Simple Sabotage Field Guide
4-channel video installation, 22′
2021

Simple Sabotage Field Guide is a filmic journey recounting the path towards the end of the trail, or Finis Terra, at the end of the sacred El Camino in Spain. In the large scale video installation, we are taken through a series of caleidoscopic sequences of landscapes from city to the end of the world projected on 4 screens. The journey is twice interrupted by a voice reading fragments of a manual written by the CIA in the late 1940s, the Simple Sabotage Field Guide, containing disruptive tactics for toppling down “enemies”. The field guide, meant to be used by undercover agents, describes how one can for instance interrupt a film using simple, yet effective means which remind us of dadaist actions. Hjelm reminds us of the apparent naïveté and irony with which powerful agencies such as the CIA used to tackle complex questions in the past. He asks us to meditate about how to meet the complexities of the present by way of an invitation to meditate on our place in the world, and asking what world we want to live in.