<underfire> Image as Event

[sdv at krokodile.co.uk]

Radhika

The last paragraph, which is the most serious has an answer already... 

But first 'peace' and 'compassion' --- please.

Some years ago I remember a latin american militant (whose name I cannot remember at the moment) saying to  liberals and militants in the 'north' that if we are are serious about helping those who live in the south, then we must work against our neo-liberal governments and their associated ideological supporters.... exactly what in the below, with it's north-american address is going to help her when the noth american state has the energy to once again intervene in latin america again ? What has changed  over the years since she said this ?

Both Susan and you may be missing the point, it has always been us, the difference is that we live in the heartlands of capital and in your case the heart of empire as well.

s
 



Radhika Subramaniam wrote:

>To all Under Fire
>
>Yesterday Palestine.  Today Iraq.  I, like Susan Charlton, 
>can’t help but read it as saying:  Tomorrow, it will be 
>us.  And what does that warning (hope to) achieve?  To 
>follow on Negar’s closing comment, what is Tehran’s 
>pre-occupation?
>
>What I can see a glimmer of here is what strikes me 
>continually in my New York world and that is the wagging 
>finger that governs our daily life now.  That warns and 
>threatens and keeps us confused, suspicious, careful and 
>obedient.  Surveillance, ID cards,  fingerprinting, 
>toothpaste gels – yes, from the video camera in a bank to 
>what I use on my teeth – are all part of this fantastical 
>construction of fear and control.  I have learnt to press 
>my index finger hard at the airport counter knowing my 
>prints never show up at the first try.  I no longer rail 
>against building regulations that ask Carlos to greet me 
>by name while refusing me entry to my office because I 
>can’t find my ID in my bag.  For so many living in the 
>U.S. there is just the enormous, dare I say, silly, web of 
>poking and prodding that transform the everyday – and it 
>seems that it is really for this, after all, that havoc is 
>being wreaked half way across the world.  For this 
>“security” which now serves as a substitute for peace. 
> Can anyone really speak of “peace” anymore – the sort of 
>peace whose originary affect is compassion, as Bracha 
>Ettinger suggests?  The sort of peace based on reciprocal 
>knowledge, even a churlish tolerance.
>Of course, there are more violent systems of policing – 
>the detentions, renditions, surveillance – that are but a 
>step away.  I have often wondered how one sort of terror 
>and violence (arbitrary searches) comes to substitute for 
>another sort of terror (al-Qaeda) while making invisible 
>the experience of that substitution.  Why aren’t we 
>horrified?  Why aren’t we terrified?  And I can’t help but 
>feel that a component of it lies in these asinine daily 
>rituals which confirm our participation in the broad 
>network of policing – as the policed – which then allows a 
>certain smugness to paper over what could have been that 
>horror of what is taking place.
>
>Is it really possible, then, to counter violence and 
>terror without fundamentally imaging the very forms that 
>are being opposed?   How can one deploy the Abu Ghraib 
>image of the hooded man with any certainty anymore, for 
>instance?  Do notions of “good intentions”, “context” etc 
>matter when in this age of internet promiscuity, it’s no 
>longer possible to claim that those borders can be drawn?
>
>And isn’t there a question here for Under Fire as well: 
>even if we have no illusions of our remove from the 
>apparatus of violence, how do we astutely, craftily 
>construct an alternative, a response, an expression of 
>outrage that doesn’t partake of the same murky stuff that 
>seeps and unsettles zones of fear and terror?
>
>Best, Radhika
>
>Radhika Subramaniam
>Director of Cultural Programs
>Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
>_______________________________________________
>Under Fire  http://underfire.eyebeam.org
>16 October - 10 December 2006
>International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville 
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