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Conference Paper Call: Making Sense of Visual Culture

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Making Sense of Visual Culture

University of Rochester

April 1st-3rd, 2011, Rochester, New York

The Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester invites scholars from across disciplines to discuss the evolving institutional and methodological contours of our field.  From April 1st-3rd, 2011, “Making Sense of Visual Culture” will address large-scale disciplinary questions as well the development of new approaches to an expanded range of sensory objects, phenomena, and practices.

We invite innovative work by graduate students and non-tenured faculty for a series of round-tables, workshops, and panels that will address the two major, interlinked concerns of the conference: sensory experience and the future of the field.

There are many ways to participate in this discussion, even if you cannot join us in April.

1. We are circulating a questionnaire.  All responses will be posted to an open access website to create a broad dialogue.  (Instructions for accessing the questionnaire are here.)

2. We solicit 300-word abstracts for 20-minute paper presentations on work that exemplifies, challenges and expands the field of visual studies.  Possible topics include, but are not limited, to: multi-sensory approaches to material culture and memory – the “hegemony of the visual” – the practice of visual culture as method, discipline or sensibility – visualizing sensory experience – cultural difference and the senses – epistemology of the senses – histories of perception – lending form to affect – synesthetia – the interface of vision and touch – changing practices of visualizing information – the present and future of medium specificity (in both artistic and scholarly practices) – the role of technologies in sensory perception.

Please include a brief CV with your submissions.  Deadline: January 15, 2011.   Please email these documents to submissions@makingsenseconference.com

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Behind the Facade of Modernization

Let me be perfectly clear: this post is not a criticism of either China or India.  Their economic development, social services, and security measures are hardly perfect, but that is true of every society, not least the one that I know best.  The images below are distinctive, however, for at least two reasons: they belie the dominant narratives of modernization and the triumph of capitalism that now define coverage of those nations and many others as well, and they expose a truth about human mortality that is never likely to be carried in the parade of well-dressed shoppers, shiny new automobiles, and gleaming office buildings that otherwise define the Asian miracle and the Indian takeoff.

HIV-sufferer-in-China

Welcome to the other China, the one where 150 million still live below the poverty line.  This photograph of an HIV patient could double as a template for modern poverty.  Aluminum and electricity are there, but dented and run in via an extension cord.  The daily calendar is there–symbol of the modern work day-but stuck on a wall where it looks like a hospital room number, a sign for a place where time only passes instead of being harnessed to measure productivity.  The walls themselves have seen a lot of time pass, as they are old, chipped structures from another era.

Time passes also as our gaze is drawn slowly into the recesses of the room, which becomes an image of stasis.  The man is not moving, may not have moved for awhile, may never move again.  The pathway goes past the stove, then the bag of rice, then to the man himself.  It is hard to imagine him getting up, measuring and cooking the rice, and walking out the door.  The low-grade disorder of the table and bed is just one notch above the almost complete inertia of the scene as a whole.  This is not an image of dynamic progress.  The future may be bright, but in this case it is not likely to arrive in time.

Corpse and cop-in-Srinagar

And here is certainly is too late.  One police officer accompanies another who was killed in a shootout with insurgents in Srinagar, India.  Some hint of the vibrant street life of the subcontinent is evident outside the van, but, again, this is an image about an interior space. Although ringed with windows, the van is almost a small, funereal world onto itself, a temporary tomb for one dead body and another in waiting.  And, again, the shabby seats seem to confirm the overall inertness of the place, as if nothing ever really changes there.

Others can see into the van, but the man seems to be staring blankly, as if lost to inward reflection.  He has reached out a hand as if to steady the corpse, but it may be a last gesture of connection taken to steady himself inside.  A gesture not evident in the first photo, but one that can be made by the spectator, were we to take the time to reflect on what is being revealed.

Political violence is the low-grade disorder affecting the Indian nation–and many more as well–and its alignment with stasis in this image is another sign of the persistence of violence within modernization.  Gandhi called poverty the greatest violence, and it, too, seems to persist all too easily within modern development.  Closer to home, all the marvels of the modern world will not save any one of us from death or from the isolation that can precede death.  Whatever the date, at the end of the day we all end up behind the facade of modernization.  As that is so, perhaps we might do more to reach out to those already there before us.

Photographs by Reuters and Altaf Qadri/Associated Press.

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Out of the Mists: The Fire this Time

What if you were to ask yourself what happened while you were asleep?  A simple question, unless one doesn’t take it as a literal question–that is, regarding what happened during the night or while one was napping.  It’s a different question if it pertains to dogmatic slumbers, chronic indifference, or collective amnesia.  That kind of sleep can go on for a long, long time.  And, of course, it can occur while you otherwise are fully awake.  Awake, for example, but shrouded in myth.

Afghan laborers

This is a remarkable photograph, not least because it imparts such a sense of calm.  Three laborers in Afghanistan have become transposed into profound elements of Chinese culture: the misted mountains that are the backdrop for so many paintings of natural beauty, and the three sages of Confucian philosophy who exemplified the virtuous conduct required for social harmony.

Against the pacific backdrop of the ancient mountain softened by fog, the three figures strike unaffected poses of disciplined conversation.  One expounds, another offers a counterpoint, while the third listens reflectively.  Each is self-composed, seemingly capable of serenely walking the earth without care or imposition, and yet they are joined by the intent concentration evident in their gestures.  Whatever the whirl of events in the modern world, they seem to be safely ensconced in a time out of time where philosophical conversation and unhurried labor are all one needs to be content.

As it happens, the simple labor involved spreading dirt on an earthen barrier for a police station.  We don’t know what they were discussing, but they definitely are caught up in the war.  The photograph, which rightly reminds us that there is more to contemplate in Afghanistan than the war, also becomes a template for the mythic interpretation that I set out above.  Stated otherwise, the photographer may have captured how some would like to think of Afghanistan: as a timeless place, graveyard of empires, that will endure unchanged regardless of the current occupation, and that can be conveniently put out of mind, forgotten, left to itself.

Well, that’s one country.  And here’s another:

Afghan firemen

Not so calm.  This enormous fireball is erupting from an oil tanker that was lit up by an IED.  That kind of fire only comes from modern fuel, and so there is little question that this is a contemporary scene and that the war is front and center.  Instead of the laborers (now known as firefighters) dominating the picture, they are smallish figures set off to the side, obviously dwarfed by the enormous force of the flames.  The sense of time is hardly mythic, as it is clear that the fire will have a relatively predictable burnout, and that the hoses then will be rolled up, the crowd will disperse, and everyone will move on to whatever is going to happen next.

The firefighters appear skilled, properly equipped, and very much an extension of a modern system of command and control.  Look closely, however, and you will see something more: note how closely they stand to the flames, and how unhurried they appear–even calm.  They are exhibiting another kind of serenity: the confidence that comes from having done this job many times before.  And so they have: tankers are being detonated constantly in Afghanistan, and the firefighters and other first responders there are becoming all too experienced in managing disaster.

And so there is something timeless about the second photograph after all.  It’s a modern scene, but also a story of continuous repetition: of bombings that are occurring over and over and over again.  And don’t tell me that the incidence of explosions has decreased in this or that province, or that new headway is being made in the effort to win the hearts and minds of the people.  The fires are burning, and they will continue to burn.

What happened while you were sleeping?  Nothing much, just the war.

Photographs by Chris Hondros/Getty Image and Rahmat Gul/Associated Press.

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The 2010 Election: Was Voting Enough?

It’s not easy to find a distinctive photograph on election day in the US.

election official's hands hold voting stickers

This certainly would seem to qualify, but it is one of three very similar images that I found in a few minutes of looking through the slide shows at several major papers.  Each of the three was close cropped to feature a hand or hands, voting stickers, and nothing else.  I think this is the best of the set, and the best image overall, but the bar was pretty low.  The ritual event seems to bring out the conventional in all of us: red, white, and blue clothing, lines of people at the polling places, a few contrasts between the official paraphernalia and local culture, early morning voters or rows of candidates’ signs, representative examples of The Common People voting and finally of the suits themselves: candidates voting, winners raising their arms in victory, losers standing bravely before their tearful supporters.

And what would you expect?  it is precisely the ritualized character of the event that is so important: democracies may have bitterly contested electoral campaigns, but the transfer of power is supposed to be peaceful, orderly, routine, and–although in one sense momentous–entirely unsurprising.  This is not to be a drama of succession among the nobility, not a story of cabals, intrigue, and violence, no tense transition from one ethnic group to another.  The public art in this case reflects the polity’s lack of recourse to anything but its most ordinary version of itself.  The aesthetic dullness is a sign of democracy’s strength.

Even so, the images may be doing more than reporting the conventional features of election day.  The photograph above, for example, seems to be a poignant celebration of the root belief that democracy is the government of all the people.  The rough-hewn hands and skin color channel a great deal of American history, not least the 14th Amendment, while their pose is almost religious, as if praying or holding a communion vessel.  Or, if they are the hands of a working man, the stickers could almost be seen as food, perhaps that given out at breadlines in the depression of the 1930s.  (I mention the date as we now have to be a bit more specific than was necessary a few years ago.)  Thus, the image beautifully celebrates democracy itself, as if the vote is both substance and sacrament of the common life.

That’s the good news.  I think we also need to consider how the image may be inadvertently pathetic.  This image of citizenship shows us a truncated citizen, just as it has reduced civic participation to the sheer act of voting.  What’s wrong with that?  On a day that celebrates civic unity after the divisiveness of the campaign, nothing.  As a symbol of what the country really needs, however, it’s not enough.  This country needs not only elections but good decisions, and not only winners but leaders, and not only control of the House or the Senate but also consensus on behalf of serious policies to address real problems.

To get that, much more is needed than merely voting.  If all that is asked of citizens is that they vote, their citizenship can be reduced to something like the sticker itself: a cheap display of temporary virtue that really doesn’t change anything.  If all that is asked of elected officials is that they mouth platitudes while consolidating power and obstructing effective government, you don’t even need to vote.  So, before you take that sticker next time, ask yourself, what are you doing, really, on election day?

Photograph by Luke Sharrett/New York Times.

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When the Bank is Worse than the Weather

A recent New York Times story featured this photograph of a woman walking toward a yak herd in northern Afghanistan.  The photo was taken in August.

Afghan woman, August snow

She lives in the Wakhan Corridor, a region beyond the Hindu Kush mountain range that has been remote enough to usually escape the ravages of war.  It doesn’t seem hard to see why.  Sans oil or accessible mineral deposits, the combination of geography and climate should suffice to maintain relative isolation.  That was the point of the story and certainly of the photograph: some modernization is underway, but the people there are likely to continue to live largely as they have, that is, in pastoral cultures bound by the simple routines and set traditions that equip them to survive in a harsh natural environment.

The woman in the photograph exemplifies this portrait.  She is layered in the colorful clothing assumed to be the mark of ethnic authenticity, and if she looks apprehensive, it has more to do with the intrusion of the photographer than any hesitation regarding the challenges of separating her yak from the herd spread across the frozen landscape.  She trudges out into the cold dutifully, as she really has little choice: the yak has to be milked, and her family needs the milk, and what else is there to do anyway?  This is not her world from the inside, of course, but the image draws on a long history of travel photography carrying these assumptions.  The bottom line is that she may be doing well enough–look closely at her clothing, for example–but that few readers of the Times would want to change places with her.  Yak milk in a yurt on a frozen plateau is one thing, and a latte in an urban coffee shop is quite another.

Foreclosure victim

If those were the only two options, the world might be a pretty good place.  But there can be worse environments than those created by the weather.  The market economy, for example, particularly when people have to depend, not on their animals, but on predatory mortgage companies.  This woman was featured in another Times story on the same day.  She is standing before her house in Colorado.  This could be a picture of the American Dream: a single women can own her own house, complete with a terrific view of the Western sky.  You can sense that’s not the case, however, as her rueful expression is reinforced by the dark tonality of land and clouds.  The weather is warm enough that she can be sleeveless, but the scene nonetheless feels cold and ominous.

And rightly so: she is having to defend herself against foreclosure by Deutsche Bank, which, after a mortgage company changed her locks without cause and then encouraged her to skip a payment while restitution was arranged, has moved to seize the house on grounds of non-payment.  Having done nothing wrong, she now is having to incur legal fees just to hold on to the home and the equity that was rightfully hers.  And I’ll bet that her sense of security and social trust is not doing so well, either.   Maybe having your own yurt wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Photographs by Gilles Sabrie and Kevin Moloney for The New York Times.

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NCN Hits the One Million Mark

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According to our WordPress statistical report, this week NCN passed 1,000,000 views.  That’s views, not dollars, but we’re not complaining.  The blog actually will have passed the mark some time ago, because RSS feeds are not likely to be included in the WordPress report.  But it will include robots, guys looking for porn–hey, we love you, too–and perhaps an occasional space alien, so we might as well take the count we have as a good enough reason to celebrate.

Since John and I live in separate states, the celebration will be rather low-key.  Much more important, however, is that the day gives us another opportunity to thank our readers.  We don’t get any credit in our day jobs for doing the blog, so the fact that you are reading it, and that some of you comment from time to time, means a great deal.  So, thanks: for your interest, your comments, and your suggestions, which always are welcome.

Photograph by J. R. Eyerman/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images.

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Our Cops, Ourselves

It is a commonplace that one can become like one’s adversary.  Sometimes the mimicry is especially arresting.

French cop & student

This confrontation between a student and and a police trooper occurred during a demonstration at the Place de la Republique in Paris.  The place name is significant, for the gendarme and the student stand as two sides of the republic: the administration of its laws, and the citizens they are to serve.  That mutuality is signified by their commonality in costume and stance: The black, zipped up jacket mirrors the black uniform, as hat mirrors helmet, erect posture is balanced by erect posture, and extended right arm is matched by the raised right hand. Each is impassive, and together they form an almost classical tableau; if one had the right narrative, one could imagine them as a commemorative statue in the public square.

The similarities are not the end of the story, however, for they also underscore the differences.  Black and white, to be sure, and also force and speech, for the one holds shield and club while the other’s hand assumes an elocutionary gesture.  Yet both are restrained: force used only to block, speech not yet voiced.  What is most striking is that law enforcement appears so alien–as if the carapace of body armor were the outer shell of something no longer wholly human.  And so the matching coloration also becomes disturbing, as if the citizen also were becoming deformed by their co-evolution in the 21st century.

What saves them, for the moment, is the near-perfect stasis of the image.  Neither is moving or likely to move, and at the end of the day the photograph may be recording a relationship of respect.  Each is equipped for their respective roles in the demonstration, yet they still stand as equals.  As that is one of the dearest principles of civic republican government, this may be a picture of political sustainability.

In any case, the photo documents a political culture.  As does this:

cops on football field takedown

If you live in the US, you know the drill.  A fan has run onto the field during a football game, and the troopers assigned to the tough detail of providing security–i.e., watching the game from the sidelines–have run him down and tackled him.  The fan’s behavior is intentionally comic–a silly stunt done on a dare or, more likely, just for the hell of it.  The cops’ behavior is unintentionally comic: they pile up like a bunch of Barney Fifes, probably picking up an injury or two, with hats (symbols of authority) flying and their guns and other equipment useless at best (you have to hope that nothing goes off).  The parodic doubling of the actual (official) game makes the scene all the more carnivalesque, which is one reason it fits into the larger spectacle.

And speaking of fit, did you notice how fan and cops mime one another?  The intensity of the fan’s expression is mirrored by the other two faces that we can see, just as their bare arms, skin tones, and haircuts mirror his, and even his casual clothes seem similar to their uniforms, and they all are jumbled up together anyway.  The cops probably aren’t drunk, so that could be one difference, but, as above, the similarities suggest a common culture.

And so the real difference is not within the photograph but between the two images: one serious and the other a study in mindless distraction.  In one, the state is the subject of politics, and in the other, the state provides rent-a-cops for the entertainment business.  Neither culture is perfect: in one, the cops appear alien even when behaving with respect; in the other, the cops appear thoroughly human but hapless.  The important point is that these photos aren’t really about the cops at all.  They depict two very different conceptions of what it means to be a citizen.

Photographs by Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters and Jeff Gentner/Associated Press.

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When We Decide to Know

IED victim bad

Usually I avoid rubbing your face in it, but not today.  This image, which has been sitting on my desktop for a few months, is offered out of anger, grief, and extreme frustration with the press, the public, and the Obama administration–and most of all with the public.

The photograph records a badly maimed soldier being delivered to a military hospital in Kandahar.  Think of how many times you have read about IEDs and about wounds suffered from IED explosions.  Did you ever imagine anything like this?  Think of all the photographs you’ve seen of soldiers standing guard, walking on patrol, talking with villagers, or deploying for another mission.  Did you ever consider how those photos were being used instead of images like this one?

And while we’re asking questions, did you notice, when looking at the photograph above, how absolutely routine this event is to the medical personnel?  Only the soldier jogging out the door looks a bit concerned, and he may be steeling himself against what he knows he is going to see up close.  Everyone else, including the stretcher bearer, has the postures–that is, the attitudes–of complete habituation.  The guy on the right could be waiting to take a number at the social security office.  Something horrific, catastrophic, and uniquely terrible has happened to the soldier on the stretcher, but to everybody else it’s something they’ve seen a thousand times.

If the war in Afghanistan were vital to national security, perhaps this sacrifice would be worth it.  If you have to fight, you want your military to have the experience and other capabilities necessary to handle catastrophic injuries efficiently.  But we know that national security is not on the line in Afghanistan.

We do know that, don’t we?  Two stories intersect today to underscore my frustration: First, press analysis of the WikiLeaks archive of 391,832 documents is exposing greater than admitted death tolls, abuses by US contractors, and brutality by other US allies, as well as US knowledge or and lying about this information.  Second, New York Times photographer Joao Silva was badly injured by a land mine in Afghanistan.  Leg wounds, and others as well.

One reason I am so angry and frustrated is that there really should be no need for the Wikileak documents, or for brave photojournalists to continue to take risks to inform the public.  I want to take nothing away from those who released the documents, or from Silva, whose work I have posted here with deep admiration and respect.  The truth of the matter, however, is that the public has had plenty of information for many years about the sacrifice of our troops and our treasure in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  Likewise, the government has known even more of the costs, and has not yet–in all this time, and across two administrations–been able to provide a single, legitimate, valid rationale for continuing the war.  (For the record, I think the original invasion of Afghanistan was justified, but that now has no bearing on the current operations.  And I appreciate that public opinion polls state that a majority of Americans oppose the war, but that level of opposition obviously is not enough.)

I think the basic problem is that people, at least collectively, decide to know.  It is not the case that we know and then act.  We decide when we will know, and then we are more likely to act.  You can have the truth staring you in the face, but it doesn’t matter until you decide to suspend all the habits of amnesia, distraction, rationalization, and denial that are otherwise in place and reproduced continuously.  Once we decide, we can look back and see that there was plenty of information there all along.  But we have to make that decision.

The question remains, what will it take to get enough people to decide to know that our war in Afghanistan is futile?  Sometimes, a photograph will make the difference.  But how many photographers and soldiers have to be used up until that day arrives?

Photograph by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

Cross-posted at BAGnewsNotes.

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Can You Remember When?

Sherffius, Pledge to Amnesia

Credit: John Sherffius/Boulder Daily Camera.

Sight Gags” is our weekly nod to the ironic and carnivalesque in a vibrant democratic public culture.  We typically will not comment beyond offering an identifying label, leaving the images to “speak” for themselves as much as possible.  Of course, we invite you to comment … and to send us images that you think capture the carnival of contemporary democratic public culture.

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