ACI Live Event with Dani Ploeger, 18.06.2021, 8pm CET
www.art-claims-impulse.com
Presenting the art project "A Space War Monument" Dani Ploeger will give
a presentation on his new work A Space War Monument, a land art
performance commissioned by the Kuwait National Pavilion at the Venice
Architecture Biennale on occasion of the 30th anniversary of the end of
the Persian Gulf War (1990-91). At this online event, organized by Art
Claims Impulse, he will share some insights on the background, context
and realization of the work in the Kuwaiti desert.
The Gulf War has become broadly known as ‘The First Space War’ because
of the prominent use of GPS-technology, ‘smart bombs’, stealth aircraft
and other advanced technologies by the US military and their allies.
However, philosopher Jean Baudrillard has suggested that this
understanding of the war as a clean, high-tech affair has been
constructed through media representations. Hardly anybody knows what
really happened on the battlefield in the Kuwaiti desert, because news
reports almost exclusively originated from heavily controlled and
redacted press sources embedded with the US military. For this reason,
he provocatively stated that ‘the Gulf War has not taken place.’
In this context, A Space War Monument connects the Gulf War’s high-tech
dimension to a low-tech aspect of the conflict – the use of bulldozers
as assault weapons by the US military – which have remained largely
unacknowledged in official narratives. Ploeger commissioned a
GPS-controlled bulldozer to erase remaining traces of the war in the
Kuwaiti desert. This civilian machine brings together high- and low-tech
aspects of the Gulf War, while drawing attention to the
cross-contamination of military and civilian technological innovation:
After the Gulf War, the bulldozer was the first construction vehicle
that was equipped with GPS technology.
Kind regards
Art Claims Impulse
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