Traditionally the power of science fiction has been to offer a concrete view of what the world would look like if a technological breakthrough occurred that changed everything, or if the natural world were constructed with a few basic building blocks completely different, like if the sky were red and blood were blue. With Neuromancer, an irresistible page-turner by William Gibson in the 80s, the whole game changed. That novel recognized that a technological breakthrough had already happened while almost nobody noticed, that was to change everything, predicting not only the digital communication explosion but globalized culture. Trevor Paglen's exhibition at Matrix, in the Berkeley Art Museum, is the art world catching up with Neuromancer twenty-five years later.

Paglen demonstrates through gorgeous, NASA-like photographic prints that another unseen reality has permeated the world: that of high-technology government and military satellite surveillance. While we all know vaguely that gps and google maps are made possible by satellites, Paglen reveals the chilling source of these capabilities. He patiently records the tracks of orbiting spy hardware in the night sky. Apparently there are hundreds of these space ticks sucking the blood of terrestrial activity, just on the part of the United States. With the hardware up there from other countries it could be many thousands of such objects. Since these are paid for by black budgets--unannounced, unsupervised--citizens do not review the expense or the policy.

Four Geostationary Satellites Above the Sierra Nevada, 2007
Courtesy of the artist and Bellwether Gallery, New York

In a second section of his exhibition Paglen has built a tour-de-force video installation showing a large transparent globe and four video projectors depicting the paths of these satellites around our planet. Sited in a very dark room, the traditions of film screening, video installation, science fiction, political activism, spook show, and planetarium converge. The resulting experience is one in which the grace of immaculately conceived art falls on a crucial stance of advocacy.