The aerial gaze of earth observation satellites is the visual material for the installation Europe’s Eyes on the Skin of the Earth unraveling a complex economic and political web that make up the fortification of the European Union’s external borders. Private security and military companies win huge contracts for supplying an array of surveillance technology such as radars, satellites and drones to the European Union. One of the biggest private security and defence companies, Airbus, is a EU’s main provider of these technologies.

Hansen has accessed the interface of satellites made by Airbus, to understand how the aerial gaze is composed, where it is constructed and who the financial benefactors are. She uses the satellites as a kind of material double-agent, and has an interest in what the satellites are made of and tracks where these materials have been extracted from and where they are brought to — familiar colonial routes reappear. Hansen also traces who is making money off European border surveillance which is an industry built up by a web of corporations, subcontractors, stakeholder and investors.

Europe’s Eyes on the Skin of the Earth.

2021

By: Nanna Elvin Hanse

Materials: 11:40 min. Video installation with sound, wood and metal

Presented at: Kunsthall Charlottenborg, Afgangsudstilling 2021 

Voices: Shakira Kasigwa, Sifa Dogustan and Nanna Katrine Hansen

Videomapping & technical support: Maya SB

Thanks to: Forrest Curriculum (AbhijanToto & Pujita Guha), Maria Cariola, Shakira Kasigwa, Monia Sander Haj-Mohamed, Jane Jin Kaisen, Jonas Eika, Agnieszka Polska, Christian Danielewitz, Katrine Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Stephen McEvoy, Silas Emmery, David Catherall, Daniel Olivares

Returning to the remote sensing of the satellites themselves, they register more than what a human eye is capable of seeing, using infrared technology and other wavelengths. On the website, they showcase how aerial imagery can be used to analyse potential hiding places in bushes close to the external border of the EU as well as movements or changes within refugee campsites.

In the installation we are placed amongst the satellites, looking down on a map. Cartography is not only a tool for navigation and depiction of geographical landscapes — maps are involved in making and creating worlds.

Who are objects to be surveilled, traded, commercialized, and who can look on from the safe distance of the European fortress?