I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me
I discovered Trevor Paglen’s book I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon’s Black World some time ago and picked it up because frankly it was awesome design inspiration. A collection of mysteriouso Black Ops military patches. Patches that looked so ridiculous I just assumed this was a design book that had a slew of artists invent these patches and try to pass them off as real but I didn’t really give it much thought and filed the book away on our office bookcase. Well how wrong I was!
After taking a nasty spill on my bike yesterday afternoon and being forced to spend the rest of the afternoon/evening indoors I comforted myself by flipping through whatever few cable channels I have. And of course at the most unexpected of channels, C-SPAN’s Book TV I found my evening’s entertainment. Trevor Paglen was discussing this very book at a very small reading (even though the book had little to read) at Brooklyn’s Melville House.
I was amazed to find out that all the patches were indeed real and he had been collecting them for quite sometime. Paglen makes his living as a military journalist specializing in reporting on all things that should be classified! So trying to decipher the clues of the symbols and iconography on these patches plays heavily into his reporting! Most of the talk was spent pointing out how certain graphics can easily now be related to recently declassified operations, programs or ships. While others were probably hinting to military programs or organizations still under wraps! It quickly started turning into some real X-Files level shit and was quite eye opening and amazing! If any of this remotely interests you (I know it does most of us at Mishka) then you should check out this book and see if you can catch a repeat of his talk on C-Span’s Book TV. Or better yet just frequent his excellent website for all sorts of details and updates!
Like Mulder… I want to believe!
**UPDATE 4/1/08**
The NY Times has a great article on Trevor Paglen and his patches in today’s Science Section!
- My Pal the Crook
April 1st, 2008 at 5:36 pm
the slideshow on the NYT website has already taken down 1 of the 10 patches… CONSPIRACY! I think it was the one with the naked woman riding a killer whale. I forgot what that program was about. Maybe they took it down because of poor taste or female vitriol.
Gotta love the Air Force patch motto “Oderint Dum Metuant”, translates to “Let them hate so long as they fear.” Didnt i see that in the Mishka brooklyn warehouse behind the fake wall where you and greg always warned the volunteers to never go near???
NYT website also posted a short video interview today with Isaiah Saxon & Sean Hellfritsch of Encyclopedia Pictura who made Bjork’s “Wanderlust” video in stereoscopic 3D with creations made at Matthew Barneys studio. Cost over $100,000. How much does Kanye claim to spend? $1 million?
http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=cae6cd1d56ad61cd2686baeba62701d9f7a8d2ae
and Woody Allen’s suing American Apparel for $10 million for using his image on a billboard ads in NY and LA.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/business/media/01woody.html
October 18th, 2009 at 2:48 am
As I became a designer in the professional world I learned that the rules of design are suggestions that the novice designer should follow in order to play it safe. My professors would kill me if they heard me say this but, if there is a good concept behind your work and it