CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/20/2019

Trevor Paglen's new book offers an enigmatic glimpse into decades of covert operations

Featured image, an emblem for the headquarters of the United States Air Force Space Command program, Cyber Warfare Division, is reproduced from Trevor Paglen's new artist's book collecting fascinating ephemera produced around covert aerospace operations from the archives of Peter Merlin, aviation archaeologist. "Merlin's work as an aerospace archaeologist is animated by a simple premise," Paglen writes, "'Something always remains.' Everything that happens in the world leaves some kind of trace, whether it's paperwork, cultural artifacts, anecdotes or material remnants of the event itself… The segments of aircraft, the totemic patches and coins, the desk models, rocket ignition keys, ID cards and pamphlets in Merlin's collection recall the fossilized dinosaur eggs left over from a planetary crisis, albeit one that is far from over. They speak to a moment in time when the apocalypse was near: a moment in which political superpowers built stealth bombers and nuclear weapons with the potential to devastate the planet as thoroughly as the Chicxulub asteroid. Some of these artifacts tell their own stories. Most do not. Nonetheless, they are fragments of human undertakings whose implications remain largely unknown. The ultimate legacy of the programs they were affiliated with may be one of the greatest mysteries surrounding these bits of material culture."