Trevor Paglen’s edition for the Whitechapel Gallery accompanies his work in the 2016 exhibition Electronic Superhighway 2016-1966, and depicts a ‘numbers station’ in Germany - a type of shortwave radio station characterised by unusual broadcasts. During the Cold War, radio listeners across the globe started to notice bizarre broadcasts on the airwaves and believed they were carrying coded messages. This old-fashioned, low-tech method of communication probably remains the best option for transmitting information to agents in the field and might still be used, some espionage experts suggest.

Artist and geographer Trevor Paglen purposefully blurs the boundaries between contemporary art, journalism, science and politics to forge curious and particular ways to view and interpret the world around us. His highly conceptual and thoroughly researched practice has examined mass surveillance, particularly in the wake of Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks, and the ‘black world’ — highly secret and guarded military test sites. His work is political in its willingness to uncover and make visible these dark areas of classified activity.

Trevor Paglen, born 1974, lives and works in New York, USA. Paglen has exhibited widely across the USA and internationally. His work is included in many private and public collections including Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.