D.O.F. (Degrees of Freedom)

Tomás Saraceno considers this panopticon of the Cold War to be creating a problem of overfocusing: a phenomenon known as a “focusing illusion.” This phenomenon occurs when people place too much importance on one aspect of an event, causing an error in accurately predicting a future outcome. Consequently, Saraceno has manipulated a standard public binoculars in the Peace Observatory, originally fixed and directed towards the DMZ and North Korea, so that it now rotates in all directions. The title of the work comes from degrees of freedom which refers to the multiple degrees of humans or animals performing a movement in order to achieve the same goal. Instead of limiting one’s view to the restricted angle of a political landscape, Saraceno opens it up to the air space above and to the widely varied species of birds and insects in the area, quite naturally unrestricted by borders, fences, and land mines.