[-empyre-] I feel today a bit patriotic :)

[Leandro Delgado]

Hi


This evening I was watching TV at the doctor’s waiting room (everything was
OK). The breaking news was about the beheading of a woman whose head was
found rolling down a highway by a driver in the outskirts of a very well
known Uruguayan seaside resort. Speculations about her identity ended up in
the news of the disappearing, days before, of a 15 years old girl. I will
not go into more details about this. But I started to think of a connection
(in my head, in the audiences, in all of us) between beheadings no matter
the reasons, political or not. So I started to wonder what allow ourselves *to
watch* a beheading from ISIS. Is a beheading for political reasons singular
and consequently watchable? It seems to me that we allow ourselves to watch
sadistic actions on screen, on pictures, for reasons we have to ask
ourselves very seriously. ¿What do allow ourselves (millions and millions
of spectators) to watch the unwatchable? Are ISIS beheadings unwatchable?
What do we mean by "unwatchable"? I have no answer. But I think these
questions are necessary because ISIS takes a very good advantage of our
“police blotter audience” or “melodramatic audience” condition --by means
of an endless aesthetization of horror through fiction series, games,
police blotter or whatever. I never watch ISIS beheadings for political,
ethical and moral reasons since I think that the mere act of watching is a
form of participation which makes us, like it or not, accomplices, like
watching pedophile porn. I think this is critical since we are used to
demand for the visibility of political crime actions that are usually
hidden or out of the public view. But now we have to understand that these
guys want us to watch the beheadings as part of their political strategy of
(spectacular) horror, and we *are* watching.


Best,

Leandro



On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 8:46 PM, Ana Valdés <agora158 at gmail.com> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Today started the Syrian kids their first day as pupils in a public
> school in Montevideo. They are among the 120 refugees taken as
> political refugees to Uruguay. Several of them are Palestinian living
> in Syria as refugees, the war expelled them from Syria and now they
> are refugees here, they are going to be trained in Spanish and be
> treated as any child.
> The Uruguayan school is a copy of the French, secural, free and
> obligatory. All wear the same white rock with a blue tie, to cover up
> the social differences.
> I was myself educated in a Catholic private school but the public
> school in Uruguay is really something to be proud of.
> And it feels right for us, who has been refugees in so many countries,
> to open this land to so many refugees as possible who want settle down
> here. A country bigger than Belgium and Holland together and with a
> population of 3 million people need new ideas and cultural input :)
> Ana
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6jp0757lUo
>
> --
> http://www.twitter.com/caravia15860606060
> http://www.scoop.it/t/art-and-activism/
> http://www.scoop.it/t/food-history-and-trivia
> http://www.scoop.it/t/urbanism-3-0
>
>
>
> cell Sweden +4670-3213370
> cell Uruguay +598-99470758
>
>
> "When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth
> with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you
> will always long to return.
> — Leonardo da Vinci
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
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