Boat, aluminium and wood: 440 x 240 x 75 cm; single-channel video: 1’ 15”

In April 2004 video footage appeared on the Internet showing two Tamil Tigers proudly patrolling Sri Lankan waters in a boat retrofitted in the shape of a US Air Force F117 Stealth Bomber. In 2006 Knowbotic Research + Peter Sandbichler reconstructed a stealth boat and launched it in the harbour of Duisburg. The polygonal contours of the boat were jarringly visible among the local boat traffic, but it proved invisible to quayside radar. While the cloak of such radar invisibility did not ultimately translate into invincibility for the Tamil liberation movement, as pointed out by writer Stefan Riekeles, the boat’s shape is a “negative blueprint of the radar-controlled space” of contemporary surveillance society.