Information
Technology
Material
The boat seems to be a formal adaption of the US stealth bomber F117, KR and Sandbichler gathered information inside different networks and through private contacts in order to re-engineer and rebuild the boat.It appeared to be unmanned, although navigated in the harbour environment by a person hidden inside the boat.
Equipped with a silent electrical engine, it stayed invisible for a radar station positioned on the river bank.
Descriptions & Essays
Re-engeneering and Re-enactment of a stealthboat as shown in a Tamil Tiger propaganda video footage. The Tamil Tiger video footage was found on internet sites of private analysts of clandestine weapon systems.
The boat is patrolling river banks. The crew is captured in heroic poses, thus creating a rather theatrical appearance. The origins of the 'stealth'boats are the subject of much debates, some analysts believe the design and construction to be indigenous to Sri Lanka. The Tamil population are by tradition expert boat builders. Furthermore the Sea Tigers have utilised speedboats as weapons over the past few years. The frame on the front of the boat could be described as holding spikes that fasten the boat to its target once they have collided. A further indication that the boats were not originally designed for military missions are cut-away parts of one boat's cockpit that were found lying on the jungle floor. First seen in a video-footage captured from a Tamil Tiger cameraman before he had time to destroy the evidence."Be Prepared! Tiger!" is a project by KR in collaboration with Peter Sandbichler and was first presented in the harbour of Duisburg in April 2006 during the exhibition "Designing the Truth".
Central to the project is the re-enactment of a stealth boat as depicted in a propaganda video of the Tamil Tigers, the rebel Tamil liberation army. The boat seems to be a formal adaption of the US stealth bomber F117,
a myth of invisibility and invincibility. KR and Sandbichler gathered information inside different networks and through private contacts in order to re-engineer and rebuild the boat.
It appeared to be unmanned, although navigated in the harbour environment by a person hidden inside the boat. The Tiger Stealth Boat is opening up a space of technological and symbolical transcodings. The Tamil appropriation of technology and symbolic power relies on their equivalents in the US. In the opposite way the symbolic quality of US stealth technology is 'infected' by the Tamil video. Even if it was visible the boat would hardly be decodable; yet it activates the clandestine dimensions of urban space. A further layer is added to this scenario by a website through which the stealth boat is offered up for sale. It is thus fed back into a commercial public context where its technical invisibility becomes a good that must be shown. What seems paradoxical is only consequential, both in the logic of the Tamil Tigers who show off their camouflage vehicle, and in he logic of the online shop that sells the stealth boat.
Literature
Schmidt, Sabine Maria. »be prepared! tiger!.« Article Artist´s Homepage.
Meyer, Eva. »Me as MacGhillie.« In Opaque Presence. Manual of Latent Invisibilities, edited by Andreas Broeckmann and Knowbotic Research. Berlin, Zürich: Diaphenes Verlag, 2010.
Fuller, Matthew. »The Cat Seemed to Think There was Enough of it Now in Sight.« Online Publication on Artist´s Homepage (2010).
Broeckmann, Andreas. »The Naked Bandit in the Theatre of Visibilities. Control, Attention
and Performance in Recent Projects by Knowbotic Research.« Knowbotic Research (online) (2010).
Nechvatal, Joseph. Immersive Ideals / Critical Distances. Saarbrücken: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 2009, 2009.
Paul, Christiane. Digital Art. World of Art Series, New York: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 2008.
Popper, Frank. From Technological to Virtual Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006.
krcf. »Transcoding Sovereignty: Naked Bandit/Here, Not Here/White Sovereign.« In Sarai Reader 2005: Bare Acts, edited by Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta and Jeebesh Bagchi and Geert Lovink, 111-114. Delhi: Sarai Media Lab, 2005.
Arns, Inke and Jacob Lillemose. »Es arte contemporáneo, imbecil - Comisarios de arte digital para
sacarlos del gueto, a minima.« new media, actual art 13 (2005): 164-175.
krcf. »Knowbotic Research The Dilemma: Naked bandit Transcoding Extra-territorialities,
Floating Sovereignties and Non-publics.« keine genaue Jahresangabe.
Exhibitions & Events