Photos from the opening of Culture of Torture Torture in Culture
at Artneuland, Berlin, 26 March 2009

Christian De Lutz presents written evidence and accounts of people who have been present in the so-called “black sites”. This is a military and journalistic term for the extra-judiciary interrogation centers, used by the U.S. military and the CIA. The most famous, or rather infamous, of these sites are probably camps Delta, Iguana and X-Ray at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, Abu Ghraib in Iraq, and Bagram in Afghanistan. However, a number of other such places have existed, and probably still exist throughout the world.

The first series of prints are facsimiles of CIA documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The documents were requested with keywords which are shown, but almost all the rest information was blacked out by CIA censors. The second series of prints are meta-geographies which show views of alleged black sites, such as Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan via Google Earth and NASA Worldwind. Included are mash-ups by Google Earth users and abstract lines showing the paths of the satellites which took the photos. “Black Sites” reflects upon the distribution of knowledge and the effect it has on our empathy.

from the exhibition text