Art for a Post-Surveillance Age

I ask Trevor Paglen at his central Berlin studio. The prewar apartment was once surely the most surveilled place in the city, having formerly belonged to his friend Laura Poitras, the director who helped Edward Snowden go public. ''We're always being watched,'' he replies. The space is filled with computers: Against one wall, an assistant writes code while another researches data used to train artificial intelligence. Opposite is a long credenza filled with art monographs and topped by a slightly sinister collection of objets: a Dungeons & Dragons-style dragon trophy with a shield and saber; a toy model of the stealth submarine U.S.S.