Re: [-empyre-] re Norie's posting
Hi there -
I have been intending on responding to this discussion for some time
now, as my practice during the '90's was intermittently focused on
notions of panic, terror and militarization. Naturally, my attention
gravitated to this month's topic.
At running the risk of being redundant to a few on this list, I will
quote from a post made to another list a few months ago, as I believe
it is pertinent to this discussion - as offering one perspective from
the States .
.... I'm uncertain of other peoples response on the day of 9/11 as I
can only speak to my own. And my own was predicated on the research
and work that I had been doing on a collaborative project with Jackie
Orr ( a Sociologist, Professor and Performance Artist ) the title of
which was " Keep Calm ... in the Cold War. " We ( primarily Jackie )
took a look at the contemporary militarization of U.S. civilian
psychology in the context of World War II and Cold War efforts to
target the psychic and emotional life of civilians as a battlefield
component of ‘total war.’ Selectively tracing the entangled histories
of academic social science, the mass media, military technologies,
and U.S. government agencies, we posited that the post-World War II
emergence of the U.S. national security state is founded in part on
the calculated promotion of civilian insecurity and terror. From the
televising of U.S. atomic bomb tests in Nevada to ‘Operation Alert’
exercises (1954-57) when thousands of civilians participated in a
simulated response to Soviet nuclear attack, strategies for
productively frightening the U.S. population have become a
significant feature of U.S. political history and popular culture.
The militarization of civilian psychology—that is, the psychological
re-organization of civil society for the production of violence—
becomes historically visible as an administrative imperative of U.S.
government. This visibility is paramount in interrogating and
intervening in the complex politics and cultures of terrorism today.
I pasted a project description below in an attempt to lend yet
another perspective to how we might engage with the issues at hand
Keep Calm, a cross disciplinary installation tracing and interweaving
the cultural socio-economic forces revolving around the legacy of the
cold war, its relationship to the ascent of technology, the resulting
subterranean presence of anxiety ( both real and constructed ) and
the prosperity of the Cold War California suburb as represented
through the ubiquitous presence of mid- late 20th century
photographic narratives and related media. Imagine 1954: It is the
height of the cold war. Troops march uneasily along the border
between North and South Korea. The United States congress is holding
hearings about immorality and treason in government. Many
conservatives believe that a secret cabal of godless communists is
trying to create a New World Order. There are rumors that aliens have
landed, and UFO reports abound. 1997: The cold war is over--and we
won! Or did we? Some people believe "black helicopters" watch them,
because they know too much. Aliens from Roswell, N. M. are alive and
abducting new people every day. A "New World Order" is coming,
promoted by the godless humanist conspiracy, or the United Nations,
or both. X-Files ( the television show) shows a government divided
against itself, with covert agents of a mysterious something (the New
World Order?) pursuing their agenda and concealing their presence.
The Cancer Man is pulling strings, Deep Throat is dead, and Mulder
and Scully never quite seem to be able to bring it all out into the
light.
Recall September 11, 2001.... as the media has repetitiously stated,
things can never be the same ... the imaginary of our national
landscape has been altered and the flatness of the viewing screen has
made it even more unfathomable.
Where did all of this come from? What does it mean? " The truth is
out there. "
The "war" is over, but the language and imagery of the war continue
to shape our thoughts, our fears, our collective and gendered
imaginary. Through this installation and database, we will offer a
visual/cultural analysis of the rhetorical devices through which the
people of the United States came to understand themselves and the
world during the Cold War. In addition, we will explore the function
such rhetoric serves and begin to learn to evaluate the rhetoric for
what it reveals and confuses in our world, our culture, our
relationship to technology, our economy, our society, and ourselves--
both in the Fifties through the turn of the century.
Now ... of course the question begs as to why this installation has
not yet been realized during the years following 2001 ...
Could it be that a consensual hallucination (resulting from cinematic/
media/sonic narratives ++++) offers an augmented reality that resides
in our collective consciouness that is activated by issues mentioned
already on this list as well as the direct defunding of education in
USA ?
I've taken the liberty of attaching a couple of images: the first
depicts the game simulations for military training at the Institute
of Creative Technologies - with some of you may be familiar; and 2. a
screen shot of some "silo" info one could grab off the internet prior
to 9.11. Just for your viewing pleasure -
> Christiane Robbins
The original post, in its entirety can be located at:
http://underfire.eyebeam.org/?q=node/484
On Apr 9, 2007, at 12:43 PM, timothy murray wrote:
Thank you for your posting, Norie. I seem to remember that the
first time I experienced the disembodiment of being registered by
a surveillance traffic camera was in Sydney while we were crossing
a street going about the banality of everyday affairs, the sort of
digital registration whose stakes are raised so tremendously high
by Horit's work and postings.
It's so important, Horit, how your postings and work engage us in
contemplation of the contradictory nexus in which we all operate.
Many of us in American universities find that our involvement in
political and preemptive new media is so frequently offset by the
technostructure out of which we work, where politicized
experiments in new media are only barely endorsed by University
structures more keen on gathering up the extravagant research
funds available for national security projects. At a recent
address on our campus, one of our highest university officers
foregrounded experimental work being done in visual imaging by
referencing the advanced work being done in surveillance coding
and robotics for security interests.
Although we shouldn't be naive about the paradoxes of our research
collaborations with colleagues who are outfitted with the highest
tech labs, it does seem like light years back when those of us in
university in the 60s were organizing and demonstrating against
the prevalence of Department of Defense contracts in physics and
related disciplines (our university's physics building still bears
a the plaque proudly thanking the Department of Defense for its
patronage). I wonder what's become of similar resistance to
Homeland Security patronage on university campuses? It certainly
isn't particularly loud.
Have we been hoodwinked into being embarrassed by its opposition?
Are we concerned about insulting those whose personal losses from
9/11 and other events might seem to warrant the rampant increase in
tracking technologies and our cultural will to give into them?
This is the realm of technopanic in which many of us teach and all
of us think.
Tim
--
Timothy Murray
Professor of Comparative Literature and English
Acting Director of The Society for the Humanities
Director of Graduate Studies in Film and Video
Curator, The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell Library
A. D. White House
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853
office: 607-255-4086
e-mail: tcm1@cornell.edu
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
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Christiane Robbins
- JETZTZEIT -
... time filled by the presence of the now ...
Walter Benjamin
LOS ANGELES I SAN FRANCISCO
The present age prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to
the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence for in
these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane.
Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804-1872,
German Philosopher
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