Staring into a Void:
Groom Lake and the Imperial Production of Nowhere

Groom Lake, Area 51, Dreamland, Watertown, the Ranch, the Remote Location, Elvis’ House. A lot of names for a place that does not legally exist. Founded in 1955 as a test site for the super-secret U2 airplane, the base later known by the above-mentioned names would become both a resonant non-image in the United States’ popular imagination, and a place where military and intelligence activities occur outside the conventions of the state. The site at Groom Lake is, literally and figuratively, a non-place: local commanders claim federal law does not apply, maps do not show its presence, and all workers are sworn to lifelong secrecy. Until this day the Air Force has refused to acknowledge its existence.

Despite its birth in the stygian recesses of the Cold War, the site at Groom Lake refuses to become an anachronism. Instead, the visual and legal “nowhereness” of Groom Lake plays a structuring role in the contemporary state. Rather than close shop with the end of the Cold War, Groom Lake has, in fact, expanded considerably.

Using conventions from experimental film, academic lecture, and performance art, this “experimental lecture” uses the trope of Groom Lake to examine the production on non-place in relation to questions of sovereignty, international law, the militarization of the domestic landscape, and the secret nuclear war which has been fought in the Nevada desert since the early 1950s.

Performance History:

April 2004:
Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL
Performance in conjunction with Version Festival.

University of Chicago, Chicago, IL

March 2004:
Philadelphia, PA.
Association of American Geographers Conference