Re: [-empyre-] Bare Life, Ghost Detainees, Exclusion and Performance

["Conor McGarrigle" <conormcgarrigle@gmail.com>]

Hi GH,  list,


> In 2000-2001 Peter Sinclair and I developed an immersive, interactive
> laser and 3D sound art work called Shooter,
> <> the piece allowed the
> viewer to walk into a darkened room laced with red lasers. Passing
> through a laser triggered sounds that were fed to the 3D sound space.
> The sounds included, firearms, guns, explosion, video arcade sounds and
> xenophobic rants.  The piece was about Bush's buildup to war and video
> games.  When a person walked into the room they became the target.


I think that shooter and works like it -  did you see Joseph Delappe's
Dead in Iraq http://www.unr.edu/art/DELAPPE/Gaming/Dead_In_Iraq/dead_in_iraq%20JPEGS.html?
- which are subverting existing genres of cultural product (and with
the online shooter is now used as a recruiting tool by the US army) is
where new media art actually works as an effective form of political
art because we make our art in the wild so to speak, outside of the
protected gallery space where it is categorised and the audience knows
what their reaction should be our audiences have to make their own
decisions about what it is they are seeing and how they should react
to it, in other words tactically as they do with their everyday life
which I believe ties our art in real life. My work Google Bono
www.stunned.org/bono/googlebono.htm was taken up by U2 fansites all
over the internet all which carried it as a 'serious' service playing
along with the spirit of the work.

The question is this; do my
> actions and that of terrorists constitute normal political discourse in
> a global techno society? Furthermore is expulsion or bare life negation
> created by denying access to or recognition of a perso in the web and
> internet and mass media?

Whether or not terrorism - -and that word is a loaded one - is normal
political discourse or not history teaches us that at some time
'terrorists' will become mainstream and be negotiated with so perhaps
at the heart of every terrorist movement is a genuine cause that left
untreated lens a legitamcy to extreme elements that in the normal
course of events would remain isolated.  Exclusion from access to
media while not bare life in itself would certainly seem to me to be a
powerful tool in facilitating exclusion.

best

Conor