The Royal Road

My mash up this week is influenced by the Royal Wedding and the current global political situation! 

Peter W Singer the writer of "Wired For War", states that an armed Drone could shoot an apple at 800 meters but that it could not tell if it was an apple or a tomato!

With Unmanned Vehicle Systems (UAV's) now in Libya, Syria......I was wondering if it might be possible for those flying eyes, present around the Mall tomorrow for the Royal Wedding, to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys.  At least the Syrian Ambassador has now had his invitation withdrawn! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13223428 

In a world of appearance  it seems quite an important limitation of a machine, not to be able to understand the actuality or nature of an object presented to it on a screen.  For behind the world of appearance or surface behaviours are concepts and it is these concepts, ideas and greater understandings of what appears on the surface, that provides us with knowledge of what is actually present.   It is only then, that we can discern if that object is morally right or wrong, good or bad etc etc. If a drone can't understand whether you put the object into a salad or into pudding, then it cant embrace its contradictions, or in Marx's terminology, the dialectics inherent in the object.

We have an instinct for dialectics and we only loose it by the search for facts - ingrained by parents and teachers at a very young age.  We are trained for certainty and rational, definites or answers that we are led to believe embody some sort of truth.  Will the car driving down the Mall have Kate and William in it or the Syrian Ambassador and his wife?  We know the answer and the difference because we understand whats happening, the car has context and their is a concept behind the image which we can work out. Kate is marrying William, he is a Royal, Royal's drive down the Mall when they get married and he is a boy and she is a girl, they are young etc etc.  The UAV as an object, flying above us tomorrow wont have a clue!  It could be anyone in the car/coach/whatever, and be doing anything for all the Drone cares. 

In the world of image, it seems to me that it is this contradiction and the relationship between truth, definitive answers and fantasy that makes what we do as photographers interesting.  Photography illuminates the world around us,  turning the surface of appearance into a conceptual framework.  In its essence dialectics is critical and revolutionary, not just one view but many views, bouncing off each other like a virtual game of Vortex.  What happens when you break through the wall is unpredictable, free floating, exciting and innovative.  Keeping things moving and free floating is what keeps photography relevant, and inspires people like Jim Goldberg - the winner of the DB prize - to carry on working.

Karl Marx understood everything as process, everything moving, capitalism is perpetually "on the road".   In "Capital" V 1, Marx starts with concepts and only when you finally reach the end do you have any real idea of whats happening, what the hell is actually being said about the world.  Photography is this for me, an idea that becomes a collection of surface information that produces and culminates in a eureka moment giving greater understanding of the original concept. This is only possible when you are forced to relinquish your preconceived thoughts and limitations of a subject and allow your consciousness to be hijacked and sent spinning off in many directions.

And then of course there is Sigmund Freuds understanding of dreams noted in The Interpretation of Dreams 1900, being the "Royal Road to the Unconscious" What is hidden through dreams comes to the surface in everyday life indicating the 'real' trauma or event that inhibits daily existence.

So, the real trauma is clearly not the Royal Wedding but is the appalling nightmare and humanitarian disaster that we are watching unfold in the Middle East.  Tomorrow means nothing by comparison but will give respite to those across the globe, especially those at Fort Rucker, Alabama, who have told me to pass on that we should celebrate tomorrow and look to Kate and William to bring hope for a less chaotic and desperate future.

Photo by me, 26th March. "March for the Alternative"

Great day!
Join this group and upload your photos. This is what democracy looks like.

Photos by Milo, 26th March. "March for the Alternative"

Photographs by my son. ©Milo Winstone.

Managed to be at the front of the March and therefore in plenty of time to see Ed Miliband speak.  He really was very good.  I was almost convinced!

Raiding the Icebox

©Lisa Barnard

Two things caught my eye today. A great post by my friend Professor Skip Rizzo from The Institute of creative Technologies in Los Angeles, and Peter Wollen's great book called 'Raiding the Lightbox', which I was reading as part of my research into an Andy Warhol project I am working on with the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill. The article that Skip posted was written by Robert Reich and called 'Safety on the Cheap'. A familiar yet important rant from Reich on the relation between large corporation, profiteering and safety. The quality of the Mark 1 boiling water reactors, used in TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan have been questioned and are the concern for Reich and indeed for all of us interested in the connection between politics, capitalism and everyday life. Quite rightly, he ends up drawing comparisons between the Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and Hallibuton's involvement with that disaster and the quality of the cement used in the wells that prevent blow outs.

On reflection, what came to mind was Deck Cheney. On further reflection I remembered Naomi Klein's brilliant and distressing book 'The Shock Doctrine' and the rest is history or is it?!

'Raid the Icebox with Andy Warhol' was an exhibition held by Warhol in 1969 at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Arts' after he was invited to raid/research the permanent collection and arrange/or not, the eclectic mix of items in various installations around the space. To create, in fact, a new archive or new display of those items that he was drawn to. Of particular interest to him were a collection of Windsor Chairs which he stacked in a corner, the result of which can be seen below.


Installation of Windsor chairs, from "Raid the Icebox With Andy Warhol," exhibition at the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, April 23 - June 30, 1970

In Wollen's 'Raiding the Icebox' the connection is drawn between Henry Ford's production line of 1908, the avant-gardists and radical subcultures of the 20th-century, consumerism and how the most powerful artists of the 20th century endeavored to redraw the line between high and low art. The period he reflects on is the time when capitalism was at its most fervent prior to the Great Depression starting in 1928 on Black Tuesday, through to Andy Warhol and Guy Debord's 'Society of the Spectacle'.

The connections are there, I promise. Capitalism is the key and innovation and catastrophe is part of the answer.

This is an exciting time for photography - new technology, revolution, financial and political crisis..... The early 20th century was the most important time for creativity - failed and successful revolutions, fordism, mass production, the great depression of 1928, new technology..... Artists sort new ways to be activists and developed different ideas to experience and produce art. New technology allowed the blurring of high and low art. We are there again, the creative revolution and photography as at the forefront....bring it on!

On even further reflection, I though of two great photographers featuring an Icebox -of sorts- in their work.



(Freezer) Memphis, Tennessee, early 70's by William Eggleston



Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Mario, 1978

The Marxist literary and political theorist Frederic Jameson who wrote in 1991, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, suggests that technology can only be theorised through the category of the sublime. His writings and ideas seem to be more relevant than ever, especially as the relationship between online networking and hand held devices has now crept into the very heart of where political decisions are taking place. Read an interesting paper -part of the online Tate research Journal - by Eugénie Shinkle on the relationship between video games and the 'technological sublime'. Not specifically about Jameson but well worth a read. Here.

At least I'm not asleep

Today on 'Yesterday in Parliament' on BBC Radio 4, I was interested to hear that 'hand held devices' were now allowed in the House of Lords.

It's just a trial for one year, but it could mean greater interaction by those unable to attend or those watching and lead to broader debate within the House. Or it could not!

See article here.

I wonder what Queen Anne would have made of this?

Image is made from using the search engine and montaging parts of the image results.

©Lisa Barnard