<underfire> re fluid borders, structured chaos, weak discipline

Wed Nov 1 13:04:16 EST 2006

I am looking forward to this week end in Sweden, we will continue this
discussion in person, I am sure about it.

Yes the Crusades are a good example of what is happening today. I agree with
what Ana wrote. I want to add that the during the Crusades there was also
media manipulation from both sides. Nur al Din, for example, skilfully
manipulated the concept of the Jihad to organise an army to fight the
Crusaders. Saladin took the idea, enlarged it and turned the Jihad into a
war instrument. We all know what Pope Urban II said to the Crusaders, go,
conquer with force Jerusalem and you will enter Paradise. At the time there
was no media as we know it today, Nur al Din used banners written in Mosques
and the Pope the network of the Church. 

As Ana said religious fundamentalism from both sides are destroying liberal
values, freedom of expression, all political conquests achieved by mankind
through centuries. The Crusades and Saladin Jihad destroyed a splendid
civilization, Islam, one which has given the world so many scientific
discoveries.

Loretta 

-----Original Message-----
From: underfire-bounces at underfire.eyebeam.org
[mailto:underfire-bounces at underfire.eyebeam.org] On Behalf Of Ana Valdes
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 6:34 PM
To: underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org
Subject: Re: <underfire> re fluid borders, structured chaos, weak discipline

Hi Loretta and I has missed our exchanges as well, by the way, we are
going to meet each other in Umeå on Friday, when the "Iraqui Equation"
is launched. You surely remember our exchange in the first Under Fire,
when Eyal, Jordan, you and me discussed about the Crusades as a
metaphor for the modern clashes of the civilizations, paraphrasing
Tarik Ali and Huntington.
I am now driving a project called Crusading, http://www.crusading.se,
which is one of the hosts of Catherine Davids exhibition and very much
of the intellectual and ideological base of the project has been
inspirated by our conversations in Under Fire.
The Middle Ages and the Crusades are still for me important references
of the conflicts and tensions we are seeing and suffering today. The
national states who were emerging in the 13 and 14 century developed
in welfare states with strong centralization, now it's the
corporations who are taking over the traditional roles of the state
and are the engine of wars and hostile take overs.
The radical Islam and the Evangelical US need each other and it's in
their struggle for world domination where much of the traditional
liberal values are being erased.
Concepts as habeas corpus and freedom of expression and reunion don't
fit in a world where Philip K. Dick "Do Androids dream about
Electrical Sheep?" dystopy is very near.
Ana

On 10/31/06, Loretta Napoleoni <lanapoleoni at btopenworld.com> wrote:
> It is so nice to read Anna's posting again. It made me realised how much I
> have missed our exchanges!
>
> I agree, we are sliding into the modern Middle Ages but not because of
> physical barriers to travel but because of mental blockages. I travel a
lot
> in the Middle East and I see 'foreigners' which are totally blind to what
> surrounds them. I detected the identical blindness among jihadists,
> followers of al Zarqawi or of Osama bin Laden. They do not want to see us
> and we do not want to see them. We are perfectly satisfied with our own
> illusions, in fact we are even afraid to venture outside the cocoon
created
> by our society's illusions. It is only through war, when the individual is
> stripped to his/her emotional and human bones, that we finally see each
> other. And what we see is ourselves, individuals, human being absolutely
> identical.
>
> So perhaps the new borders should be marked by our humanity, by the fact
> that we are all born, have a childhood, fall in love and have hopes for a
> decent life, perhaps we need to go back to the very basic and simple needs
> of men to find the common denominator and then build from it. It may sound
> simplistic but I believe that we have gone too far to find in politics a
new
> structure to organise humanity. Politics in the post Cold War globalised
> world has been enslaved by economics, politicians simply respond to
economic
> stimulus. Innovation must come from the base of the pyramid, from the
people
> because they are the only force able to subvert modern politics.
Consumers,
> for example, have a tremendous power but they are unaware of it.
>
> Utopia?
>
> Loretta Napoleoni
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: underfire-bounces at underfire.eyebeam.org
> [mailto:underfire-bounces at underfire.eyebeam.org] On Behalf Of Ana Valdes
> Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 6:32 AM
> To: underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org
> Subject: Re: <underfire> re fluid borders, structured chaos, weak
discipline
>
> Hi Christina, Loretta, Jordan and all the others onboard Underfire!
> It's nice to see how many virtual "conversations" link together and
> the same voices appear in different phantom bodies. The discussion we
> held in Empyre, the list moderated by Christina, about bare life and
> Art it's for me a crucial discussion in Under Fire as well. I, as a
> writer and activist, feel a demand of selfreflection and analyze about
> my own logical and emotional parameters.
> As many of you know I was detained in a high security prison in
> Latinamerica in the 70:s for four years. I was 19 years old, the "rite
> de passage" between teenage and adulthood. It changed my world from
> upside down and it gave me tools of analys and discussion I never
> found later in the different universities I have attended.
> For me the link between my own prison, the economical terror networks
> which Loretta describes, the new borders which Saskia defines and the
> exception laws narrated by Agamben are clear. New borders and new
> shapes of a imaginary geography are needed to create a consensous, a
> mutual agreement where people agree with the role given to him or her
> since birth. The mobility, a key word of Modernity, it's only
> conceived if you move to work or study to find another spot where you
> can exerce your right to an active citizenship. I think we are going
> again to the Middle Ages, where people were stuck in place and the
> only mobility you got was if you went into war.
> Ana Valdés
>
> On 10/30/06, Christina McPhee <christina112 at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > Hello Loretta,  Michael,  and underfire
> >
> > Interesting posts just now.
> >
> > Reflecting on this matter of suffering and its exposure because of,
> > abetted by, and possibly, ameliorated by,  net/media.
> >
> > > Yet violence seems much more interesting to notice, watch, playact,
> > > imagine, bemoan or discuss than more peaceful topics. Hence this
> > > discussion itself. Somehow, it is very easy to put oneself in the
> > > shoes of either the murderers or the victims — or both. On the
> > > whole, I think, the victims cry out to us more, but only because we
> > > also understand the deliberateness of killing, and that it, too, is
> > > done by those like us. A victim of deliberate violence may cry out
> > > no more loudly than the victim of a natural disaster or a disease,
> > > but draws our sorrow and pity and desires for justice or revenge
> > > much more intensely. Heartless as we may feel is an employer who
> > > lays off workers or a real estate developer who disposseses
> > > tenants, or even a tobacco tycoon who knowingly presses the chance
> > > of lung cancer on unsuspecting smokers, we do not normally feel as
> > > much anger towards them as towards a small-scale serial killer, a
> > > torturer or rapist in some distant place who we read about only in
> > > the daily newspaper. Sex may sell; violence sells even better, or
> > > at least it more completely draws our attention.
> >
> > In my view violence includes the violence of the state against its
> > citizenry by means of neglect and the gradual or rapid cutting off of
> > services and support.  As Loretta has noticed,
> >
> > > Rogue economics is a maze of market-orchestrated interdependencies
> > > and curious contradictions: financial aid has impoverished Africa,
> > > while high-sugar food donations have triggered epidemic diabetes in
> > > its population.  Rogue economics is the uncontrollable power which
> > > is erasing centuries of social improvements: slave and child labour
> > > make Asian products competitive in the West.
> >
> >
> > However there is little  [re]presentation of this violence as such in
> > the media image lexicon.  It seems imperative to create a visual
> > media discourse that will deploy
> > pictorial vernaculars outside the mainstream idioms of mass media,
> > but  within commonly available structures and accessibility of use
> > (such as internet video).
> >
> > To me this has a fundamental connection to the problematic of 'bare
> > life' to which Agamben has introduced us.   How may the visual
> > producer move outside the 'embedded' absurdity
> > of only contributing, by virtue of the privilege of making visual
> > content accessible to the public through the net,  to mass media
> > spectacle?
> >
> > To approach (or perhaps, to have rapproachment with, or towards) the
> > condition of 'bare life' which is by nature not representable.   But
> > to intensify this effect of reception, which Michael notices (here):
> >
> > > We see and are directly affected by suffering because it is so much
> > > more central our own humanity than killing is.  Statesmen only
> > > barely are beginning to understand this. One thing the Internet ahs
> > > already done is enlarge this contact with "the other side." I don't
> > > see any easy way for this trend to stop. Nor do I believe that
> > > anywhere in the world where such images are available they will not
> > > have effect.
> >
> >   Bare life is still outside art. Art in the land of traumatic
> > visualization anticipates a differential of probabilities: the fear
> > and/or knowledge of knowing you may lose everything, even yourself as
> > 'subject'. Remixing the topographic structures that arise from images
> > that record or portend traumatic traces, I am concerned with a fugue
> > or palimpsest that develops relative differentials into which images
> > remix, as if they are shadowy residue from the site's 'bare life'
> > ontological condition, invisible, into which they  insert themselves
> > and into which they disappear. That disappearance must be at the core
> > of the ethical challenge at the site of trauma.
> >
> >
> > Christina
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > -----------------------------------
> >
> >
> > http://christinamcphee.net
> > http://strikeslip.tv
> > http://naxsmash.net
> >
> > current:  La Conchita mon amour:  http://www.re-title.com/artists/
> > christina-mcphee.asp
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Under Fire  http://underfire.eyebeam.org
> > 16 October - 10 December 2006
> > International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville
> > all writings copyright individual authors
> > no commercial use without permission
> > to post a message, send an email to:
> > underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org
> > to unsubscribe, send an email to:
> > underfire-leave at underfire.eyebeam.org
> >
>
>
> --
> "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
>
> _______________________________________________
> Under Fire  http://underfire.eyebeam.org
> 16 October - 10 December 2006
> International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville
> all writings copyright individual authors
> no commercial use without permission
> to post a message, send an email to:
> underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org
> to unsubscribe, send an email to:
> underfire-leave at underfire.eyebeam.org
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Under Fire  http://underfire.eyebeam.org
> 16 October - 10 December 2006
> International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville
> all writings copyright individual authors
> no commercial use without permission
> to post a message, send an email to:
> underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org
> to unsubscribe, send an email to:
> underfire-leave at underfire.eyebeam.org
>

-- 
"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

_______________________________________________
Under Fire  http://underfire.eyebeam.org
16 October - 10 December 2006
International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville 
all writings copyright individual authors
no commercial use without permission
to post a message, send an email to:
underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org
to unsubscribe, send an email to:
underfire-leave at underfire.eyebeam.org