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
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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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