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INS Inspectorate Berlin
Briefing documents issued by INS Department of Propaganda,
November 2004
Berlin
Surveillance of the city of Berlin is carried out under the
authority of the INS Inspectorate established by the INS First
Committee in 2003. In the course of its mission, the Inspectorate
will conduct a series of examinations, interrogations and
assessments and fieldwork in the city. The Inspectorate’s
brief reflects the key INS concern of investigating the fault-lines
in culture: between literature and philosophy, art and propaganda,
fiction and phantasmagoria, territory and map.
The instructions issued by the INS First Committee detail
a series of operations under the rubrics of the INS central
interests: marking and erasure, transit and transformation,
cryptography and death. The inspectorate is instructed to
make its findings public.
Advance Reconnaissance, undertaken by INS
General Secretary Tom McCarthy with the co-operation of Sparwasser
HQ , 10–22 July 2004, had the following objectives:
- To identify and contact subjects for future in-depth interrogation,
in particular among philosophers, cultural critics, writers
and artists resident in the city. These results to be communicated
to INS Chief Philosopher and Inspectorate Specialist Simon
Critchley.
- To identify and recruit local informants and potential
collaborators, in particular reliable people with the skills
necessary to assist in future detailed surveillance operations.
- To identify and conduct preliminary assessment of specific
sites and networks for future observation and analysis.
These results to be communicated INS Specialists Anthony
Auerbach (aerial reconnaissance/erasure and inscription)
and Melissa McCarthy (pulses and flows/transfer, transport,
transition and translation).
- To provide information to Berliners on past and present
INS activities by means of art-spaces open to the public
and local media outlets including newspapers, magazines,
radio, television and internet.
Aerial Reconnaissance
Following the success of the Advance Reconnaissance Phase,
INS First Committee requires historico-topographic data for
its intelligence assessments concerning the city of Berlin.
The INS Inspectorate is therefore instructed to dispatch an
aerial reconnaissance team to the city to retrieve such data
in co-operation with local agents.
The Aerial Reconnaissance Team led by INS
Chief of Propaganda (Archiving and Epistemological Critique)
Anthony Auerbach will conduct field surveys examining in detail
the re-inscription of natural and social history on sites
of erasure, especially monumentalised or memorialised sites
in the city of Berlin. The project will provide the INS First
Committee with data for its ongoing investigations of encryption,
inscription and erasure.
Aerial Reconnaissance operations will comprise two components:
- Mapping, assessment and selection of target sites. The
Aerial Reconnaissance Team will seek information from the
following sources: maps, prior photographic reconnaissance
(PR), published histories, hearsay. Such information will
be collected and displayed at Sparwasser HQ.
- Low-altitude photographic reconnaissance. The selected
sites will be the subjects of reconnaissance sorties carried
out using vertical photography techniques and apparatus
modified from those devised by Anthony Auerbach for the
pieces ‘Planet’ and ‘Enemy Contact Surface’
(2002). Photographic materials will be assembled and subjected
to preliminary interpretation at Sparwasser HQ.
Sparwasser will therefore become for three weeks the operational
HQ of the INS Inspectorate Berlin. The Inspectorate’s
work will be accessible to the public during hours determined
in consultation with Sparwasser agents. Sparwasser HQ may
be closed to the public during fieldwork sorties.
At the end of this period, INS General Secretary Tom McCarthy
will visit Berlin to inspect the Inspectorate and hold a public
consultation. INS Agent Nick Grindell will act as Official
Interpreter.
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