Cosmopolemos /koz-mə-pol’e-mos/ noun
The ordered universe of war
From Greek kósmos (order, universe) and pólemos (war, the personification of war)
The result of seven years of research conducted by visual artist Edmund Clark and investigative reporter Crofton Black, Cosmopolemos delivers an analysis of the American military-industrial complex through an interplay of images, data and language.
The United States account for 40% of military spending worldwide, spending each year for their defense as much as the next nine countries put together. In the period between the attacks of 9/11 and the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, the U.S. Department of Defense issued $6.5 trillion worth of contracts. The some 43 million transactions accounted for between these two iconic events encompass every aspect of life and death – from oil reserves and nuclear weapons to cookies and cleaning services. These data are not secret, but their scale and complexity challenge understanding.
In order to comprehend the meaning and scale of such power, Clark and Black adopt the medium of the printed Encyclopaedia. Although it is nowadays often seen as redundant, humans have used this form to make sense of inconceivable complexity for centuries.
The images and texts they used come from the Department of Defense’s photography galleries – the images it chooses to represent itself. In Cosmopolemos, this freely accessible content is articulated in two contexts: a Gazetteer focussing on countries where activities take place, and a glossary of words found in the transactions’ descriptions or in the images’ captions.
In combining the Department of Defense’s transaction data with its soft-focus photography of American military power, this Encyclopaedia offers a representation of everything the US military paid for everywhere. Thus, Clark and Black build up an encyclopedic analysis of the commercial relations that sustain the hegemonic power of the world’s first superpower in 2026, the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence. In the exhibition, data and images intertwine and merge into an installation that echoes the sheer scale of the figures and ressources of American military power.
