--empyre- soft-skinned space--
Hello Alan,
I am looking foward to your month of curation at empyre.
I chime in early as an uninvited contributor.
The reaction to ISIS, with such speculation, as you put it, on How does one
live within the knowledge of annihilation? seems to me to say more about the
magnifying powers of modern mass networked media that the strategic
capabilities of the barbaric Islamic State.
The possibility of us in the Western World being annihalated by the despotic
and brutal IS is questionable at best. However, the actions of this group
should provoke far more legitimate and pressing questions over the 10+ years of
Western investment in the state of Iraq, along with the geo-political future of
the region and the fate of the millions of people in the region who have
already suffered under this horrible war and occupation.
My point is, your statement that the anguish of political situations that seem
out of control should be interogated for why these situaitons seem this way,
not for the nature of control and how it can be restored to a prefered status
quo. I believe it is the representation of the political situations that is out
of control, to the point where the most bloody act now gains the most
attention, as if rhetoric was now violence and words the flash of a sharpened
blade. All maginfied in the echo chanber of an increasingly hierarchical World
Wide Web (as in clusters of information centered on powerful producers and
organizers)
The IS has been described repeatedly as a Death cult by the current
Australian Prime Minister, who unwitingly identifies the source of the image
for this terror group as online media:
“This mob, by contrast, as soon as they’ve done something gruesome and ghastly
and unspeakable, they’re advertising it on the internet for all to see which
makes them, in my mind, nothing but a death cult and that’s why I think it’s
quite proper to respond with extreme force against people like this.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/02/tony-abbott-says-extreme-force-needed-to-counter-isis-death-cult
The horrific executions of nationals on film has become the calling card for
the cruel and merciless group known as IS. But actual technologies of
annihalation that can kill very large numbers of people have taken vast steps
since Walter Heerdt and Bruno Tesch developed and delivered vacum sealed
cannisters of Zyklon B to their fascist customers in Nazi Germany. Presently,
no such technologies or infrastructures seem to be in the hands of the ISIS
thugs and murderers (Thankfully). Instead, today for the majority of us in the
world we have a lot of terror by virtue of a social media campaign that is
extremely effective.
So how does one fight this vast image of terror? That is a question I would
like to see dealt with, among others, in the month ahead on empyre. How does
one comprehend such pitiless acts of barbarism as public decapitation when they
are combined with the amatuer YouTube asethetic and a resounding chorus of
theocratic manipulation as audio and editing and are available online 24/7 from
pole to pole?
Finally, as an after-thought; citizens and non-citizens alike are regularly
beheaded and even crucified (crucifixion in this context means the body and
head would then be put on public display) in Saudi Arabia. It has been going on
for decades-
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/saudi-arabia-five-beheaded-and-crucified-amid-disturbing-rise-executions-2013-05-21
where has been the global outcry over this barbarity?
Best
James
James Barrett
PhD Candidate/Adjunct
Department of Language Studies/HUMlab
Umeå University
Sweden
http://about.me/James.G.Barrett
From: empyre-boun...@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
[empyre-boun...@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of Alan Sondheim
[sondh...@panix.com]
Sent: 03 November 2014 06:19
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: [-empyre-] Introductory post (Alan Sondheim)
--empyre- soft-skinned space--
(The beginning guests will be announced shortly)
The topic for this month:
ISIS, Absolute Terror, Performance
Our initial precis:
The world seems to be descending into chaos of a qualitatively
different dis/order, one characterized by terror, massacre,
absolutism. Things are increasingly out of control, and this
chaos is a kind of ground-work itself - nothing beyond a
scorched earth policy, but more of the same. What might be a
cultural or artistic response to this? How does one deal with
this psychologically, when every day brings new horrors? Even
traditional analyses seem to dissolve in the absolute terror
that seems to be daily increasing.
We are moderating a month-long investigation on Empyre into the
dilemma this dis/order poses. We will ask a variety of people to
be discussants in what, hopefully, will be a very open
conversation. The debate will invite the empyre community to a
deep
