MnIndy’s Schmelzer picks black-ops chronicler as artist of the year

Naturally, Shepard Fairey, who created the ubiquitous poster of Barack Obama that eventually made the cover of TIME (in revised form), was dubbed artist of the year by one writer at City Pages. But when Paul Schmelzer, Minnesota Independent editor, was asked to make his pick for the Minneapolis altweekly, he went for a less obvious choice: Trevor Paglen.

An experimental geographer based at the University of California – Berkeley, Paglen has long tried to peer into the murk of the U.S. government’s “black” world, which makes up around $30 billion of the annual budget. He looks at where these secret projects interface with the so-called “white” world, using public documents (including some that expose front companies created by the CIA to aid its “extraordinary rendition” flights), views beyond the fences at sites like Area 51 through high-powered camera lenses, and the identifying shoulder patches worn by personnel at black ops. His views are rarely clear, as you’d expect. One patch Paglen found (above) speaks directly to the secrecy. Worn by personnel that ran nighttime flights between aerospace contractors and secret sites, its embroidered acronym reads: “NOYFB”—None of Your Fucking Business.

Read Schmelzer’s piece.