Fourteen Square Feet of International Water

The piece shows a pixelated satellite image of water, printed on canvas, stretched across the surface of a raft. When exhibited, the raft was moored for a week at Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture, placing in the midst of the changing surface of the water an image of water as seen through satellite imaging. For this printout, I selected a section of pixelated water from just beyond the international US border to draw a comparison between the degraded resolution of the image and the deregulated and illegal nature of military activities happening offshore, thinking specifically of the extraordinary rendition of unlawful combatants and political detainees. The satellite image is of San Francisco’s closest international waters (roughly halfway between the Farallon Islands and the Peninsula), which I ‘relocated’ to the SF waterfront at Fort Mason.