The exhibition US Army Torture Devices comprises a presentation of an interrogation booth, similar to the ones found in detention centres such as Guantánamo Bay, Cuba: equipped with a sound installation and a strobo- scope. This type of booth has been used by the 'Coalition of the Willing', in casu the United Stated Army, to illegally torture 'enemy combattants'

The first report of the use of music as a torture device or weapon by the USA has been during the Panama war in 1989. Next to the psychological terror that is caused by the constant submission to loud music: sleep deprivation, hallucination, etc., it is, within a rigid interpretation of the Qu'ran, not al- lowed to listen to any music whatsoever. In that sense, prisoners, mainly muslims, in Guantánamo Bay and other places are forced to commit an 'aggressive act of passivity', namely to submit themselves to something that is illegitimate withing their interpretation of the islam. These methods of torture are actually already forbidden by the European Court of Human Rights since 1977.

It is typical that the tools used in these 'no-touch torture' procedures in order to deprive prisoners of sleep, cause disorientation, etc. are at the same time typical export products of a democratic country: (noise) music and electric lighting. Products that the USA wish to export to countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, after peace has been finally established. Products of democracy that are employed against the 'enemies of democracy', against the 'Axis of Evil'. Because these products are employed outside the demo- cratic context - in a detention camp, where prisoners are factually without rights, outside the Geneva convention, "those who were missed by the bombs" - their meaning is immediately reversed: from positive, liberating rock music, the symbol of freedom within western society, to a terrorizing force, unleashed at prisoners with no rights whatsoever.

The iconic elements of democracy presented in the exhibition US Army Torture Devices: liberating rock music, disco lighting, acquire a new, con- strained meaning. On one side, when recognized and acknowledged as a 'torture room', the space produces a claustrophobic effect. On the other side, even when a visitor is confronted with the context from which the exhibition has emerged, the space fits extremely well to the decadence of urban uitgaanscultuur (lit. going-out culture). In that sense it can be seen as a perverse design for urban culture.

As the exhibition's opening hours are completely adapted to the Amster- dam uitgaanscultuur, generally taking place between 10 pm and 4 am, it can — without any critical reflection — be experienced as a typical product of urban night culture, in which heavily loaded (photographic) images, such as tortured individuals in Abu Ghraib, or jumping people from the Twin Towers (the latter images used to confront Abu Graib prisoners with the 'terror' executed by Al-Qa'ida), become aesthetically pleasing features; the stage for an increasingly grotesque, nihilistic and globalized culture.