War Re-Framed
(from LMCC LowDown, Summer 2003)
I would like to discuss two contrasting forms of mediation
in relation to
the use of images of war: the form which occurs through
over-exposure
to images via news and television, and the kind that results
through
absence or long-term inaccessibility, as with government
classification
and partial declassification. Much has been written about
image saturation
in the media, but there has been no study that I know of
to determine
the potency of secrecy as a form of mediation vis-à-vis
the viewing public,
or the general psychological effects of declassification.
As a painter who uses media imagery as well as
declassified government
photographs as primary source material, I am interested in
the relationship
of these mediating forces to the myth of the photograph as
"proof," since it
continues to underscore our perception of all media
images. Artists take it
for granted that images are constructs; but when it comes
to photographs,
people generally forget this, despite what is known about
photographic
manipulation, digital or otherwise. We know that the
camera is never
neutral—there is either someone holding it, or steering it
remotely, or
else downloading and framing the contents of its transmission
so it may
be interpreted and acted upon—and yet we still regard the
photograph as
a mechanical, factual document. How might either of these
two kinds of
mediation—over-abundance versus secrecy—affect this myth
of
photographic objectivity?
I’ve been developing The Bomb Project (www.thebombproject.org), an online
nuclear resource for artists that grew out of image
research for a series of
paintings. The project
raises a number of questions regarding the possible
effects of government secrecy on our perception of past
events via new
knowledge from declassified imagery. For instance, how can
we digest the fact
that miles of film footage and still imagery of hundreds
of nuclear tests were
hidden from the public for decades, and how does that
affect how we look at
these images/events now?
If we have become a viewing public that only thrills
in real-time broadcast of disaster and war, how are we to
make sense of these
images of a half-century ago? Do these photographs of
historical events seem
unreal because they weren’t disclosed until decades after
the events they
depict? Does declassification itself become a mediating
factor, dovetailing
neatly with psychic numbing and public denial?
Our government is as secretive as ever, but more apt to
deploy a great array
of imagery in the public domain. This seeming
over-abundance is itself an act
of mediation, but of a subtler order. A good example of
this would be the
television transmissions from the First Gulf War—the “CNN
War”—and the
illusion that we were privy to the totality of the war.
Only years later were other,
less triumphalist and gruesome images declassified for
public consumption.
Of course, their meaning and impact on the viewing public
at the time would
have been more significant than it is now.
Can creative practice offer us an alternative in the way
we access and respond
to mediated image sources? By re-appropriating as creative
raw material
images that have been mediated according to untold
agendas, we may
stand a chance of internalizing
and understanding the events they depict.
Joy Garnett participated in the recent The
Future of War conference organized by our new-media
initiative Thundergulch with The New School
(see LowDown, spring 2003). She is an
artist living
and working in New York and is represented by
Debs & Co. Her paintings depict media images of
technology and disaster. She recently curated
the traveling exhibition Night Vision, made possible
in part by the Manhattan Community Arts
Fund/New York Department of Cultural Affairs, administered
by LMCC.