CHArt TWENTY-FOURTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE
|
|
Seeing…Vision and Perception in a Digital Culture |
David Crawford, Göteborg University, Sweden
Realism vs Reality TV in the War on Terror: Artworks and Models of Interpretation
Much of what is associated with the so-called ‘War on Terror’ bears a relation to images. While society is increasingly media savvy, these images tend to be produced and consumed in such a manner that spectators are left little room and even less encouragement to engage in critical thinking as an intermediary act. The proliferation of new technologies for the production and distribution of images (e.g. camera phones and the Web) have added new elements to the equation worth consideration. This article attempts to open up a space for reflection using a combination of theoretical contextualisation (largely by way of Jean Baudrillard) and artistic example. The practice of art making is thus cast as a productive tool for sense-making on the part of those producing and consuming images associated with the so-called ‘War on Terror.’
…the distinction between civil and military is tending to disappear, like that between private and public. […] Hence the advent of a third type of conflict, after ‘civil war’ and ‘war between nations’: namely, war on civilians… (Virilio 27)
If we are in the midst of a ‘war on civilians’ as Paul Virilio claims, one which sees citizens physically besieged by terrorist acts and symbolically attacked via images of those acts, then the proliferation of camera phones creates an unprecedented situation whereby large numbers of ‘photographer-witnesses’ (Susan Sontag’s term) become de facto war photographers. War photography is a practice beset by ethical challenges and thus we are likely to have to wrestle with the questions it poses on an increasingly large scale, both as producers and consumers of imagery.