Stars and Stripes War and Crimes in Cybertimes
The 176 page, A5ish size western dime novel is the result of a 2-day-workshop with the title ‘The Eyes of the Secret Cult’ with Ruben Pater (Barcelona/Amsterdam): ‘A stone’s throw from Darmstadt lies the Dagger Complex; the main data center for US military intelligence for the entire continents of Europe and Africa. Terabytes of data are stored about threats to the Western supremacy. Despite the high security, fragments of this data surfaces thanks to whistleblowers or open information requests. Leaked secrets that provide a glimpse of the things that go on behind the concrete of the Dagger complex and the operations of the 66th Military Intelligence Brigade. These digital espionage activities are a form of contemporary Western power, and the stories about or against them can be seen as a new form of Western. Like the sheriff who can do what he wants in the cliché Western town, the US intelligence has supreme power to listen to our phones, record our internet history and read our email. Inspired by Westerns we will challenge the sheriff’s supreme authority by creating counter narratives as creative resistance. As graphic designers we don’t have access to this secret data and we cannot visit the site. But we can harness the power of fiction and images. Photos: Jenny Schmitt and Hannah Reinhard