Spectacular

Spectacular

Reflections
on visual culture
in a wartorn world

Entry 1: visuality and the right to look

As society has become increasingly digitalized, it has become evident that media consumed daily should not be disregarded. Exclaiming, "my amazon is listening to me!" upon seeing cat food...

Entry 2: Looking at images of violence: Abu Ghraib and the "aesthetics of turture"

On April 28, 2004 CBS aired gruesome photos taken at Abu Ghraib, an American-run prison in Iraq. These photos showed Iraqi prisoners tortured, raped, and forced to pose in obscure sexual positions...

Entry 3: Looking at images of violence: violence on black bodies from Rodney King to George Floyd

On March 3, 1991, five LAPD officers violently beat and abused Rodney King. Witness Goerge Holliday videotaped and shared this incident, one of the first instances of citizen journalism...

Entry 4: Deracializing the field of vision and BLM

White supremacy in America is neither the cumulation of many racist individuals nor a fallacy that can be fixed or educated. It is something much more significant. White supremacy is intertwined with the creation of America as a state: a state built on the backs of black slave labor, a state that...

Entry 5: Biopolitics and Necropolitics, the right to rule over life and death

Western modernity has grown up with what can be known as a liberal democratic perspective on sovereignty, the power of free people to self-determination limited by their own reason. Politics claims to play the role of exercising reason...

Entry 6: Distant suffering and what makes a life grievable

In the age of the internet, it may seem possible to exclaim that we know “everything that is happening in the world”. While this statement is a good testament to the dissemination and oversaturation of media in the digital era, it is also a bit of an exaggeration...

Entry 7: Nuclear terrorism, colonialism, and disinformation

Modern warfare is complex and multidimensional. In the previous weeks we have discussed the vertical dimension of war and territorialization of the skies through the means of drones and surveillance technology...

Entry 8: Investigative aesthetics

In the age of “fake news”, it truly is difficult to decipher between the real and the fabricated. With just a few seconds of voiceover paired with a short video, just about anyone of any skill level can create a rather convincing AI video speech of a politician saying just about...

Entry 9: Evidentiary realism

Modern wars are no longer waged over resources and geography but over something much more complex: the interpretation of the truth. Identities are formed, communities are created, and hatred is spread...

Entry 10: Is there a moral obligation to look at horror images?

We have discussed the importance of claiming the ‘right to look’, but how do we exercise this right when the images at hand are so horrific that we cannot look? Images that portray death, violence, and struggle torture to an extent that makes one close their eyes...

Entry 11: Surveillance cultures post 9.11

In the chapter, “Video Surveillance, Torture Porn, and Zones of Indistinction” of Catherine Zimmer’s book, Surveillance Cinema, the relationship between torture and surveillance by...