Moving Target Shadow Detection

2022 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
18:55 minutes

Modelled and rendered in 3D, Moving Target Shadow Detection by Sung Tieu reconstructs the entire interior of the Hotel Nacional de Cuba in Havana, the site of the first-known instance of a supposed sonic attack, which collectively became known as ‘Havana Syndrome’. First reported by CIA staff in the Cuban capital in 2016, the syndrome includes a range of unexplained disorders ranging from nausea, fatigue and memory loss to brain injuries resembling concussions. In Tieu’s film, CCTV camera footage and images taken by a nano drone lead from the hotel’s lobby to an occupied hotel room, where the viewer is confronted with classified documents and news reportages of the recent Havana Syndrome attacks around the world. Exploring timely questions relating to information systems, surveillance, as well as sonic and psychological warfare, the film problematizes the recent evolution in military technologies and how these silent advancements continue to expand their pervasive presence, causing a multitude of yet unknown effects.

Sung Tieu’s artistic vocabulary explores the vast and evolving protection and control industries, still rooted in the logic of the Cold War, used to restrict and mould subjects in subsequently globalized capitalism. Her works are informed by her own experience of cultural collision and displacement, as a Vietnamese refugee in Germany. Within her exhibitions, a sense of dislocation is evoked through a combination of sonic, visual, and textual elements; at the same time, her extensive research on sonic weaponry and sound as medium accentuates the work, demystifying and highlighting their material mechanics. In an era in which politics everywhere is being rendered by polarisation, fake news and foreign electoral intervention, Tieu’s takes us back to Cold War tactics, construction of fear and paranoia; the genesis of such psychological warfare.

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