In the 1960s, the video artist Nam June Paik imagined broadcast television as a two-way signal that could communicate with spirits. Today, the artist Na Mira extends these ideas. Mira’s installation NO SMOKING examines the military origins of imaging and sonic technologies, and considers how these tools have shaped our perception.
Mira recorded the footage at the heart of this work in an empty cinema at the Fort Bliss Army base and the White Sands Missile Range. These adjacent sites along the US–Mexico border make up the country’s largest military installation. In the gallery, infrared videos play on monitors tuned to a frequency that causes the images to glitch continuously with flushes of color, while holographic projections move across opposing walls. Rather than replicating the camera’s single-point perspective, the imagery changes with the viewer’s position. A soundscape of field recordings, spatialized audio feedback, and music samples by artist and composer Chuquimamani-Condori travels throughout the gallery.
Mira describes this work as a “vanishing point” that degrades the image resolution on which soft power, propaganda, and other forms of statecraft often rely. “I work with what is hard to see.” NO SMOKING invites us to experience the edges of perception, where moving images shatter, multiply, and disappear in plain sight.
Na Mira: NO SMOKING is commissioned by The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Organized by Sophie Cavoulacos, Curator, Department of Film, with Abby Hermosilla, Curatorial Associate, Department of Curatorial Affairs and Department of Media and Performance.