIC, containing plastic (explosive) substances «to a degree», is a system of listening devices turned inside out, where the hidden becomes visible. The organizing principle of the details in the wiring diagrams of the listening devices became the scenario for building its internal architecture.

The installation environment suggested the formation of a communication field, inviting an exhibition visitor to join. The installation listened, recorded, and reproduced the auditory traces of the spectators present in the space through the glass vibration, stitching them into their artistic tale about the «sleeping». One of the sculptures included in the work, imitating a dream catcher, was a kind of «sound catcher», allowing one to read the «space» through a stretch of glass screens. Speech and the surrounding noise in this

work became machinery oil, creating suitable conditions for engineering installation functioning.

Is it possible to establish a relationship between the military and the civilian in terms of notions such as pseudomorphism and plasticity? In work
«p-L-ast-IC», these concepts become a kind of «translation» allowing to integrate political and social into the materiality of the geology and brain structures, moving away from the dialectical juxtapositioning of what are the power structures and what are the opposing parties, such as the urban guerrilla forces. In geology, pseudomorphism means a change in the original structure without changing its shape. And plasticity is a neuroscience concept, the brain’s ability to alter radically and then retain the new structure.

Thus, geological morphing reports that a transition can be created itself — a hybrid moment when the force complex can adopt the tactics of the development of guerrilla groups since it is known that the representatives of the special services fully formed the third composition of the RAF guerrilla.

The speech deterritorialization by the reproduced glass vibration made space speak and disintegrate into different personifications of natural and military: dead corridors as assemblies of political desires of power structures, and pseudomorphism as an abstraction for detecting guerrilla groups elimination tactics of by the forces.

It is also significant that in the implementation of measures related to tracking the city guerrilla, a raster grid search system — «seine» — was developed, the use of which was also applied during the search for terrorist groups after the attacks in September 2001, within the framework of the project to identify subsequent potential threat «Sleepers». The project included searching for suspects among civilians. It aimed to detect potential danger, namely people capable of engaging in terrorist acts but who have shown legitimate and inconspicuous behavior for a long time.

Among the main criteria for the search were: male students and former students between 18 and 40 years old, with allegedly but not necessarily Islamic religious affiliation, studying technical, scientific, and humanitarian subjects between 1996 and 2001, who are financially independent and frequently traveling. The apparent unsuccessful use of this kind of weapon for people hunting, which includes such a large number of ordinary citizens in the status of a potential «threat», has led to the emergence of programs that imply even greater force control and data collection, converting any citizen into a potential «sleeper».