Able Archer, Country Club/Iconoclast Editions, Cincinnati, OH, 2008
Also emerging from the Mobile Observation series, Able Archer '83 is a radio play pressed on vinyl, produced by Iconolast Editions. Within the play, Raskin performs every character, forcing their own implication into the narrative, which is centered on the 1983 NATO war game that nearly triggered nuclear exchange between the US and USSR. This work is conceptually linked to Armada (2009) in that it emerged from Raskin's recognition that they are always already implicated in the oppressive systems their work critiques. This came into sharp relief during their field research to the Titan Missile Museum where they learned that during the Cold War, gay women served in Strategic Air Command; obliterating the artist's previously held assumption that it would have been groups of cis men who would have "pressed the button" to carry out the order of nuclear strikes. This personal implication is another articulation of the turning point in Raskin's research-based practice, which moved them from critical observer to implicated participant in the systems their work critiques. Able Archer '83 also features Raskin's alter ego Herr Doktor Wolfgang Hauptman, who has emerged as a collaborator since the early 2000s.