Technologies of War, Media, and Dissent in the Post 9/11 Work of Krzysztof Wodiczko
Year: 2008
Type: article
Abstract: In the U.S. war on Iraq and the elusive, euphemistic ‘global war on terrorism’ manufactured in response to the events of September 11, video and surveillance have been used in radically diverse ways, eroding the line between public and private in the service of state control, political recruitment, terror, individual curiosity and radical critique. These technologies have been used to scrutinise the body by government agencies, publicise beheadings by Iraqi insurgents, send global messages by Osama Bin Laden and produce a recruitment tool by Al-Qaeda now on the Internet.1 Many independent agents have produced private videos that have found their way to a global audience via Internet sites such as YouTube, and, of course, the news media rely on video, subject to the pressures of state control. Artists, too, draw on the technologies of video, surveillance and the media to produce critical works about the troubling and often invisible effects of war. In this essay I examine some of these effects, focusing on the work of Krzysztof Wodiczko and his post 9/11 video, sound and vehicle projects, which mobilise war and media technologies in order to perform a radical critique of the war on terror, particularly the political repression it has unleashed against immigrants in American society and the frightening impulses and enduring damage it has effected on soldiers who function as both perpetrators and cannon fodder in this imperialist adventure.
Source: Oxford Art Journal
Author: D. Apel
Language: English
Topic: Art, Politics, and Modernism
Subfield: Visual Arts and Performing Arts
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1965541462