I'm beginning to understand and identify artist lectures more and more as performances. (all of life actually) Paglen's lecture was given with a sincere casualness; an informalness that seemed to say "I'm showing you this information, but it's not important to me that you believe me." This act actually lent credibility to his work at first- I'm so confident in this material, I don't even need to "sell" it to you.
His presenting the "art" as "research" led to a sliding scale of discourse and vocabulary. At one time art, at another research, it felt like Schrödinger's cat, both art and research, while neither art or research.
I began to align his work more along the lines of the constructed fictional historical narratives of Zoe Beloff, and I began to consider his photographs and collections as really poorly photoshopped images or technically poor constructions. I lost trust in him and his work.
I know that his work is about the blurry line between information/disinformation, trusting/entertaining... somehow i found his images very interesting and compelling when presented as truth and evidence, but during his presentation, I began to feel as if it were a poorly constructed entertainment. I guess that's part of his message.
I came across Paglen's work a few years ago in "Wired", and they treated the material from a much more "X- Files" point of view... this Lone Ranger character, going into harm's way to uncover the "truth", and bring it to light, kind of like Taryn Simon's "Secret Sites" photos. Paglen's approach was much less heavy-handed, but the lack of conviction in his delivery made me think he didn't even care about his work all that much.
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