WAR LOOP

War Loop- Statement

WAR LOOP

(Savage Simulacra and Simulation)

The remix ‘WAR LOOP-Savage Simulacra and Simulation’ is a comment on the homogenised representation of war and in particular, the war in Iraq. The footage was sourced from predominately American and Australian mainstream media, army personnel video, Hollywood cinema and computer games. In total there are 84 video and 119 audio clips. The snippets of video were edited together to create a 4 minute loop of war over a 24 hour period. The images are blurred together so it’s difficult to distinguish the difference between which footage is real and which is a construct or even a reflection of a constructed image. The final piece reflects what images are used and how they are used by governments, media, corporations and individuals to convey a desired perspective.
Baudrillard’s proclamation that the first Gulf war wasn’t real and indeed didn’t happen, as it was nothing more than a simulation and media spectacle, demonstrated how reality can be perverted and mimicked. The first Gulf war was a surgical strike, incisive and reconciled with embedded journalists and computer game style missile’s eye view footage and posed images. The real violence was thoroughly overwritten by electronic narrative and the media representation for the viewing public. (Poole, 2007)
The present war(s) Iraq and Afghanistan, unfortunately haven’t been decisive or quick, but a 10 year struggle and slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians in both countries, as well as thousands of military personnel. The media depiction of this ongoing battle has become indistinguishable from political propaganda and the rhetoric of the American media. The images are banal, artificially heroic, often cliqued and disturbingly cynical, but with little meaning or veracity. So maybe Baudrillard’s point continues on, albeit, messily.
“Any slaughter would be forgiven them if it had a meaning, if it could be interpreted as historical violence -- this is the moral axiom of permissible violence. Any violence would be forgiven them if it were not broadcast by media. But all that is illusory. There is no good usage of the media, the media are part of the event, they are part of the terror and they are part of the game in one way or another.” (Baudrillard, 2001)
The dubious reasons given for the invasion of both Afghanistan and Iraq and the ongoing platitudes to justify continuation of the wars give rise to the notion that we are incapable of seeing beyond the ‘silken purse’ made for us. Our compliance is complicit, not with the reality of war, the horror, blood, death and mutilation, but the fiction of war, the one that looks unreal(real), like a movie, like a game, like the news, the one we can turn off. The one we are told by our governments is a good thing, right and proper. The true horror of war is manipulated into something palatable enough to live with and live with it we do, year in and year out.
“Simulation is infinitely more dangerous because it always leaves open to supposition that, above and beyond its object, law and order themselves might be nothing but simulation.” (Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation)

Our media induced passivity over this relentless war was sharply outlined recently with the discovery of the inhumane methods of killing our exported cattle in Indonesia (not minimising the disturbing nature of that situation). After the Four Corners program, ‘A Bloody Business’ reported by Sarah Ferguson and Produced by Michael Doyle was broadcast on the 30/05/2011, the whole nation stood up and demanded action; parliament cancelled all exports of live cattle and set up inquiries into how such an abhorrent situation could have occurred. In contrast the Four Corners programs ‘Secret Iraq-Awakening’ and ‘Secret Iraq-Insurgency’ Produced by Quicksilver Productions and broadcast on the 18/10/2010 and 11/10/2010 respectively, created not a stir. Why? Because in reality, the war is a distant media construct, a phenomenon too awful to actually acknowledge as real and thankfully we aren’t expected to, that would destroy the fragile matrix of the war game as seen on our screens. That is until more soldiers return home in body bags from Afghanistan and we see the crying families and wonder why that Afghani solder turned on the men helping him.
The remix ‘WAR LOOP- Savage Simulacra and Simulation’ is an attempt to draw attention to the cynical way in which we are fed information and the frightening fallacy that is destroying lives and at the same time perverting our intelligence and capacity to feel with the knowledge that what we feel is motivated by a truth, albeit, a disturbing one.
By the end of this year all American troops will withdraw from Iraq, and what of the 10 year war? Game over!
Baudrillard, J. Simulacra and Simulation. In J. Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation. Michigan.
Baudrillard, J. (2001). The Spirit of Terrorism. Le monde .
Poole, S. (2007, March 7). Guardian Obituaries. Retrieved November 15, 2011, from The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2007/mar/07/guardianobituaries.france

Wallpaper

Tina's Epiphany

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http://fav.me/d4aausl

T-Shirt Design

Rainy Day Memory

The World Is Her Stage

Digital Media Production-Mosaic

For the final stage of our blog development, we had to construct a video relating to the French railway graphic used as a background of the Innart blog. The video Mosaic is a view from the train, the different scenes in strips as glimpsed through the windows.

Identity

Identity from Sarah Coller on Vimeo.

Artist Statement

She has been interested in the notion of identity and what makes a person that specific person through time and space. The questions she asks herself are age old and clichéd with the endless asking and answering, but that doesn’t lessen the intrigue she feels as she ponders who she was, is and will be in a moments time. Every time she constructs a new profile on a website she asks; ‘is that really me?’ Looking at old images she asks; ‘was that really me?’ She wonders at the layers of memory that construct the known or unknown projection, the reflection; ‘is this really me?’ she asks and questions what that actually means. She has worked at recording herself in different ways to get a glimpse of her true identity, the one which isn’t a profile to log into, nor the smiling social chameleon on computers old and new, close and afar, clogging Terabytes of disk space. She looks at the artworks of her younger self, by her younger self, searching for the person that was and maybe still is, amongst the rushing, flashing and fleeting images of the mind. Thoughts and memory, experiences and sounds clamour for prime position to claim the mantel of her identity, but in the end there can only be one, a single being identified every second, momentarily unique and alone.

Iconic Irony

Iconic Irony from Sarah Coller on Vimeo.

The 'son of man' a self-portrait by Rene Magritte depicts a man in an overcoat and a bowler hat standing in front of a short wall, beyond which is the sea and a cloudy sky. The man's face is largely obscured by a hovering green apple.
This work as been appropriated in different ways since it's beginning; the anonymous archetypal image of every man, resonates in people.

Magritte said of the work
"At least it hides the face partly. Well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It's something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.