11/19/2023 0 Comments Are secret agents real![]() ![]() One of the art installations included in the exhibition occupies an entire room: Probably Chelsea, in which Heather Dewey-Hagborg builds 24 completely different faces of Chelsea Manning, from DNA donated by Manning herself and generated with algorithms, presented as a clear indication that DNA alone is not sufficient to recreate a human face. Right: a Chinese secret service women's bag that hides a camera. Real spy gadgets: Center, a camera that takes pictures from its side. “If it’s here, it’s because of Stéphanie M., a collector who has bought material on the black market in the Baltic States, moving in the shadows with great care,” Midal points out, in another metaphorical game of Russian dolls: to acquire spy gadgets, you have to behave like a spy. There are also personal albums kept by the real Mata Hari and makeup sets used by the Stasi, the feared secret services of the former German Democratic Republic, as well as all kinds of message encryption machines, from the mythical World War II-era Enigma to the Soviet Fialka, whose secrets the Western agencies never managed to crack. The exhibition brings together 270 pieces from 30 private collections and institutions: movie posters, drawings, paintings, videos, installations, film fragments, original film costumes such as Daniel Craig’s tuxedo from Casino Royale (2006), historical documents and numerous authentic spy gadgets: a poison-tipped umbrella with which the Bulgarian secret services assassinated a dissident in 1978 watches with tape recorders cigarette cases, bags (the only piece in the exhibition from China) and lighters concealing cameras a pipe with a poisoned dart dollar and ruble coins with microfilm compartments a camera that actually takes pictures from the side a hat with a holster designed by Britain’s MI6 shoes with a retractable blade, and the “Kiss of Death” lipstick, so named because it conceals a single-shot 6mm-caliber pistol. Part of the exhibition focuses on spies, with the bust 'Extase' (2020), by Nina Childress, which pays homage to Hedy Lamarr, in the foreground. Certain gadgets of movie espionage and the technology used in real life by the secret services have ended up being the same, and even film directors use sound and image recording systems to stage what they want to tell, like secret agents do,” says Alexandra Midal, professor of art and design at HEAD University in Geneva and curator of the exhibition along with Matthieu Orléan of the Cinémathèque. ![]() Going deeper philosophically, “actors spy to build their characters and spies have to act when on covert missions. As happened with the mafia and The Godfather (members of the Italian-American criminal organization decided to adopt the manners and attire with which they were characterized on screen), espionage and cinema have been communicating vessels since the birth of the latter, to the point that, during the Cold War, the secret services of each side watched the movies created by their opponents to gauge their state of mind and to learn from their methods. Top Secret discusses real espionage, that which inspires glorious fiction, and how both have fed back on each other. Cinema and Espionage, an international exhibition currently being staged at the CaixaForum in Madrid after its run at the La Cinémathèque Française in Paris. This game of mirrors, the double-face of espionage, of who is a spy and who is spied upon, who is a patriot and who is a traitor, forms the basis of Top Secret. A journey between the first sentence of Casino Royale, the first novel starring James Bond, which its creator, Ian Fleming, published in 1952, to a September 2019 interview published in EL PAÍS with Edward Snowden, a CIA computer security expert and the source of one of the biggest leaks of state secrets in history when he brought to light a program of mass surveillance on a global scale by the CIA and the U.S. I think European governments are afraid of me” there is not only a time lapse of more than six decades, but also a huge journey between fiction and reality. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling - a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension - becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it” to “I have not made public anything that endangers people. ![]() From “The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning.
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