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"Mythic Visions" Redux: Looking to the Heavens With a Tragic Optic

Guest Post by Jeremy Gordon

In his recent post Mythic Vision in Afghanistan, Robert Hariman writes that in the face of  “enormous organizational and technological power,” unseen enemies, non-identifiable strategy, unknown objectives, and forces beyond the scope of certainty, photographers have tapped into mythic visions of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.

After reading Hariman’s optical shift to science fiction I was reminded of a Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk and crew come across the ancient Greek god Apollo, who has been waiting for humans to believe in him again.  With faith in their technology and rational systems of knowledge production, Kirk and crew resist.  They spend the episode tearing Apollo down and so he retreats to the stars with all of the other disregarded gods, most likely taking cover as constellations, as seen here:

Afghan night, stars

There are complex themes to be explored by looking at these images with a mythic vision, reflective of a much more complex tension between men and gods (gods here being the virtues and vices of human behavior, unseen forces of contingency, paradox, luck, and chance).  Mythic vision invites various poetic optics through which scenes from Afghanistan are not overshadowed by the instrumental laws of efficiency and technology championed by Captain Kirk.

For instance, as the scene from a Greek tragedy, we might imagine Ares brewing a storm over the camp, and that Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty, is part of the charge.  We see all the armor and firepower Hephaestus, the god of fire who armed Achilles with his shield, has fashioned.  But rather than being captivated by the tools at our disposal, the Humvees and desert camouflage give way in looking elsewhere to understand what the scene is about, the unseen actors who were always offstage in ancient tragedy.  The encampment is silent and, as warriors hide amongst their vessels, we can see the gods, or what is left of them, watching, waiting to play their hands.  What is telling about this image of the Cosmos, and Kirk’s denial, is that what awaits us in the future, is what we have left in the past, the faith in gods and understanding that forces beyond our control make moments of domination and victory fleeting.  Using such a tragic optic urges us to look beyond the horizons to corners and edges, to the apparitions that induce us to question if we saw Ares in the .50 caliber round that accidentally discharged, killing a warrior at point blank range?  Was that whisper in the wind the just goddess of war Athene, who blew sand away from a hidden IED?

Recognizing gods requires looking beyond the earthly horizon.

Afghan patrol, Gurkhas

The desolation wreaks of endlessness, but the trees blurred and dusted by the winds of the desert emphasize a destination, perhaps the River Acheron, the crossing point at which spirits move to the underworld.  What of the warrior illuminated in dusty green among the shadows?  Is he walking amongst the dead, following and being driven by ancestors?  Are the shadows Hermes like figures?  Hermes protects travelers and looks after boundaries, especially the one between the land of the living and the dead.  Hades’ presence is strong here, as the ground seems to swirl and blur beneath their feet.  The glare is stark and suffocating, and there is no telling what is beyond the horizon for the warrior still in color, but we can guess that violent contingencies may deny him the protection offered by body armor and firepower.  We see a spark of chance, a whisper of hidden secrets, and a hint of mysterious experiences in which the difference between technology and the Cosmos is not so clear.

If Kirk is right and we have outgrown the gods, is it any wonder warriors are instrumentalized to the point where war becomes merely an extreme sport? An ode to Achilles’ mastery of killing, as an extreme athlete?  Is it a surprise that we fail to recognize Hypnos and Thanatos on the heels of these “athletes?” When we outgrow the gods, we fail to grasp the tragic laws in the poetics of the ancient deities, always present but incognito, laying in wait only to sneak back into the rational world of warfare as violent epiphanies, even if present only for a moment, which is forever.

Photographs by Hyunsoo Leo Kim/AP/The Virginian-Pilot and Bay Ismoyo/AFP-Getty Images, thanks to The Big Picture.  Jeremy Gordon is a PhD student in Communication and Culture at Indiana University-Bloomington who pays homage to (and is repulsed by) the gods of war, rhetoric, theatre, and myth.  He can be contacted at jeregord@indiana.edu.

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Protective Eyewear in The War Zone

When going on vacation this summer, you can be assured that the war will be there when you return.  Waiting, stealthily, ready to kill again.

face of war

This chilling image could well be the face of war in the 21st century.  He sits there quietly, comfortably, in no hurry.  There is no risk that the mission will be canceled or that the funding will be diverted to civilian projects.  His job doesn’t turn on any election or economic policy.  He sits at a ledge overlooking the street in Kabul, but the room behind him could be in any warehouse or empty building anywhere.  It might as well be a portal to hell; close one, and another can be opened around the corner.

As he sits safely in the darkness, we become aware of the light along the ledge, light that barely penetrates the dirty and boarded windowpanes.  The light limns his firing stand and headgear, while the binoculars (which double here as goggles) look like another set of darkened panes, as if light itself were a threat to this demonic creature.  Demonic, and fashionable: this cyborg is neatly hybridized as well: a NATO-ISAF soldier, his combination of high-tech weaponry and traditional headdress could fit in just as well on the other side, or sides.

He is not a massed army, and so the death toll is kept at sustainable levels, but he is lethal, and so specific individuals and their families are due to enter a world of pain and loss.  Above all, although the face of war you can’t see his face.  From sophisticated optical devices to protective eyeware, modern warfare is about equipping the eyes so that they can see but not be seen–and see but not question, judge, or look away in disgust.

sunglasses bloodied in Iraq

And so we get to this awful reminder that the war is not just about deploying, shooting, or otherwise acting against others.  This US soldier’s sunglasses are splattered with some of the blood from an IED explosion in Afghanistan.  The glasses appear to be fine.  What looks like a fashion accessory is in fact essential gear, and not just to cut the glare.  Once again, however, we can see the optical instrument but not who wore it or what was seen through it.

The camera is another optical instrument.  These photos bring us closer to the war zone, but they also remind us how much remains unseen and unchanged.  One might ask how we should use such images.  Are we going to ponder what they may be telling us about the nature of war and the representation of war, or are they likely to become another form of protective eyewear: something used to see while safely at a distance or avoiding the glare and grit, and also to look without seeing, questioning, and demanding change.

Photographs by Ahmad Masood/Reuters and Bob Strong/Reuters.

Cross-posted at BAGnewsNotes.

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Conference Paper Call: The Image

theimagelogo

December 2-3, 2010

University of California, Los Angeles

The conference is a cross-disciplinary forum bringing together researchers, teachers and practitioners from areas of interest including: architecture, art, cognitive science, communications, computer science, cultural studies, design, education, film studies, history, linguistics, management, marketing, media studies, museum studies, philosophy, photography, psychology, religious studies, semiotics, and more.

You may submit a proposal to the Conference Review Committee for an In-Person Presentation, or a Virtual paper at the Image Conference. If your conference proposal is accepted you may submit a written paper to The International Journal of the Image. All proposals, presentations and papers must be in English.

The deadline for the current round in the call for papers is August 5, 2010.  Additional information is here.

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Sustainable Catastrophes

Let’s start with the obvious: who can name the movie?

Deepwater Horizon rig aflame

It’s a trick question, of course.  This fabulous sci-fi machine looming monstrously out of smoke and flame isn’t from a movie set. It’s the Deepwater Horizon oil platform in its death throes on April 22, 2010, two days after the explosion that started one of the worst environmental disasters in US history.  Life seems to be following art as this tragedy mimes an image and mood easily conjured out of popular culture, and not for the first time–recall how many people remarked that the planes exploding into the World Trade Center seemed to be a film rather than an actual historical event in real time.

Nor has this uncanny experience happened for the last time.  And the story that accompanied this photograph in the New York Times is one reason why we will continue to experience large-scale disasters.  To see why, we can begin by noting that photo had two captions: One was the small credit off to one side that said “Catastrophe” and then provided the literal details of what, where, and when.  The other was the large headline running the length of the huge photo filling the space above the fold: “Taking Lessons From What Went Wrong.”  Catastrophes, it turns out, have silver linings, as they are a spur to technological progress.  The rest of the article embroiders this idea, while also contrasting”engineers”–who agree such lessons are inevitable and valuable–against “environmentalists”–who apparently are not engineers and argue for discarding risky technologies rather than allowing them to “evolve.”  Unfortunately, “The history of technology suggests that such an end is unlikely.  Devices fall out of favor, but seldom if ever get abolished by design.”  With science, nature, and history on the side of the engineers, and a subtle association of environmentalism with the creationism and intelligent design movements, this one is a no brainer.

I could write a book about this article, as it is a line-by-line case study in ideological rationalization, and in self-contradiction.  That’s not feasible at the moment, so let’s just back up a bit and then take another look.  The article is, of course, absolutely right: engineering works by learning from its failures, and well it should.  But we knew that, right?  The problem is that the Times also is claiming that “‘You don’t want to let a good crisis go to waste,'” but that is exactly what the oil companies–and the Times–are avoiding.  If the lesson to be learned is that technology is always getting safer, and if all of the corporate and regulatory decisions that created the disaster–decisions that were made by neither engineers nor environmentalists–are hidden behind a screen of merely technical adaptation, the crisis will have been wasted.

Ironically, the story ends by quoting yet another expert, who intones, “‘It’s like our personal lives, . . . Failure can force us to make hard decisions.”  And that is exactly how it is not like our personal lives, as all the hard decisions are being ducked.  And so we might as well go to the movies.

The turn to fantasy, however, need not be an exercise in escapism.  One might ask, is there anything in the photograph that reveals some of the truth being denied in print?   The photo is not obviously radical, and it certainly also can contribute to enchantment, not least the blurring of fact and fiction that was part of the Times’ narrative.  But there are some clues: the behemoth rises up as if the embodiment of the technological imperative, an imperative that is is fully realizing itself as a gigantic, autonomous machine.  That embodiment is tragic, however: the machine is embattled with demons of its own making and dying a hero’s death.  Technocratic civilization rises up above its creators, only to crash amidst the flaming oil and gas that was its lifeblood.  To crash and burn, but boldly, gloriously, a last monument to its own epic grandeur.

That’s the movie, anyway.  Reality is less dramatic, but to the same end.  Were we to learn from the picture, the ultimate catastrophe might be averted.  Unfortunately, the narrative will dominate.  And it will dominate despite assuring us both that “‘it can’t happen again'” and that additional disasters are “inevitable,” that “investigatory findings will eventually improve the art of drilling for oil in deep waters,” and, well, “at least until the next unexpected tragedy.”

Thus, by putting text and image together, the truth is revealed.  Between the technological development that will in fact result from the disaster, and the artistry of the Times and many other propagandists spinning it down the memory hole, the opportunity for genuine societal adaptation will be lost.

The modern prophet Walter Benjamin once defined the critical moment as that point where the status quo threatens to be preserved.  In the same passage he also said what it was to have missed the opportunity: that was the definition of catastrophe.

Photograph credit: no credit was provided at the Times.  The Benjamin citation is from The Arcades Project (Harvard/Belknap,1999), N10,2, p. 474.

Cross-posted at BAGnewsNotes.

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Mythic Visions in Afghanistan

The war in Afghanistan is not only a difficult military mission, it’s also a hard war to report on as well.  And for the same reason: you have a modern army trying to subdue guerrilla fighters in a desolate land for no clear political purpose.  The deployment of heavily equipped troops provides continual demonstration of enormous organizational and technological power, but with no identifiable enemies, territorial objectives, or sound strategic rationale the sense of things seems to drain away into the vast, almost lunar terrain.  In these conditions, some photographers have managed to tap into mythic visions.

Afghan patrol, Gurkhas

This photograph of troops on patrol was captioned to report that they are soldiers of the Royal Gurkha Rifles and Afghan National Police on patrol in Helmand province.  That information tells you very little, however, and not enough to understand either the image or the war.  Instead of reporting anything of note, the image evokes the mythic theme that war is eternal, and like other forms of eternity, a place where something elemental about moral life is revealed.

The patrol is moving out, two by two, across featureless terrain into some unseen, unknown future.  One figure is stopped for a moment, and the profile allows us to see the burden he carries.  Although he is equipped with a radio, he seems caught in silence, as are the others, their thoughts to themselves while everything else is reduced to being silhouettes.  We don’t know where they are going, but in the myth it doesn’t matter.  The long grey line continues forever, and they are simply carrying the load for their brief time.  They walk through history into the unknown, as good soldiers always do and always will, ennobled by their simple devotion to duty.

Like I said, it’s a myth.  I won’t deny it entirely, but I will note that it can expand into full sentimentality because there is so little in its way, and because mythic significance becomes especially appealing when no other, more pragmatic rationale is available.  Whatever the photographer’s intention, something deep has been evoked by this image.  What could be a parable of military activity without purpose  evokes instead a sense that war is, if not an end in itself, something close to that.

Myths are used to make sense of large forces that exceed understanding.  Mythic allusions may be particularly available in images of Afghanistan because there is a deep need to make sense of something that is becoming increasingly senseless.  It has dawned on me that I now have several posts that identify various mythic projections infiltrating the optical unconscious: how the war is a form of extreme sport, or Afghanistan a new frontier.  In each case, media culture digs into its storehouse to put up images that imply some otherworldly yet familiar narrative.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think the image above does double duty in this regard, as it also could be a scene from a sci-fi movie where the heroes head out from their craft to explore a dry, unforgiving planet.  And so you can imagine my reaction when I saw this photograph:

Afghan night, stars

This photo of the night sky over Camp Hansen in Helmand province is a stunning image of the firmament, so much so that I can feel the pull to go there and see the heavens so close, bright, vast, and deep.  But I see something else as well: another mythic vision, this time from science fiction.  Camp Hansen could be perched on some distant planet, a small outpost of humanity now flung across the stars.   Across the stars, but still at war.

Photographs by Bay Ismoyo/AFP-Getty Images and Hyunsoo Leo Kim/AP/The Virginian-Pilot, thanks to The Big Picture.

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Taking a Look at the Public Eye

Chicago’s latest public artwork of note is titled Eye.  The artist, TonyTasset, apparently likes to say what he means.

Tony Tasset, Eye, Chicago

The thirty foot high eyeball has been placed in Pritzker Park and is getting a good deal of attention.  (The full installation is entitled Eye and Cardinal, but I haven’t heard a thing about the bird.)  One reason will be that it invites comparison with The Bean, a large, reflective object in Millennium Park otherwise known as Cloud Gate, by Anish Kapoor.  Both sculptures are examples of the role of spectatorship in the self-understanding of the modern city.

Imagine a large sculpture of a human ear.  Or nose, or lips.  Or perhaps a giant foot.  Not likely, although the urban environment certainly requires walking, and civic life is very much about talking and listening, and about smelling (sometimes to our dismay).  I can’t say that some artist won’t sell some city manager on the idea of branching out, but these figures still would not challenge the role of seeing as an organizing principle of modern society.  What artworks such as the Bean and Eye do is deflect our attention from the objects of sight to the process itself, which is a social process: we see ourselves reflected amidst those strangers milling casually around us, and we see the organ of sight itself as a public monument—as a monument to being together in public.

Nor are these works unique.  Think of all the observation decks, sightseeing buses, and other modes of spectatorship that are fixtures of urban tourism.  Note other artists who highlight urban optics, such as the Eye Walkers (my label) created by Medaman-Medaman.  These are but a very few of the many ways that urban culture is a distinctive kind of visual culture.  And one feature of that culture is that it generates diverse forms of interaction between the artworks and their audience.

Tassett Eye reflected in sunglasses

Where to begin?  We see Eye doubled as it is reflected in this guy’s sunglasses, and so one optical instrument is reflected in another, and the artwork is doubled by an optical trick to more accurately reflect the operation of binocular vision, which allows the artificial eyes to assume the place of his real eyes while what is transparent to him is reflective to us, which is what the artwork does for all of us (can you see your eyeball, and how often do you think about public spectatorship?), and those eyes could be staring at him, transfixing the urban space, but they actually are only a reflection where they are joined with other spectators, strangers who are simply part of the scene, non-threatening in part because all are accustomed to practices of mutual but non-hostile surveillance, and all this and more is there but way too serious against the allusion to crazy eyeball glasses, and so silliness is part of the photographer’s achievement here, which reflects in turn the comic element in the artwork and so in the civic attitude itself, and all of this is wrapped up in the good vibe of this guy’s happy smile as he’s just digging this giant eyeball in the middle of the city.

And to appreciate what is at stake, all you have to do is look at those teeth.

Photographs by M.T. Sullivan/flickr and Nancy Stone/Chicago Tribune.

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Nocaptionneeded.com Turns Three

This week nocaptionneeded.com celebrates its third birthday.

Three birthday candles

As we did last year, this is a time to say “Thanks” and to take stock.  Thanks to all our readers, and not least to those who comment on the posts.  If anyone would like to give us any advice about the blog itself, now is a good time to do it.  We can’t say we’ll follow that advice, especially given our limited resources, but it always is appreciated and sometimes one thing can lead to another.  You can comment below or email us at rhariman@gmail.com and lucaites@indiana.edu.

A big party is not in the works–living large is so last year–but we will take two weeks off from posting to get caught up on some other work.  We’ll continue to read our mail, however, and hope that you’ll be back on July 7 as we start another year at NCN.

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The Golden Dream of Modern Technology

The catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has renewed debate about key elements of modern resource use.  How dependent should a society be on fossil fuels?  What constitutes “energy security?”  Can extraction industries and other commercial interests such as tourism thrive in the same ecosystem?  Advocates of various stripes argue that we should drive less, drill more, or rely more on either government or markets to mange complexity.  These are important debates, but the familiar antagonisms can create their own smoke screen.  To understand our predicament more deeply, it can help to look at those images that capture modernity’s basic promise and pathos.

Grounded-planes-at-Heathrow

This photograph of a plane at Heathrow airport is not only a stunning depiction of modern design, but one that evokes the dream of technology liberating humanity from earthly bonds.  The marvel of flight has been intensified into a few, sharp, geometrical lines.  The sleek lines of the machine represent sheer efficiency, while its dark undercarriage harbors the deep thrust of power that can lift everyone into the sky.  The terrain of earth is reduced to wisps of low-lying trees in the background, while machine and sky, technology and nature, exist in a pure space of perfect harmony.  The plane is at rest, yet poised as if waiting for a radio signal from heaven.  Flight has become a reality, while even greater potentialities for transformation are waiting to be released.

One might ask, however, why the sky is so golden, or whether the sun is rising or setting.  It might help to know that the plane was on the tarmac because it had been grounded by the ash clouds blowing across Europe last April.  Despite its technological prowess, modern society is still bound to unwanted natural constraints.  Indeed, looking at the image again from the standpoint of a catastrophic situation awakens one to another dimension of technological achievement.  Attending now more to color than line, a melancholic mood emerges to mark what is at risk.  The plane conquered the air only by consuming vast quantities of jet fuel.  The dark fuselage, wings, and engines now stand for the hidden cost of otherwise efficient design.  The darkness below becomes systematic denial of what continues to bind us to the earth.  The golden hue is not a sign of transcendental favor but rather the sunset of a civilization.

Not to put too fine a point upon it, but modern technology has allowed society to advance to a point where it is capable of engineering its own collapse.  That is an achievement, actually, and not for the first time.  It is small consolation, however, to imagine that at least we, too, will be remembered for our beautiful sense of design.

50th-anniversary Brasilia

This insight holds even if the sun is actually rising, as it is in the photograph taken on the morning of the 50th anniversary of the city of Brasilia.  The epitome of high-modernist urban design, Brasilia has become a monument to both the Utopian dream and social poverty of modernism.  This beautiful image captures each condition and can stand as a complement to the one above.  Using the same economy of line and the same combination of color and darkness, the photograph exposes at once the precision, the promise, and the danger of a society organized around modern technologies.  Once again, society seems poised for ascension into a higher order of being, and yet also reduced to emptiness and darkness.  The golden dream, it seems, will be eternal, even when only one person remains.

Photographs by David Levene/The Guardian and Fernando Bizerra, Jr./EPA.

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Wild West Fantasies in Afghanistan

The New York Times made it the lead story: “U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan.”  The question remains of who will get the riches.  The Times danced all around that one, and the key words sound like a Hot Button list for those who pay attention to how imperialism is coded in public discourse.  The report was filed by a Pentagon task force for business development that had recently been transferred from Iraq.  (Did you know that the Pentagon has a deputy undersecretary for defense for business?)  The research was conducted with geologists from the United States Geological Survey’s international affairs office.  (Yes, they have an international affairs office.)  The relevant Afghani law was written by advisers from the World Bank (just happened to be passing through Kabul).   Mining contracts are being drawn up by “international accounting firms,” and the technical data is about to be turned over to “multinational mining companies.”

Needless to say, with talent like this, we can look forward to the day when, according to the internal Pentagon memo quoted by the Times, Afghanistan will become “‘the Saudi Arabia of lithium.'”  Coming your way soon, yet another obscenely wealthy beacon of authoritarianism and Islamist terrorism.

But that’s the future, and of course the future could turn out otherwise.  What is interesting for the moment is how the conversion of Afghanistan into a mineral extraction colony for multinational capitalism is being framed both verbally and visually.

Afghanistan sheep, Tyler Hicks

This is the photograph that the Times appended to their article.  It is one of many amazing images of Afghanistan by Tyler Hicks, and I believe I’ve seen it some time ago.  In short, this is not Tyler Hicks working up the mineral story, but rather an appropriation of the image to frame that story.  As such, the implications are clear: there really is nothing and almost nobody there; the pastoral herders who are there are incapable of the capital- and technology-intensive development necessary to convert the rocks to wealth.  Where have we heard that before?  Well, in the American West.

base near Marja, Afghanistan

Let me suggest that the idea that Central Asia is a new Wild West has been present often enough in the visual coverage of the American military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.  This photograph was part of a slide show at the Washington Post on Marine efforts to secure the area around Marja in southern Afghanistan and train Afghani police at “Camp Leatherneck” there.   This shot was the last in the series.  Don’t say there are no more frontiers, because this is an image of a frontier outpost.

Photographs by Tyler Hicks/New York Times and Andrea Bruce/Washington Post.

Cross-posted at BAGnewsNotes.

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