Image operations: Visual media and political conflict 9781526108647

Citation preview

i

Image operations

ii

iii

Image operations Visual media and political conflict

EDITED BY JENS EDER AND CHARLOTTE KLONK

Manchester University Press

iv

Copyright © Manchester University Press 2017 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data applied for ISBN 978 1 5261 0721 3 hardback ISBN 978 1 5261 1397 9 paperback First published 2017 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-​party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset in Minion and Gill by Out of House Publishing

v

Contents

List of plates List of figures Notes on contributors Acknowledgements Introduction Jens Eder and Charlotte Klonk

page vii x xi xvi 1

Part I  Using images: metaphors, processes, affects

23

1 Images of the world, images of conflict Ben O’Loughlin

25

2 Worldmaking frame by frame Zeynep Devrim Gürsel

37

3 Working images: Harun Farocki and the operational image Volker Pantenburg

49

4 Affective image operations Jens Eder

63

5 Method, madness and montage: assemblages of images and the production of knowledge W. J. T. Mitchell

79

Part II  Images in warfare, insurgency and counterinsurgency

87

6 Image operations: refracting control from virtual reality to the digital battlefield Timothy Lenoir and Luke Caldwell

89

vi

vi

Contents

7 Sensorship: the seen unseen of drone warfare Tom Holert

101

8 Images that last? Iraq videos from YouTube to WikiLeaks Christian Christensen

118

9 Images of terror Charlotte Klonk

128

10 The making and gendering of a martyr: images of female suicide bombers in the Middle East Verena Straub

137

11 Photographic archives and archival entities Ariella Azoulay

151

Part III  Image activism and political movements

167

12 Exposing the invisible: visual investigation and conflict Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski

169

13 Human rights in an age of distant witnesses: remixed lives, reincarnated images and live-​streamed co-​presence Sam Gregory 14 The hunger striker: a case for embodied visuality Bishnupriya Ghosh 15 The visual commons: counter-​power in photography from slavery to Occupy Wall Street Nicholas Mirzoeff

184 197

208

Afterword James Elkins

219

Index

227

vii

Plates Plates can be found in the pages that follow the afterword

1 Desktop screenshot © W. J. T. Mitchell 2 Aby Warburg, Mnemosyne Atlas, plate 45, 1924, photograph © The Warburg Institute, University of London 3 Neil Brown, Dennis Del Favero, Matthew McGinity, Jeffrey Shaw, Peter Weibel, T_​Visionarium II, iCinema Scientia Facility at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Festival, 2008 4 Unit coordination in Virtual Battlespace 2, Bohemia Interactive Simulations, 2007 © Bohemia Interactive Simulations 5 The ARC4 augmented-​reality display for the soldier of the future © Applied Research Associates, Inc. 6 Plan X visualises networking information on large touchscreen monitors to allow intuitive conduct of cyberwarfare, DARPA, 2014 7 Geospatial Intelligence conference (GEOINT) in Tampa, Florida, April 2014 © United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation 8 Predator C Avenger UAV Great War Machine, General Atomics promotional video, c. 2009 (Bravo.Alpha, 2012, www.youtube. com/​watch?v=v0dHKWjXn-​E) 9 Predator Sensor, USAF video, 2014 10 #NotABugSplat, A giant art installation targets predator drone operators, April 2014, photograph taken from a small drone 11 Montage of CCTV footage of the men behind the 21 July 2005 failed bomb attack in London (www.theguardian.com/​uk/​2005/​ jul/​22/​july7.uksecurity9) 12 Charles Maurin, Ravachol, 1893, coloured print, 220 × 137 mm, private collection, photograph © Charlotte Klonk 13 Arrest of Muktar Said Ibrahim and Ramzi Mohammed on 29 July 2005 in London (www.bbc.co.uk/​london/​content/​articles/​ 2007/​07/​09/​bomb_​plot_​trial_​feature.shtml) 14 Video testimony by Sana Yusif Muhaydli, broadcast on 9 April 1985 on Lebanese television (www.ssnp.com/​new/​multimedia. htm)

viii

viii

List of plates

15 Photograph of Dareen Abu Aisheh, handed out by her family in Nablus on 28 February 2002 16 Photograph of Ayat al-​Akhras, presumably taken on 29 March 2002 (http://​americanfront.info/​2013/​03/​31/​present-​pflp-​martyr-​ ayat-​al-​akhras) 17 Photograph of Reem Riyashi with her three-​year-​old daughter (www.paldf.net/​forum/​showthread.php?t=549634) 18 Portrait of Eliot Higgins, at his house, in his town and at work, Exposing the Invisible film series, 2014 © Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski 19 Reference image of Iranian 107mm rocket (left) and occurrence of Iranian rocket in Syrian war video (right), Exposing the Invisible film series, 2014 © Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski 20 Rajwa and co-​activist of the Mashaa group at work, Exposing the Invisible film series, 2014 © Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski 21 Connecting Nabih Berri, Speaker of the Parliament of Lebanon, to his coastal house, Exposing the Invisible film series, 2014 © Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski (map image © 2014 Google, DigitalGlobe) 22 Hagit Keysar’s work–archives in Jerusalem (left) and a still from video of House Demolition in East Jerusalem by Haitham Khatib (right), Exposing the Invisible film series, 2014 © Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski 23 Kids and kites, Exposing the Invisible film series, 2014 © Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski 24  Portrait of James Bridle (left), image of rendered drone as seen on online hobbyist forum (centre) and Bridle’s drone model in car park (right), Exposing the Invisible film series, 2014 © Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski 25 Render drone: canonical but deceptive drone image, Exposing the Invisible film series, 2014 © Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski 26 Real-​sized drone model in the car park, Exposing the Invisible film series, 2014 © Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski 27 The Most AMAZING Video on the Internet #Egypt #jan25 (Hadi Fauor, 2011, www.youtube.com/​watch?v=ThvBJMzmSZI) 28 Kenya, 11 witches burnt alive, from kaotal.com (Serignesene, 2009, www.youtube.com) 29 Live-​streamed arrest in Brazil (PosTV, 2013, www.youtube.com/​ watch?v=aDO6tr6kgAk) 30 Irom Sharmila in Tales from the Margins (dir. Kavita Joshi, India, 2006) 31 Postcard from ‘Postcards for Irom’ campaign © Abhishek Majumder

ix

List of plates

32 Protesters hold banner of Irom Sharmila’s image in Srinagar © Dar Yasin (AP Photos) 33 Timothy O’Sullivan, Untitled (Slaves, J. J. Smith’s Plantation, near Beaufort, South Carolina), photograph, 1861, image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program 34 Jill Freedman, Untitled (woman burning draft card), photograph, 1968 © Jill Freedman 35 Jill Freedman, Untitled (Rev. Kirkpatrick), photograph, 1968 © Jill Freedman

ix

x

Figures

Harun Farocki, Eye/​Machine, video, 2000 © Harun Farocki page 50 Harun Farocki, Eye/​Machine, video, 2000 © Harun Farocki 51 Harun Farocki, Inextinguishable Fire, 16mm film, 1969 © Harun Farocki 57 Harun Farocki, Inextinguishable Fire, 16mm film, 1969 © Harun Farocki 58 Mohammed Atta, New York Post, 13 September 2001 132 Untaken photograph, Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, May 1945 158 Inaccessible photograph, Israeli prison, Hani Muzheir’s testimony, recorded by B’Tselem report on torture, 1994 158 8 Unshowable photograph, Tul Karem region, women and children who are part of a transfer of 1,100 people leaving the Jewish zone toward the Arab zone, under the auspices of the International Red Cross on 18 June 1948, V-​P-​PS-​N-​0-​4-​2679 160 1  2 3 4 5 6 7

xi

Contributors

Ariella Azoulay is Professor of Comparative Literature, Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, USA. Her publications include From Palestine to Israel:  A  Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947–​1950 (Pluto Press, 2011), Civil Imagination:  The Political Ontology of Photography (Verso, 2012), The Civil Contract of Photography (Zone Books, 2008)  and, co-​ authored with Adi Ophir, The One State Condition:  Occupation and Democracy between the Sea and the River (Stanford University Press, 2012). She is the director of several documentary films, among them Civil Alliances, Palestine, 47–​48 (2012), I Also Dwell among Your Own People: Conversations with Azmi Bishara (2004) and The Food Chain (2004), and has curated numerous exhibitions including Untaken Photographs (Ljubljana and Tel Aviv, 2010), Potential History (Leuven, 2012) and Act of State 1967–​2007 (Centre Pompidou, 2016). Luke Caldwell is a PhD candidate in the Program in Literature at Duke University, USA and a Beinecke scholar. His work examines the naturalisation of cyber and information warfare under digital capitalism and contemporary manifestations of the military–​entertainment complex. He is a co-​author with Timothy Lenoir of The Military–​Entertainment Complex, forthcoming from Harvard University Press (2017). Christian Christensen is Professor of Journalism in the Department of Media Studies at Stockholm University in Sweden. In addition to his edited volumes, he is the author of over forty journal articles and book chapters, as well as a large number of popular pieces on media and politics published in outlets such as Le Monde Diplomatique, Al Jazeera and CounterPunch. His current work revolves around technology, politics and news, and he is participating in three large-​scale projects on (1) the use of new technologies by journalists in Sweden; (2) social media and national elections in Sweden, Norway, the United States and Australia; and (3) media, conflict and democratisation in South Africa, Egypt and Serbia. Jens Eder teaches at the Institute for Media and Communication Studies at the University of Mannheim, Germany. Previously, he was Professor of Film Studies

xii

xii

Notes on contributors

at the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, and Associate Professor of Media Studies at the University of Hamburg. He has written on audiovisual narrative, film and politics, cross-​media strategies, emotions in audiovisual media, media characters and representations of human nature in the media. His publications in English include the book Characters in Fictional Worlds (de Gruyter, 2010, with Ralf Schneider and Fotis Jannidis) and papers on characters, emotion, digital media and transmediality. A monograph on the theory of media characters is forthcoming with Amsterdam University Press (2017). James Elkins is E. C. Chadbourne Professor in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA. His most recent book is What Photography Is (Routledge, 2012). He writes on art and non-​ art images; recent books include Chinese Landscape Painting as Western Art History (Hong Kong University Press, 2010) and Art Critiques: A Guide (New Academia Publishing, 2012). As of October 2015 he has stopped writing monographs in order to concentrate on an experimental writing project that is not related to art. Bishnupriya Ghosh is Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. She is the author of two books on contemporary elite and popular cultures of globalisation. When Borne Across:  Literary Cosmopolitics in the Contemporary Indian Novel (Rutgers University Press, 2004) addressed the dialectical relations between emerging global markets and literatures reflexively marked as ‘postcolonial’, and Global Icons: Apertures to the Popular (Duke University Press, 2011) turned to visual popular culture as it constitutes the global. She is currently conducting research for a third monograph, The Unhomely Sense: Spectral Cinemas of Globalization, which tracks the relations between globalisation and cinematic/​ post-​cinematic images. Sam Gregory is a video producer, trainer and human rights advocate. He is Program Director at WITNESS (www.witness.org), which trains and supports people to use video in human rights advocacy. He has worked with human rights activists  –​particularly in Latin America and Asia, including the Philippines, Burma and Indonesia –​integrating video into campaigns on human rights issues. He was lead editor of WITNESS’s book Video for Change: A Guide for Advocacy and Activism (Pluto Press, 2005). He developed WITNESS’s Video Advocacy Institute, an intensive two-​week training programme, and has taught on human rights advocacy using video at the Harvard Kennedy School. Zeynep Devrim Gürsel is Assistant Professor of International Studies at Macalester College, USA. She received her PhD in Anthropology with a Designated Emphasis in Film Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Her book Image Brokers: Visualizing World News in the Age of Digital Circulation (University of California Press, 2016)  is based on fieldwork conducted in the United States, France and Turkey and focuses on the production, distribution and circulation of international news images and the changing cultures of photojournalism after the digital turn. Specifically it addresses the labour and infrastructures behind news images. Her next project investigates photography as a

xiii

Notes on contributors

tool of governmentality in the late Ottoman Empire. She has published in Cultural Anthropology, American Ethnologist, Anthropology Now and Jadaliyya and has contributed chapters to volumes on global news and journalism, photography and memory, and visual cultures of nongovernmental activism. Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski have been working worldwide to bring design and technology together with activism and campaigning for the past twenty years. They began working together in 2000 and founded the Tactical Technology Collective in 2003, an organisation working to build the skills of activists worldwide. In 2011 they co-​founded Tactical Studios, a creative design agency for advocacy and co-​authored the book Visualising Information for Advocacy (tacticaltech. org, 2013). Stephanie Hankey has an MA from the Royal College of Art and is an Ashoka Fellow. Marek Tuszynski is the producer and director of Exposing the Invisible , and previously co- founded the Second Hand Bank and the International Contemporary Art Network. Tom Holert is a Berlin-​based art historian, critic, curator and artist. A  former editor of Texte zur Kunst and Spex, Holert is honorary professor of art theory and cultural studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where, from 2008 to 2011, he held the chair of Epistemology and Methodology of Art Production and co-​coordinated the Center for Art/​Knowledge (CAK) and the PhD in Practice. Holert is a founding member, since 2012, of the Academy of the Arts of the World, Cologne. Charlotte Klonk is Professor of Art History and New Media at the Institute of Art and Visual History at Humboldt University Berlin, Germany. Previously, she was a research fellow at Christ Church, Oxford and lecturer in the History of Art Department at the University of Warwick. She has been a fellow at the Max-​ Planck-​Institute for the History of Science, at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Berlin and the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA. Her publications include, among others, Science and the Perception of Nature (Yale University Press, 1998), Spaces of Experience: Art Gallery Interiors from 1800–​2000 (Yale University Press, 2009) and, with Michael Hatt, Art History: A Critical Introduction to its Methods (Manchester University Press, 2005). She currently researches the history, role and dynamic of images in acts of terror, forthcoming as Terror: Wenn Bilder zu Waffen werden (S. Fischer Verlag, 2017). Timothy Lenoir is Distinguished Professor of Science and Technology Studies and of Cinema and Digital Media at University of California, Davis, USA. He has published several books and articles on the history of biomedical science from the nineteenth century to the present and on the roles of federal programmes and university–​industry collaborations in stimulating innovation in several areas of science, technology and medicine. Lenoir has published several recent studies on computational media and human technogenesis, including an extended essay, ‘Contemplating Singularity’, an edited e-​book, Neurofutures, and several essays in the area of game studies. With Luke Caldwell, Lenoir is co-​author of The Military–​ Entertainment Complex, forthcoming from Harvard University Press (2017).

xiii

xiv

xiv

Notes on contributors

Nicholas Mirzoeff is Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University, USA. He is one of the founders of the academic discipline of visual culture in such books as An Introduction to Visual Culture (Routledge, 1999/​2009) and, as editor, The Visual Culture Reader (Routledge, 1998/​2002/​ 2012). He is also deputy director of the International Association for Visual Culture and organised its first conference in 2012. His most recent book, The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality (Duke University Press, 2011), won the Anne Friedberg Award for Innovative Scholarship from the Society of Cinema and Media Studies in 2013. His book How to See the World (Penguin Books, 2015/​ 2016) is being translated into Chinese, Spanish and other languages. In 2012, he undertook a durational writing project called Occupy 2012. Every day, he posted online about the Occupy movement and its implications. He is currently producing an open source anthology of the project as an e-​book. W. J. T. Mitchell is Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago, USA. He is editor of the interdisciplinary journal Critical Inquiry, a quarterly devoted to critical theory in the arts and human sciences. A scholar and theorist of media, visual art and literature, Mitchell is associated with the emergent fields of visual culture and iconology (the study of images across the media). He is known especially for his work on the relations of visual and verbal representations in the context of social and political issues. Under his editorship, Critical Inquiry has published special issues on public art, psychoanalysis, pluralism, feminism, the sociology of literature, canons, race and identity, narrative, the politics of interpretation, postcolonial theory and many other topics. He has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Morey Prize in art history given by the College Art Association of America. Ben O’Loughlin is Professor of International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. He is co-​director of the New Political Communication Unit, which was launched in 2007 by Professor Andrew Chadwick. Before joining Royal Holloway in September 2006 he was a researcher on the ESRC New Security Challenges Programme. He completed a DPhil in Politics at New College, Oxford in October 2005 under the supervision of the political theorist Elizabeth Frazer and journalist Godfrey Hodgson. Volker Pantenburg is Assistant Professor for Visual Media with Emphasis on Research in Moving Images at the Faculty of Media of the Bauhaus University Weimar, Germany. Between 2010 and 2013 he was junior director of the Internationales Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie (IKKM) Weimar, where he directed a PhD programme on the History and Theory of Cinematographic Objects. His book publications include Film als Theorie:  Bildforschung bei Harun Farocki und Jean-​ Luc Godard (transcript, 2006), Minutentexte:  The Night of the Hunter (Brinkmann & Bose, 2006; co-​ editor), Ränder des Kinos: Godard –​ Wiseman –​ Benning –​ Costa (August, 2010),

xv

Notes on contributors

Screen Dynamics: Mapping the Borders of Cinema (Austrian Film Museum, 2012; co-​editor), Wörterbuch kinematografischer Objekte (August, 2014; co-​editor), Cinematographic Objects:  Things and Operations (August, 2015; editor) and Farocki/​Godard: Film as Theory (Amsterdam University Press, 2015). Verena Straub is an art historian, working at the collaborative research centre Affective Societies at Free University Berlin. Previously, she was research associate at the Cluster of Excellence Image Knowledge Gestaltung at Humboldt University Berlin (2013-2016). She studied in Toronto and Berlin where she received her master’s degree in Art and Visual History and is currently completing her PhD thesis on video testimonies of suicide bombers and their adaptation in contemporary art. Verena Straub also works as a freelance journalist, contributing to national daily papers and art magazines.

xv

newgenprepdf xvi

Acknowledgements

Many of the contributors to this volume gathered in Berlin in April 2014 to discuss image operations across different academic fields. Others have since joined and through their generous gifts of time and hard work advanced our thinking on the subject beyond measure. We would like to thank all our authors for their remarkable dedication, their inspiring insights and their patience. A book of this kind is impossible without support by many helpful minds and hands. The conference that started our exchange received generous funding from the Cluster of Excellence Image Knowledge Gestaltung of Humboldt University Berlin and was graciously hosted by the Institute for Cultural Inquiry thanks to Christoph Holzhey and Claudia Peppel. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to David Becker, Nina Bergeest, Dortje Fink, Stefanie Gerke, Felix Kirschbacher, Maria Kleinschmidt, Christina Landbrecht, Jana Schröpfer and Franziska Solte for helping to organise the conference and for their astute comments while editing the manuscript. Trevor Paglen inspired us all with his work as an artist and researcher, which he presented at the conference in a dialogue with Isabelle Graw. The conference also included a section on image operations in the field of medicine. Although the contributions did not in the end become part of the book (because of its focus on political conflict), we are deeply grateful to the chairs and speakers of this section: Matthias Bruhn, Lisa Cartwright, Michael Hagner, David Kaul, Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles and Sven Stollfuß. The two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript provided constructive criticism and helped us in clarifying our arguments and the overall structure of the book. Our students in Berlin and Mannheim also contributed valuable questions and ideas. Lastly, many thanks go to Manchester University Press for guidance and unwavering support throughout the publishing process.

1

Introduction Jens Eder and Charlotte Klonk

Consider three well-​known images. Each set in motion a particular kind of image operation that cannot be fully understood either by reconstructing the intentions of the producers or by considering single moments of its reception. Instead, a whole series of largely uncontrollable events came together to create a complex cluster of meanings that goes well beyond the images’ efficacy at any specific point in time. Image A: on 11 March 1993, the photographer Kevin Carter accompanied a United Nations humanitarian aid mission to South Sudan. He had thirty minutes to take photographs. While the adults of the village were busy collecting the delivery from the UN plane, Carter saw a small girl crouching on the ground –​too weak to move, too starved to notice him or the vulture directly behind her. He shot a photo and chased the vulture away. Two weeks later the photograph appeared in newspapers around the world. More than any other picture it seemed to capture in one iconic image the consequences of famine and despair in Africa. In 1994, Carter won the Pulitzer Prize. Yet soon a storm of protest gathered with unprecedented force in the mass media and on the Internet. What happened to the child, viewers asked. Why did the photographer not help her? Was his interest in shooting an iconic image stronger than his humanitarian impulse? The editors of the New York Times, where the picture first appeared on 26 March 1993, were forced to reply that the ultimate fate of the girl was not known, but that it was a rule for journalists in Sudan not to touch victims of the famine in order to avoid the risk of transmitting diseases. Three months after receiving the Pulitzer Prize for the photo, Carter committed suicide. In 2006, Dan Krauss shot the documentary film The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club, which was nominated for an Oscar in 2007, and the Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar conceived a video installation in 2006, The Sound of Silence, which also centred on the life and death of Carter in order to ask questions about the ethics of humanitarian photojournalism. The image had an impact on lives well beyond the tragedy that it depicts. Image B:  on 5 April 2010, WikiLeaks released a video that would make the whistle-​blower Internet platform famous. Titled Collateral Murder, it showed

2

2

Image operations

video footage from the targeting system of a US Apache helicopter during the Iraq War in 2007. In the incident, the Reuters journalist Namir Noor-​Eldeen, the driver Saeed Chmagh and others were assumed to be insurgents and killed in a public square in eastern Baghdad. What shocked viewers around the world was that the assault continued after a minivan with unarmed adults and children arrived on the scene and two of them attempted to aid the wounded. The cynical comments of the helicopter crew as they made their decision to shoot caused a wave of moral outrage. Yet the publication of the footage also opened a can of controversy. Some criticised WikiLeaks for selectively highlighting certain aspects of the military battle in Iraq, whereas others applauded it for showing the abysmal truth of a nation that went to war on the precept of holding the higher moral ground (Adams 2010). Since its publication the video has been shared widely and is perhaps the single most influential set of images that has brought counterinsurgent image propaganda into discredit. On the one hand, its footage was instrumental in the death of innocent people and the imprisonment of Private Bradley (Chelsea) Manning, who was charged with disclosing the video. On the other, the video contributed to turning the tide of the war in Iraq, and to this day WikiLeaks’ fame is connected with its disclosure. Image C: on Wednesday, 20 August 2014, a video appeared on YouTube that showed the execution of the American journalist James Foley by a member of the militant jihadist group, the so-​called Islamic State (IS). It appeared that Foley was executed somewhere in the desert in Syria. In the video he is seen in a long orange shirt reminiscent of the jumpsuits worn by detainees at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The use of this garb has been an iconographic sign of militant anger against the United States for at least a decade. In contrast to earlier videos of this kind, however, Foley’s execution is staged in the open air. A wide stretch of the bleached Syrian desert, met at the horizon by the expanse of the blue sky, serves as the background of this scene. Behind Foley stands his masked executioner dressed in black, holding a knife in his hand. The stark colours and striking mise-​en-​scène are reminiscent of the 1995 Hollywood thriller Seven starring Kevin Spacey. It demonstrates IS’s remarkable media affinity, evident in most of its propaganda material. After the White House confirmed its authenticity, the footage quickly spread through other social platforms on the Internet. In newsrooms around the world, however, it raised ethical questions. How to report the brutal murder without becoming a propaganda tool of the IS? How to preserve the dignity of the victim while acknowledging the undeserved cause of his death? Most newsrooms decided against broadcasting the video altogether, showing instead a single static image. Most even pixelated the face of the journalist. Although the footage was immediately banned from social media, and in the United Kingdom just watching constitutes a crime, it has been found and viewed well over a million times in Britain alone. Beheadings have always attracted viewers. Yet in this case the actual beheading cannot be seen. A significant cut in the video comes between the raising of the knife and the separation of the head. It

3

Introduction

is as if the murderers knew that a botched beheading would have the capacity to be counterproductive. None the less, as controlled and image-​conscious as the video appears to be, the reactions of the Western world were varied. On the one hand it stirred an unprecedented ethical debate that led to a fairly rigorous ban on its footage and a restrained, self-​conscious showing of its imagery not practised previously when beheading videos were issued. On the other hand it drew the US government into a war in which it had so far been reluctant to engage. Whereas previously the US military declared it was acting solely as invited aids to the Iraqi Army, after the tragedy it began to conduct self-​authorised air strikes in Syria in 2014. Allegedly, the video was intended to be a ‘Message to America’ (thus the title) to stop military interventions. Instead, it provoked a more concerted military action against IS than was ever planned. It is hard to say whether this response was a hidden aim of the producers of the video or whether their propaganda strategy backfired. Yet a man died in order for the video to come into existence. As is often the case in such no-​win situations, the speed of deeds escalates and the spiral of deadly events spins out of control. More beheading videos were issued in the weeks that followed and more nations, such as Canada, were drawn into the war at home and abroad. What do all three images have in common? Firstly, they all operate in areas of political conflict. The first stems from the field of humanitarian aid, the second from warfare and the third from the particular battle zone that insurgency and counterinsurgency produces. Secondly, they were all created with a specific purpose in mind, yet in each case their reception led to unforeseen and unintended effects. Thirdly, although all three images operated within the seemingly disembodied digital sphere of the Internet, their production and circulation led directly or indirectly to the physical death of real people. Finally, in all cases the images are the agens et movens in the unfolding of events. This confluence illustrates the central premise of this book: images not only have expressive or illustrative, representational or referential functions, but also augment and create significant events. In all cases they are crucial factors within the dynamics of political conflicts. In what follows, we will define the contours of the field of image operations, consider empirical, theoretical and ethical questions that arise from their function in war, insurgency and activism and reflect on the relation between images, media and agency. Finally, we will survey existing literature on this subject and point towards some blind spots, before summarising the content of this book.

Image operations: contours of the field Images are crucial to events in very different ways, only some of which have been explored so far. Well known, for example, is their power to create events by providing evidence. As several authors have argued, images not only depict news stories but are crucial to their legibility, illegibility and perceived reality

3

4

4

Image operations

(Barnhurst 1994; Azoulay 2008; Mirzoeff 2011). For many events to come to light, we require images. But, as Susan Sontag argued, if photographs are the only way to establish what has happened (as in the case of torture and other atrocities), then the evidence actually constitutes the phenomenon (Sontag 2003). Moreover, images, such as those produced in the prison of Abu Ghraib, are not only posterior but also anterior to events, and often the camera is an active, present participant in the scenario (Butler 2010; Nichols 2010). However, as the contributions to this book show, the causal effect of images is not exhausted by these two modes of operation. There are many different ways in which images are intentionally produced to have a specific impact. As their impact unfolds they become instrumental in a whole series of further events, both in the virtual and the physical world, that often go beyond the original intentions of their producers and sometimes even against them. It is in this sense that we understand the title of the book, Image Operations. While images are operative in many areas of life –​such as industrial production, navigation, surgery, advertising and pornography  –​political image operations seem to be of particular significance, as they regularly involve larger groups of people in fundamental ways. Political conflicts concern collective interests, values or goods, and they are fought out in ways that exceed usual forms of interaction and often threaten lives (Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research (HIIK) 2014). Today’s conflicts are mediatised: media amplify the volume, speed, reach and level of conflictual involvement, influence the representation, performance and development of events and are instrumental in the structure of power relations. They reduce, intensify or transform existing clashes and even generate new types of conflict (Eskjær, Hjarvard and Mortensen 2015, 8–​11). In short, they do not just reflect or represent conflicts but play performative and constitutive roles within them (Cottle 2006, 9). Images are central to this process and it is in situations of conflict that their operational role becomes particularly evident. This book focuses on the use and function of imagery in three areas: contemporary warfare, insurgency/​counterinsurgency and non-​violent political activism. Between them, we hope, the ground of contemporary image operations is sufficiently covered, so that a spectrum of uses, reuses and abuses will emerge that is salient enough to be transferred to other fields. All three areas are, of course, highly charged areas of contemporary life. Images of suffering may arouse compassion among the global public, but they may also contribute to ‘compassion fatigue’, depending on their form and the kind of reporting in which they are embedded (Hoskins and O’Loughlin 2010). Still and moving pictures increasingly function as ‘weapons of war’ (Sommer 2003; O’Loughlin 2011) in battles of ‘image warfare’ (Roger 2013), and violent images of political terrorism have moved centre stage in insurgency strategies (Bolt 2012, 259). In all three areas, image operations aim at relatively strong, direct effects. The persons represented or addressed are to be affected in vital ways; their bodies or behaviours are to be changed. This is true for people hit by drone strikes, for suffering documented by activists and for hostages

5

Introduction

decapitated in order to produce terrifying videos. The sociocultural impact of such images can hardly be overestimated, and it confronts us with urgent political, ethical and aesthetic questions. As we are writing, discussions of such images abound in relation to war, insurgency and counterinsurgency in Ukraine, Syria, Israel, Pakistan and Paris; and in relation to activism and non-​violent protest in Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt and the United States. It should be clear from the start, however, that our focus in this book is not primarily on the journalistic and informational functions of these images or on their cumulative consequences, which usually take centre stage in accounts of media culture or political visual communication. Instead, we concentrate on cases in which images are used in operations with relatively strong and direct effects. The image operations discussed in this book have serious consequences: beyond altering states of mind, they affect bodies, and often life or death is at stake. Currently, such operations are reflected in journalists’ reports about the sophisticated media department of IS (Becker 2014), about the ‘pornography of jihadism’ (Cottee 2014), about ‘the martyrs’ home movies’ (Ratnesar and Shannon 2002), about soldiers working on the US drone programme (Linebaugh 2013) and about ‘laborers who keep dick pics and beheadings out of your Facebook feed’ (Chen 2014). Although we have limited the contributions on image operations to three particular areas of political conflict, the scope of relevant imagery is still vast:  it includes images as diverse as photographs, videos, diagrams and interactive simulations, which may be generated by human hands, optical devices or computers and may be still or moving, concrete or abstract, analogue or digital, two-​dimensional or virtually three-​dimensional. More often than not, these images do not stand alone but are combined with other semiotic forms such as written text, speech or music. They form parts of multimodal texts, intertextual networks, referential chains (Latour 1999) and larger discourses contributing to the constitution of knowledge and power (Foucault 1966). Moreover, image operations of this kind are always also media operations. Images are created, stored and spread by different devices, ranging from posters to broadcast media and Internet platforms to specific technologies such as the Arrowhead targeting system of the helicopter that took the footage of the Collateral Murder video. The specific potential of different media for producing, manipulating, storing, spreading and interacting with images leads to different operations. Furthermore, the military, insurgent and activist operations performed with, through and by diverse images and media are equally multifarious. For instance, in war, images are used to monitor military actions or steer drones from afar. Yet sometimes the same images are also employed in public diplomacy and image warfare. In the context of insurgency, violent images spread fear and provoke opponents. At the same time, however, they may be used to recruit future martyrs. In political activism, images of suffering and injustice document, appeal to and trigger attention, emotion and collective behaviour. All of this takes place in the social context of various political relations and conflicts between communities, groups, institutions, organisations and states.

5

6

6

Image operations

So who or what is operating in image operations? As the contributions to this volume demonstrate, we are dealing with complex networks of agencies, which could be modelled according to actor-​network theory or other systemic approaches. Persons and organisations use images as tools with certain functions that conform to specific possibilities and constraints of different media in certain political situations. In an important sense, however, images themselves also act. They have a dynamic of their own, suggest certain operations and crucially shape them. Today, the circulation of images on the Internet and across media makes this dynamic more obvious than ever. Image operations have dramatically changed over the last two decades. Digital, mobile and social media facilitate the production and circulation of images. New kinds of images emerge:  digital composites, interactive simulations, augmented realities (Grau and Veigl 2011). Virtually every phone today is a camera connected to the Internet, and images are shared and spread through social media such as Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. Whereas non-​professionals share user-​generated images on the Internet, big players push their content across all available platforms. Digital technologies have fundamentally altered the ways in which governments, the military, activists, terrorists and citizens engage with images in political contexts. The traditional mass communication system seems to have given way to a ‘rhizomatic communication system of multi-​directional flows’, in which images are used as weapons by diverse actors in so-​called ‘re-​mediation battles’ (Roger 2013). The sheer number of available images is rapidly increasing; their global circulation allows for citizen journalism and worldwide witnessing (fostered by projects like those of our contributors Stephanie Hankey, Marek Tuszynski and Sam Gregory). Practices of reusing media images in new contexts thrive, as already described by Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin (Bolter and Grusin 1999). In this context, many image operations become much harder to control, and the specific force of images becomes even more important. The unforeseeable travels of images in the new media environment may be illustrated by a Reuters photo from 2001, which is briefly mentioned in Henry Jenkins’s book Convergence Culture (Jenkins 2006, 1–​ 2). It shows people in Bangladesh after the 9/​11 terrorist attacks protesting against the imminent invasion in Afghanistan and demonstrating their support for Osama bin Laden. The photo is part of a complex chain of images. The photograph shows a poster, which already re-​mediates several pictures of bin Laden. Strangely, however, these pictures include another figure: Bert, the grumpy character from the children’s television show Sesame Street. How could this happen? At first, Bert’s appearance went unnoticed even by Reuters, but soon he ended up in news reports by CNN and Fox. It turned out that the poster publisher downloaded the images from the Internet. Probably without knowing who Bert was, he took a collage of bin Laden and Bert which was originally part of a student’s website called ‘Bert Is Evil’, featuring the puppet engaged in sinister activities. The broadcast reports about the case led to judicial action by the producers of Sesame Street –​and to several imitations on the Internet. Jenkins mentions this case to illustrate how content migrates

7

Introduction

across media platforms and cultural boundaries. Yet it is also an example of an image operation gone awry. Osama bin Laden was an iconic figure, a ‘bio-​icon’ in the sense of Bishnupriya Ghosh (Ghosh 2011). Images of him were able to elicit strong emotions of hate and fear on the one hand, and admiration and satisfaction on the other. For a moment, the accidental appearance of Bert changed the emotional force of bin Laden’s image in the eyes of Western audiences to one of comic relief and smug feelings of superiority. We do not claim that image operations of this kind are historically unprecedented. Images have always been central to many areas of human activity, shaped their function and generated further images and events (Bredekamp 2010). Recently, however, scholarly and artistic attention has been drawn to the various ways in which modern image technologies have been inserted into crucial and sensitive stages of an operation that differ from their function in the past. In warfare, image technology has replaced the commander-​in-​chief in surveying the field of action. Today cameras are appended not only to missiles and bombing devices, but also to bombers and pilotless drones. Warfare –​as Harun Farocki’s four-​part film series Serious Games, discussed by Volker Pantenburg in this volume, demonstrates –​has now more than ever become an act of image operation. Insurgency and counterinsurgency also have a long history of operating by means of images. From the Anarchists in the nineteenth century to al-​Qaida, insurgent actions function by creating widespread media attention. They are in turn answered by equally determined counter-​imagery attacks circulated by the threatened states (Klonk 2013). Yet the way in which images today can be produced and widely published by nearly anybody, bypassing newsrooms and editorial boards, is unprecedented and produces additional difficulties and effects. This shift is true also for visual campaigns launched by political activists who seek to mobilise not only cash flows but also bodies on the ground and at the ballot box. Yet here too the Internet is not only an aid to the campaigns but sometimes also their foe (see Gregory, this volume).

Images, agency and ethics This book positions itself broadly in the field of visual studies, understood as an ‘interdiscipline’ (Mitchell 2005, 356):  a field of encounter that brings together insights from various existing disciplines dealing with visuality, such as art history, communication, film and media studies (Moriarty and Barbatsis 2005). The central aim is to explore and understand political image operations in their complex oscillations between physical, virtual and mental worlds, between clear purposes and unintended effects. The guiding questions can be broadly divided into three categories: (1) Empirical questions are concerned with the observation, description and explanation of concrete phenomena: how are specific images used in current

7

8

8

Image operations

contexts of war, insurgency and political activism? Who or what is operating:  what persons, institutions, mediums and images? Which features are central to the image? Who is using it, and why? How is it entangled in multimodal texts and discourses, inter-​visual relations, representational chains and political contexts? How are potentials of certain media involved, for instance mobile media or Internet platforms? What actual consequences and effects do the operations have? (2) Theoretical questions aim at more general insights:  what exactly are image operations, and what kinds of operations can be discerned? How do they develop? What are the general structures of the causal networks that give rise to them? Can images themselves be considered agents? What is their specific power? What do the different fields and kinds of image operations have in common, and what is specific to them? How have the uses of images changed over time, and how will they change in the future? (3)  Ethical questions involve various normative and practical concerns: how and according to what criteria can image operations be evaluated and criticised from an ethical point of view? How should we (the public) deal with the visibility or invisibility of violence, injustice, suffering and death? How can images be used to call attention to problems and to foster understanding and compassion without violating the dignity of the victims? Particularly within areas of political conflict, ethical dilemmas are paramount. In war and counterinsurgency, we are confronted with manipulated, sometimes lying and sometimes blatantly misleading images; with the visual guidance of drones facilitating deadly strikes and leading to massive ‘collateral damage’; with images of extreme violence that are also seen by children. In the field of insurgency, showing terror images in the mass media makes the attackers effective in the first place, fulfilling their goal of getting attention and spreading fear. Sometimes their public circulation may also violate the dignity of the victims. One of the biggest problems in political activism is that images of ongoing suffering and injustice in certain areas are lacking, and as a consequence there is little public help and support. Yet too many or the wrong kinds of images may also contribute to compassion fatigue. Moreover, in all three fields –​war, insurgency and activism –​images often oversimplify the complexities and systemic causes of a political situation. Others are polysemous and ambiguous, open to manipulation, agitation and controversial interpretations. Furthermore, a new strand of ethical questions is arising: how should we deal with images that are no longer made and interpreted by humans but by intelligent machines? There are no easy answers to these questions, yet their consideration is none the less urgent. Several practical decisions, for example, had to be made as we finalised this book: which images should be shown and which should not? Which are necessary in order to understand the events in question, and which are redundant or even dangerous? In the case of the images discussed at the beginning of this Introduction, we have decided against their illustration. Each shows victims at

9

Introduction

a desperate moment in their life. Exposing them further by displaying the images would seem to prolong their humiliation without adding to the debate that each event still requires. Not showing the images –​sometimes not even watching them, as one might with good reason choose not to do, as in the case of the beheading videos issued as propaganda –​does not mean not to reflect, think or talk about them. Moreover, there might come a time when memory has faded or new facts have come to light, when showing these images might again be necessary. Images are sometimes the only evidence of a crime committed and hence, just as in court cases, often indispensable for historical and critical discussions. There is no universal rule for showing or not showing images of this kind. Each image operation is different, and it matters, as the essays in this book demonstrate, not only how and where the image operation was set in motion, but also when and why it is discussed. However, to be able to solve the difficult ethical and practical problems at stake, we first require answers to the sets of empirical and theoretical questions raised above. We need to understand what image operations are, how they are structured and how they actually develop in particular contemporary political conflicts. Even more fundamentally, a clarification of the concept of ‘image’ that is itself in operation in this book is required. Its use in our term ‘image operations’ opens up the opportunity to map relations and flows between different kinds of ‘images’, which according to W. J. T. Mitchell’s taxonomy may be graphic (like still and moving pictures), optical (like mirrors), perceptual (like sensual impressions), mental (like ideas) or even verbal (like metaphors) (Mitchell 1987, 10). In this network of relations and flows between various kinds of images, our book focuses on visual pictures. Pictures in this narrower sense can be broadly understood as anything that visually represents or expresses something else without being written language. More specifically, pictures are alternatively defined as ‘meaningful surfaces’ (Flusser and Peternák 1988), as visual constellations made for the purpose of contemplation or communication (Doelker 2002, 187), as visual signs that convey meaning by isomorphic structures addressing perceptual faculties (Sachs-​ Hombach 2003, 95) or as visual formations used in common practices of showing (deixis), for instance in ‘image games’ (as a complement to Wittgenstein’s ‘language games’) or ‘image acts’ (as a complement to Searle’s ‘speech acts’) (Seja 2009; Bredekamp 2010; Schöttler 2013). Most of the arguments presented in this volume do not depend on any of these alternative definitions, but the possible characteristics are helpful in outlining the field of phenomena and in raising awareness of new developments. They also contain indications with regard to the specific powers of still and moving images. Their potentials are described differently in philosophical, psychological and social-​semiotic approaches (cf. Domke, Perlmutter, and Spratt 2002), but, provisionally, they may be grouped into at least three categories. Firstly, images have mimetic potentials: many images, especially ‘naturalistic’ and photographic ones, resemble in relevant ways the objects, persons or events they represent. Their patterns of light, form, texture, colour and their

9

10

10

Image operations

spatial relations, in moving images also motion and sound, are analogous to things or perceptions in reality (Anderson 1996; Grodal 1997, 19–​38). This potential makes the understanding of images  –​on a very basic level  –​comparatively fast and easy, and endows them with considerable power. Detailed images representing people or locations can provide visible evidence or steer drones to their targets. In political blogs, television and press reports, images usually get more spontaneous attention than the verbal text or soundtrack that accompanies them. The apparent ease of their basic comprehension allows for their rapid spread across language borders. Moving images draw audiences into the motions of represented worlds, and still images invite close examinations of frozen moments. Secondly, images have symbolic potentials:  they compress large amounts of information onto a relatively small surface that is scanned at a glance, and copied, archived and transferred with small effort. Images condense complex, abstract information, for instance about political situations or values, as well as networks of subtle associations into concise visual forms which are immediately grasped and easily remembered in ways that often seem self-​evident. In image operations, this potential can be used, for example, to visualise complicated issues and provide orientation (see Hankey and Tuszynski, this volume) or to create political icons (see Ghosh, this volume). But while images are semantically dense, they are also polysemous and often require additional verbal information (Sachs-​Hombach 2003, 24). Therefore, political images are regularly reappropriated, recontextualised and reinterpreted in highly controversial ways (see Gregory, this volume). Thirdly, images have specific aesthetic, sensual and affective potentials. This aspect has been discussed extensively by various authors and from different angles (Müller and Kappas 2011; Haußecker 2013; Eder forthcoming). In contrast to verbal communication, which evokes mostly processes of imagination, images offer concrete perceptions, specific aesthetic forms and visible expressions that often operate as rather immediate, strong triggers of spectators’ affects and emotions. But they also contain intricate metaphorical forms anchored in bodily experience and complex emotional meanings and messages (Fahlenbrach 2010). These sensual and affective potentials are crucial for political images to make an impact on minds and memories, causing controversies and motivating spectators to move into action. These connections inform several contributions in this volume, especially those of Bishnupriya Ghosh, Jens Eder, Tom Holert and Nicholas Mirzoeff. There is also, however, a fourth potential of images: their operational dimension. It comes to the fore in their interactive use in digital media. Examples include the surveillance facilities and computer simulations used by soldiers to steer drones or to train for battle (see Pantenburg, Lenoir and Caldwell, and Holert in this volume). Such images are changed by their users in real time, react to their actions, augment reality or simulate constant changes in the environment. They make it obvious that visual communication is not just a matter of transferring abstract meanings or aesthetic experience, but also a matter of bodily action.

11

Introduction

Images are always fundamentally related to other things. The characteristics of and relations between images, pictures, objects and media have been usefully summarised by Mitchell as follows: By ‘image’ I mean any likeness, figure, motif, or form that appears in some medium or other. By ‘object’ I mean the material support in or on which an image appears, or the material thing an image refers to or brings into view …. By ‘medium’ I mean the set of material practices that brings an image together with an object to produce a picture … understood as complex assemblages of virtual, material, and symbolic elements. (Mitchell 2005, xiii)

The WikiLeaks video Collateral Murder, for instance, is a moving image that shows a helicopter attack on civilians (a real event as referential object). It appears on individual computer screens (material objects) as the result of an interplay between various media technologies and practices: the helicopter’s analogue technology for recording the image, the military database accessible to the whistle-​blower, the Internet as a communication network, the various digital devices and platforms allowing the WikiLeaks team to process and spread the image data and, finally, users’ routers and computers all over the world. Confusingly, however, images and pictures themselves are sometimes also referred to as media. The term ‘media’ has many different meanings (see Mock 2006). Even if it is confined to ‘means of communication’, it may refer to (a) semiotic forms or texts, including images; (b)  material artefacts or technical devices of communication, including pictures or their material displays; and (c)  social organisations, systems or dispositifs such as television and print journalism. Depending on the context, we speak of media sometimes in the second, but mostly in the third sense. On the basis of this understanding, we can say that images are encountered in many different media, such as photographs, comics, films, television programmes, video games and Internet platforms. Marie-​Laure Ryan (Ryan 2005), Joshua Meyrowitz (Meyrowitz 2009) and others have emphasised that media differ with respect to their specific features, which in turn enable different forms of interacting and operating with images. Compare, for instance, print magazines and video platforms. The technical and organisational structures of these media are extremely different, and so are their semiotic modes, their conventions of production and reception, their communicative forms, their practices and use values. Printed magazines embed still images into written texts in a specific language; their authors are clearly identified, but it is difficult for the audience to ‘talk back’, to reuse or to share the images. In the newsroom, press photographs are carefully selected according to news values, aesthetic conventions, ethical norms and other pragmatic and economic considerations (see Gürsel, this volume). This set of practices is completely different from video platforms that circulate all kinds of user-​generated videos across borders (see Gregory, this volume; Christensen, this volume). As wide as the variety of images and their relations to media is, the range of operations that can be performed by (using) images is just as broad. As indicated above, images influence events in very different ways:  they generate knowledge

11

12

12

Image operations

that is acted upon, suggest actions by their affective or rhetorical force, and are directly used as practical tools. Being more or less public, they influence individuals, groups, or whole societies. All these various forms of impact may be exerted by the very same image circulating across different media and social spheres. Its repercussions lead to further emergent forms of causality, to effects of effects. Therefore, the causal field of image operations extends beyond the intentions of individual human agents who are ‘doing things with pictures’ (as in Kjørup 1974; cf. also Seja 2009; Schöttler 2013). Yet it also exceeds the immediate agency of images themselves (as in Bredekamp 2010). Three sites are crucial within this network of interactions: the image, its production and distribution, and its reception and appropriation (Rose 2012). Images are created and used in the cultural contexts of politics, art, journalism, science, commerce and private life (Müller and Kappas 2011), and their production and reception follow social constraints and conventions, identities and interests specific to their different contexts. Research in media production (see Hesmondhalgh 2010; Hjarvard 2012) indicates how producers create, record, select, manipulate, show, distribute and leak images. In doing so, they use various media and attempt to achieve such goals as representing, illustrating, entertaining, distracting, directing attention, protesting, providing evidence, explaining facts, simulating real-​world actions, creating imaginary worlds, symbolising the non-​perceptible, changing modes of perception, evoking affects and mobilising action. In political conflict, images are produced and used by the military, governments, corporations, NGOs, insurgent groups and individual witnesses. Their actions range from what computer science has termed image operations  –​the technical rendering of images  –​to military information operations defined as the integrated employment of electronic warfare (EW), computer network operations (CNO), psychological operations (PSYOP), military deception (MILDEC), and operations security (OPSEC) … to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decision making while protecting our own. (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 2014)

Several contributions in this volume consider the kinds of image operations in production. For instance, Bishnupriya Ghosh and Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski discuss the image work of activists; Zeynep Gürsel investigates conventions of photojournalism; Verena Straub analyses visual practices of suicide bombers; and Tom Holert examines military imagery, which is also the focus of Volker Pantenburg’s chapter on Harun Farocki’s work as an artist. On the site of reception and usage, however, audiences are not passive either (Nightingale 2011; Bruhn Jensen 2012). Viewers perform various operations: they look for and look at images; they interpret, store, sort, share, spread, compare and comment on them. They contemplate and learn from images, adore them as fetishes or icons, fight them in acts of iconoclasm, interact with digital images and transform them, thereby becoming producers. Often, the images travel across social spheres, and discrepancies between their environments spark an unexpected

13

Introduction

dynamic: a military video may be leaked to the public by whistle-​blowers, a painting created in the art world may be embedded in television news, a picture of Muhammad produced in a secular context may trigger anger in Islamic countries. In this volume, operations at the site of image reception and appropriation are examined by W. J. T. Mitchell, Christian Christensen, Charlotte Klonk and Sam Gregory. All contributions, however, acknowledge that image operations are not confined to the sites of production and reception alone. There are not only operations on images, with images and through images, but also operations by images. As stated earlier, it is theoretically productive to think of images as agents, as having a life of their own, a specific momentum and dynamic, making certain operations possible in the first place, while shaping and constraining others. The visual image is both ‘instrument and agency: the image as a tool for manipulation on the one hand, and as an apparently autonomous source of its own purposes and meanings on the other’ (Mitchell 2005, 351). Considered from this perspective, images not only trigger certain physical and mental processes of perception and reaction in their spectators; they also function ‘as “go-​betweens” in social transactions’ (351) and contribute to the ‘visual construction of the social field’ (345). They influence the development of social discourses, the distribution of knowledge and power and the formation of social organisations. All in all, they set agendas, establish para-​social relationships, form identities, cultivate collective beliefs and stereotypes, mobilise political movements and effect people physically.

Image operations: an interdisciplinary project Image operations as defined above constitute a fairly new subject of research. Although it lies at the intersection of some major fields of study (Moriarty and Barbatsis 2005), research has been rather scarce and scattered across several disciplines. This situation is currently changing, however, and the following can only provide a tentative survey of a rapidly growing field. Within art history and visual studies, Nicholas Mirzoeff was among the first to lay the groundwork for research on contemporary political imagery (Mirzoeff 1999), followed, among others, by O. K. Werckmeister (Werckmeister 2005) with an investigation of images after 9/​11, Manon Slome and Joshua Simon on the ‘aesthetics of terror’ (Slome and Simon 2009), Horst Bredekamp on image acts from ancient times to today’s warfare (Bredekamp 2010), W. J. T. Mitchell on the metaphorical force of images before and after 9/​11 (Mitchell 2011), Dora Apel on their contemporary impact and influence in warfare (Apel 2012) and Gerhard Paul on the role and function of media icons in the twentieth and twenty-​first centuries (Paul 2013) (see also Elkins in this volume). Research in film studies builds on sophisticated methods of audiovisual analysis (e.g. Bordwell and Thompson 2008) and on a tradition of analysing political documentaries (e.g. Chanan 2007; Nichols 2010) as well as cinematic operations

13

14

14

Image operations

in times of war and conflict (e.g. Chapman 2008; Kappelhoff et al. 2014). Yet only hesitantly have researchers begun to engage with other audiovisual forms like web videos. Media and cultural studies cover a broader field. Since Stuart Hall’s classic study on news photographs in conflict (Hall 1981) and Paul Virilio’s early book on the relations between media and war (Virilio 1989), scholars have turned to the question of how war and insurgency are staged as media spectacles (e.g. Giroux 2007; Graitl 2011; Kellner 2012) and have examined the visual strategies of political activism (e.g. Fahlenbrach, Sivertsen and Werenskjold 2014). Several take a critical perspective (e.g. Ludes, Nöth and Fahlenbrach 2014) or consider the ethics of images (e.g. Chouliaraki and Blaagaard 2013). Bishnupriya Ghosh has laid the theoretical foundations for understanding iconic figures as social influences (Ghosh 2011), whereas others have studied icons from a semiotic perspective (Cambre 2015). Recently, authors have begun to examine ‘camera-​ witnessing’ and other visual practices in social networks and mobile media (e.g. Andén-​Papadopoulos 2014). Although political communication is a central research area of the social sciences (Schulz 2008), there has been a considerable reluctance to address the role of images. Many studies investigate political image production in relation to censorship, representations of violence or the quantitative distribution of pictures in the mass media (e.g. Al Jabiri et al. 2011; De Franco 2012; Wolfsfeld 1997). Yet these studies usually do not pay much attention to the form or force of images. A more recent strand of research, however, integrates interdisciplinary perspectives on visual communication, drawing on art history and media studies (see Müller 2007; Griffin 2008; Geise 2011; Lobinger 2012). Researchers have examined images of death in the news (Zelizer 2010), pictures in crisis reports (Knieper and Müller 2005; Grittmann, Neverla and Ammann 2008), uses of terror images (Beuthner et  al. 2003; Haußecker 2013), iconic images in conflict (Perlmutter 1998; Hariman and Lucaites 2007) and repercussions of the infamous Abu Ghraib photographs (Binder 2013). Some publications are also mandated by government authorities. The German Federal Office of Criminal Investigation, for example, co-​financed a study on the ‘psychological effects of right-​wing and Islamic extremist Internet videos’ (Rieger, Frischlich and Bente 2013). In political science, Roland Bleiker detected an ‘aesthetic turn’ at the beginning of the twenty-​first century (Bleiker 2001). Since then, political scientists have examined ‘images of security’ in international relations (Croft 2006) as well as connections between images, media and war (e.g. Hoskins and O’Loughlin 2010). Recent studies of the ‘image politics’ in the Middle East (Khatib 2012) or the ‘image warfare in the war on terror’ (Roger 2013) have investigated visual conflicts on the Internet and in social media. With a few exceptions (e.g. Nathanson and Zuev 2013), work in sociology has so far focused on the visualisation of conflict in the news (see Parry 2010) and on the uses of images in social movements and political activism (see Doerr, Mattoni and Teune 2015). Moreover, political activists themselves have been crucial in

15

Introduction

the reflection of their own image operations (e.g. Gregory et al. 2005). By including them in this book, we follow in the footsteps of Meg McLagan and Yates McKee’s excellent interdisciplinary volume Sensible Politics: The Visual Culture of Nongovernmental Activism (McLagan and McKee 2012). Generally, it can be said that until recently research has concentrated on a few select areas, predominantly on public images in the news, in propaganda and persuasion, in political art and in social movements. Only a small number of authors have so far examined image operations in other areas like the military and even fewer have altogether taken cross-​disciplinary perspectives. Scholars in the humanities have rarely analysed factual image operations in political conflicts and have tended to focus on exemplary images, their form and cultural context. The social sciences, in contrast, have by and large examined social practices of image usage, yet neglected the aesthetic force of visuals. Moreover, different disciplines tend to focus on different nodes of the agential networks:  art history and film studies emphasise the intrinsic power of images, whereas media studies points to the importance of media and the social sciences stress the agency of human actors and institutions. This book is an attempt to bring the different disciplines and discussions together. Each contributes in specific ways to the complexity of understanding image operations in war, insurgency and activism. Although the different approaches are consciously maintained within this volume, as they meet they complement each other and a broader picture emerges. The first part of the book addresses different levels of image operations ranging from metaphorical usage in world politics to everyday practices of arranging pictures on a desktop or refrigerator door. Investigating the connection between images and political thought, Ben O’Loughlin discusses the role of recurring conceptual metaphors such as family kinship and the moving body in international politics. He argues that ‘the practice of international relations is the enactment and realisation of a few images’, and asks how we can, if at all, escape them. It is important, he emphasises, that we attend to the way in which these images are mediated in the news. By conducting fieldwork among image brokers in New  York, Istanbul and elsewhere, Zeynep Gürsel pursued precisely this question. She demonstrates that the way in which political conflicts are configured in the minds of the decision-​makers informs their choices of images even when the subject at stake is not directly related to those conflicts. Moreover, her examples show how the image selection process in turn reinforces certain world views and not others. Volker Pantenburg shifts the focus from such deliberate human acts to ‘operational images’ processed by machines. He discusses the work of filmmaker and video artist Harun Farocki, who scrutinised operational images in film series like Eye/​Machine (2000–​3). Building on Farocki’s work, Pantenburg distinguishes between three senses of ‘operationality’: images serve as elements of purely automatic processes, as interfaces to operate machines and as triggers of human action. In contrast to such ‘cold’ functions of images, Jens Eder explores their ‘hot’ affective power. In particular, he looks at image operations that mobilise political actions by evoking intense emotions in their audiences. Drawing on research from media

15

16

16

Image operations

studies and the social sciences, he suggests a theoretical framework for analysing such affective operations and illustrates it with case studies of political videos on the Internet. Finally, W.  J. T.  Mitchell reflects on everyday and scholarly image operations that lie behind the production of knowledge. Taking Aby Warburg’s project of a universal iconology as a starting point, he claims that the accretion of images, found on refrigerator doors as well as on the desktops of scholars preparing a talk, may generate either a grid of orderly associations or a vertiginous vortex of symptomatic traces. He concludes that the line between scientific certainty and conjectural knowledge is thin and always in danger of dissolution. The second part of the book is concerned with specific image operations in warfare, insurgency and counterinsurgency. Timothy Lenoir and Luke Caldwell examine how human agency and control is refracted and distributed in new image technologies developed by the military. Video games for recruitment, cyberwar interfaces, battlefield simulations and pilots’ helmet-​mounted displays tie human actors into visual networked environments that take on an agency of their own, merging the actual and the virtual. Tom Holert continues this discussion by analysing the development of networked remote sensory devices and drones in the military. He argues that, in the absence of imagery showing them in operation, we should take the promotional visualisations of drones seriously. Analysing the iconography of publicised images, he comes to the conclusion that the fetishised vision of clean warfare requires counteractions, such as the #NotABugSplat campaign. Christian Christensen’s contribution also concentrates on military and counter-​ military imagery, but focuses on new visual practices that emerge on video-​sharing platforms on the Internet. Comparing the use of YouTube by US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan with the circulation of the WikiLeaks video Collateral Murder in the public domain after 2010, he demonstrates that for all of the images available on YouTube, ‘virtually none have led to a substantive debate on the nature of the US/​UK intervention in Iraq’, because they have by and large been ignored by the mainstream media. Charlotte Klonk then turns to images of acts of terror and provides an overview of the pictorial norms that have governed their reporting in Western media since the late nineteenth century. In view of the recent proliferation of amateur videos in the wake of an attack, she considers the ethical implications of such images and argues that we need to distinguish between images that need to be seen and those that should actively be resisted. Verena Straub continues the discussion of images related to acts of terror by analysing videotaped testimonies of suicide bombers. She argues that they function simultaneously as a death sentence and as an opportunity for the assassins to manufacture a new identity as immortal martyrs. By focusing in particular on the testimonies of Palestinian female suicide bombers, she shows that in the light of the heterogeneous image of the female martyr that emerges from them, we need to revise Western views of Muslim womanhood. Ariella Azoulay concludes this part by revising received notions of the archive and the image operations that they allow or disallow. By insisting on her right to access and make public photographs in the archive of the

17

Introduction

International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, she herself performed an image operation that resisted the obliteration of violent displacement. Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski’s contribution opens the third part, on image activism and political movements. They look at how artists and activists from different countries are utilising various digital technologies to create, spread, compare and analyse still and moving images in order to investigate political conflicts. Although these image operations do not solve problems, they succeed, the authors argue, in posing new questions and opening up new possibilities for image activism. As Sam Gregory, however, makes clear in his contribution, authenticity is an important issue when it comes to activists’ reporting of human rights violations. By concentrating on shared videos from Syria, Egypt, Burma and the United States, he alerts us to the dangers of distant witnessing and argues that the ethical implications of live reporting cannot be overestimated. Bishnupriya Ghosh draws our attention to another kind of image mobilisation that works more directly by way of the body. Focusing on Irom Sharmila, an iconic hunger striker protesting against human rights violations in Manipur, she argues that the formation of popular movements against governmental violence relies fundamentally on the production of ‘bio-​icons’ and their images. Drawing on Charles Sanders Peirce, Marie-​José Mondzain and others, Ghosh makes the point that at the centre of such mobilisation lies a particular kind of visuality that cannot be disassociated from the bodies of subjects and observers. Nicholas Mirzoeff rounds off this part by providing a historical overview of what he calls the ‘visual commons’ of photography –​a way to resist hegemonic vision. From the first use of photography in the Americas in 1832 to the Occupy Wall Street movement, the right to look and the right to be seen must, he argues, be asserted and actively claimed. Finally, James Elkins provides an afterthought to the contributions in this volume, concentrating on five issues: the development of a research agenda; the relation between politics and aesthetics; the interconnections between images and operations; the specific role of visuality; and the awareness of conflicting perspectives on political images. In its entirety this book aims to lay the groundwork for future research on image operations in contemporary political life. Balancing theoretical reflections and concrete case studies from different disciplinary perspectives, an attempt has been made to give due attention to both the images themselves and their practical, social, cultural, and medial environments. Our hope is that this book will stimulate an interdisciplinary exchange about crucial aspects of visual cultures and contribute to a critical understanding of how images operate in war, insurgency and political protest.

References Adams, Richard. 2010. ‘Wikileaks: Reaction to the Collateral Murder Video.’ Blog entry. The Guardian. Accessed 23 December 2014. www.theguardian.com/​world/​richard-​adams-​ blog/​2010/​apr/​08/​wikileaks-​collateral-​murder-​video-​iraq.

17

18

18

Image operations Al Jabiri, Ishtar, Jürgen Gerhards, Mike S. Schäfer and Juliane Seifert. 2011. Terrorismus im Fernsehen:  Formate, Inhalte und Emotionen in westlichen und arabischen Sendern. Wiesbaden: VS. Andén-​Papadopoulos, Kari. 2014. ‘Citizen Camera-​Witnessing:  Crisis Testimony in the Age of “Mediated Mass Self-​Communication”.’ New Media and Society May 1: 117–​33. Anderson, Joseph. 1996. The Reality of Illusion: An Ecological Approach to Cognitive Film Theory. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Apel, Dora. 2012. War Culture and the Contest of Images. New Brunswick, NJ:  Rutgers University Press. Azoulay, Ariella. 2008. The Civil Contract of Photography. New York: Zone Books. Barnhurst, Kevin G. 1994. Seeing the Newspaper. New York: St. Martin’s. Becker, Olivia. 2014. ‘ISIS Has a Really Slick and Sophisticated Media Department.’ Vice News, 12 July 2014. Accessed 14 June 2016. https://​news.vice.com/​article/​ isis-​has-​a-​really-​slick-​and-​sophisticated-​media-​department. Beuthner, Michael, Joachim Buttler, Sandra Fröhlich, Irene Neverla and Stephan A. Weichert, eds. 2003. Bilder des Terrors –​Terror der Bilder? Cologne: von Halem. Binder, Werner. 2013. Abu Ghraib und die Folgen. Bielefeld: transcript. Bleiker, Roland. 2001. ‘The Aesthetic Turn in International Political Theory.’ Millennium –​ Journal of International Studies 30: 509–​53. Bolt, Neville. 2012. The Violent Image: Insurgent Propaganda and the New Revolutionaries. New York: Columbia University Press. Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. 1999. Remediation:  Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. 2008. Film Art:  An Introduction, 8th edition. New York: McGraw-​Hill. Bredekamp, Horst. 2010. Theorie des Bildakts. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Bruhn Jensen, Klaus. 2012. ‘Media Reception:  Qualitative Traditions.’ In A Handbook of Media and Communication Research:  Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies, 2nd edition, edited by Klaus Bruhn Jensen, 171–​85. London: Routledge. Butler, Judith. 2010. ‘Torture and the Ethics of Photography:  Thinking with Sontag.’ In Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?, 63–​100. London: Verso. Cambre, Maria-​ Carolina. 2015. The Semiotics of Che Guevara:  Affective Gateways. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ed. 2014. Joint Publication 3–​13: Information Operations. Accessed 28 December 2014. www.dtic.mil/​doctrine/​new_​pubs/​jp3_​13.pdf. Chanan, Michael. 2007. Politics of Documentary. London: BFI. Chapman, James. 2008. War and Film. London: Reaktion. Chen, Adrian. 2014. ‘The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of Your Facebook Feed.’ Wired, 23 October 2014. Accessed 14 June 2014. www.wired.com/​2014/​ 10/​content-​moderation/​. Chouliaraki, Lilie, and Bolette B. Blaagaard, eds. 2013. The Ethics of Images. Special Issue of Visual Communication 12(3). Cottee, Simon. 2014. ‘The Pornography of Jihadism.’ The Atlantic, 12 September 2014. Accessed 26 February 2015. http://​m.theatlantic.com/​international/​archive/​2014/​09/​ isis-​jihadist-​propaganda-​videos-​porn/​380117/​. Cottle, Simon. 2006. Mediatized Conflict:  Developments in Media and Conflict Studies. Maidenhead; New York: Open University Press.

19

Introduction Croft, Stuart. 2006. ‘Images and Imaginings of Security.’ International Relations 20(4): 387–​91. De Franco, Chiara. 2012. Media Power and the Transformation of War. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Doelker, Christian. 2002. Ein Bild ist mehr als ein Bild: Visuelle Kompetenz in der Multimedia-​ Gesellschaft. Stuttgart: Klett-​Cotta. Doerr, Nicole, Alice Mattoni and Simon Teune. 2015. ‘Toward a Visual Analysis of Social Movements, Conflict, and Political Mobilization.’ Advances in the Visual Analysis of Social Movements 35:  xi–​xxvi. Published online:  http://​dx.doi.org/​10.1108/​ S0163-​786X(2013)0000035004. Domke, David, David Perlmutter and Meg Spratt. 2002. ‘The Primes of our Times? An Examination of the “Power” of Visual Images.’ Journalism 3(2): 131–​59. Eder, Jens. Forthcoming. Affekt und Emotion in audiovisuellen Medien. Marburg: Schüren. Eskjær, Mikkel Fugl, Stig Hjarvard and Mette Mortensen, eds. 2015. The Dynamics of Mediatized Conflicts. New York: Peter Lang. Fahlenbrach, Kathrin. 2010. Audiovisuelle Metaphern:  Zur Körper-​und Affektästhetik in Film und Fernsehen. Marburg: Schüren. Fahlenbrach, Kathrin, Erling Sivertsen and Rolf Werenskjold, eds. 2014. Media and Revolt: Strategies and Performances from the 1960s to the Present. New York: Berghahn. Flusser, Vilém, and Miklós Peternák. 1988. ‘Vilém Flusser interviewed by Miklós Peternák –​ I.’ Intersubjectivity: Media Metaphors, Play and Provocation. Accessed 27 December 2014. www.c3.hu/​events/​97/​flusser/​participantstext/​miklos-​interview.html. Foucault, Michel. 1966. Les mots et les choses. Paris: Gallimard. Geise, Stephanie. 2011. Vision That Matters:  Die Funktions-​und Wirkungslogik visueller politischer Kommunikation am Beispiel des Wahlplakats. Wiesbaden: Springer. Ghosh, Bishnupriya. 2011. Global Icons:  Apertures to the Popular. Durham, NC:  Duke University Press. Giroux, Henry A. 2007. ‘Beyond the Spectacle of Terrorism:  Rethinking Politics in the Society of the Image.’ Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination 2: 17–​51. Graitl, Lorenz. 2011. Sterben als Spektakel. Berlin: Springer Verlag. Grau, Oliver, and Thomas Veigl, eds. 2011. Imagery in the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gregory, Sam, Gillian Caldwell, Ronit Avni and Thomas Harding, eds. 2005. Video for Change: A Guide for Advocacy and Activism. London: Pluto Press. Griffin, Michael. 2008. ‘Visual Communication.’ In International Encyclopedia of Communication, vol. 11, edited by Wolfgang Donsbach, 5304–​16. Oxford: Blackwell. Grittmann, Elke, Irene Neverla and Ilona Ammann. 2008. ‘Ikonen der Kriegs-​und Krisenfotografie.’ In Global, lokal, digital  –​Fotojournalismus heute, edited by Elke Grittmann, Irene Neverla and Ilona Ammann, 296–​325. Cologne: von Halem. Grodal, Torben. 1997. Moving Pictures:  A  New Theory of Film Genres, Feelings, and Cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hariman, Robert, and John Louis Lucaites. 2007. No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hall, Stuart. 1981. ‘The Determination of News Photographs.’ In The Manufacture of News: Social Problems, Deviance and the Mass Media, edited by Stanley Cohen and Jock Young, 227–​43. London: Constable. Haußecker, Nicole. 2013. Terrorismusberichterstattung in Fernsehnachrichten:  Visuelles Framing und emotionale Reaktionen. Baden-​Baden: Nomos.

19

20

20

Image operations Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research (HIIK), ed. 2014. Conflict Barometer 2013. Accessed 26 February 2015. http://​hiik.de/​de/​downloads/​data/​downloads_​2013/​ConflictBarometer2013.pdf. Hesmondhalgh, David. 2010. ‘Media Industry Studies, Media Production Studies.’ In Media and Society, 5th edition, edited by James Curran, 145–​63. London: Arnold. Hjarvard, Stig. 2012. ‘The Study of News Production.’ In A Handbook of Media and Communication Research, 2nd edition, edited by Klaus Bruhn Jensen, 87–​ 105. London: Routledge. Hoskins, Andrew, and Ben O’Loughlin. 2010. War and Media: The Emergence of Diffused War. Cambridge: Polity Press. Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture:  Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. Kappelhoff, Hermann et  al. 2014. ‘Mobilization of Emotions in War Films.’ Database. Accessed 28 February 2015. www.empirische-​medienaesthetik.fu-​berlin.de/​en/​emaex-​ system/​affektdatenmatrix/​index.html. Kellner, Douglas. 2012. Media Spectacle and Insurrection 2011: From the Arab Uprisings to Occupy Everywhere. London: Bloomsbury. Khatib, Lina. 2012. Image Politics in the Middle East:  The Role of the Visual in Political Struggle. London: I.B. Tauris. Kjørup, Søren. 1974. ‘George Inness and the Battle at Hastings, or Doing Things with Pictures.’ The Monist 58(2): 216–​35. Klonk, Charlotte. 2013. ‘Macht der Bilder –​Attentate als Medienereignis.’ Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 45(46): 30–​9. Knieper, Thomas, and Marion G. Müller, eds. 2005. War Visions: Bildkommunikation und Krieg. Cologne: von Halem. Latour, Bruno. 1999. ‘Circulating Reference: Sampling the Soil in the Amazon Forest.’ In Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies, 24–​79. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Linebaugh, Heather. 2013. ‘ “I Worked on the US Drone Program: The Public Should Know What Really Goes On”.’ The Guardian, 29 December 2013. Accessed 14 June 2014. www. theguardian.com/​commentisfree/​2013/​dec/​29/​drones-​us-​military. Lobinger, Katharina. 2012. Visuelle Kommunikationsforschung:  Medienbilder als Herausforderung für die Kommunikations-​und Medienwissenschaft. Wiesbaden: Springer. Ludes, Peter, Winfried Nöth and Kathrin Fahlenbrach. 2014. ‘Critical Visual Theory  –​ Introduction.’ tripleC 12(1): 202–​13. McLagan, Meg, and Yates McKee, eds. 2012. Sensible Politics:  The Visual Culture of Nongovernmental Activism. New York: Zone Books. Meyrowitz, Joshua. 2009. ‘Medium Theory.” In The Sage Handbook of Media Processes and Effects, edited by Robin L. Nabi and Mary Beth Oliver, 517–​30. London: Sage. Mirzoeff, Nicholas. 1999. An Introduction to Visual Culture. London: Routledge. Mirzoeff, Nicholas. 2011. The Right to Look:  A  Counterhistory of Visuality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Mitchell, W. J.  T. 1987. ‘What Is an Image?’ In Iconology:  Image, Text, Ideology, 7–​45. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mitchell, W. J. T. 2005. What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

21

Introduction Mitchell, W. J.  T. 2011. Cloning Terror:  The War of Images, 9/​11 to the Present. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mock, Thomas. 2006. ‘Was ist ein Medium?’ Publizistik 51(2): 183–​200. Moriarty, Sandra, and Gretchen Barbatsis. 2005. ‘Introduction.’ In Handbook of Visual Communication, edited by Ken Smith, Sandra Moriarty, Gretchen Barbatsis and Keith Kenney, xi–​xxii. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Müller, Marion G. 2007. ‘What is Visual Communication? Past and Future of an Emerging Field of Communication Research.’ Studies in Communication Sciences 7(2): 7–​34. Müller, Marion G., and Arvid Kappas. 2011. ‘Visual Emotions –​Emotional Visuals: Emotions, Pathos Formulae, and Their Relevance for Communication Research.’ In The Routledge Handbook of Emotions and Mass Media, edited by Katrin Döveling, Christian von Scheve and Elly A. Konijn, 310–​31. London: Routledge. Nathansohn, Regev, and Denis Zuev, eds. 2013. Sociology of the Visual Sphere. New York: Routledge. Nichols, Bill. 2010. Engaging Cinema. London: W. W. Norton. Nightingale, Virginia, ed. 2011. The Handbook of Media Audiences. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-​Blackwell. O’Loughlin, Ben. 2011. ‘Images as Weapons of War:  Representation, Mediation and Interpretation.’ Review of International Studies 37: 71–​91. Parry, Katy. 2010. ‘Media Visualisation of Conflict: Studying News Imagery in 21st Century Wars.’ Sociology Compass 4(7): 417–​29. Paul, Gerhard. 2013. BilderMacht: Studien zur Visual History des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts. Göttingen: Wallstein. Perlmutter, David D. 1998. Photojournalism and Foreign Policy:  Icons of Outrage in International Crises. Westport, CT: Praeger. Ratnesar, Romesh, and Elaine Shannon. 2002. ‘The Martyrs’ Home Movies.’ Time International, South Pacific Edition, issue 3, 28 January, 24. Rieger, Diana, Lena Frischlich and Gary Bente. 2013. Propaganda 2.0: Psychological Effects of Right-​Wing and Islamic Extremist Internet Videos. Cologne: Luchterhand. Roger, Nathan. 2013. Image Warfare in the War on Terror. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Rose, Gillian. 2012. Visual Methodologies, 2nd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Ryan, Marie-​Laure. 2005. ‘Media and Narrative.’ In Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, edited by David Herman, Manfred Jahn and Marie-​ Laure Ryan, 288–​ 92. London: Routledge. Sachs-​Hombach, Klaus. 2003. Das Bild als kommunikatives Medium: Elemente einer allgemeinen Bildwissenschaft. Cologne: Halem. Schöttler, Tobias. 2013. ‘Bildhandeln.’ Glossar der Bildphilosophie. Accessed 23 November 2015. www.gib.uni-​tuebingen.de/​netzwerk/​glossar/​index.php?title=Bildhandeln. Schulz, Winfried. 2008. ‘Political Communication.’ In The International Encyclopedia of Communication, vol. 8, edited by Wolfgang Donsbach, 3671–​82. Oxford: Blackwell. Seja, Silvia. 2009. Handlungstheorien des Bildes. Cologne: von Halem. Slome, Manon, and Joshua Simon, eds. 2009. The Aesthetics of Terror. New York: Charta. Sommer, Steffen. 2003. The Medium Is the Missile: Video als Mittel der globalen Kriegsführung. Münster: LIT. Sontag, Susan. 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Virilio, Paul. 1989. War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception. London: Verso.

21

22

22

Image operations Werckmeister, Otto Karl. 2005. Der Medusa-​ Effekt:  Politische Strategien seit dem 11. September 2001. Berlin: form und zweck. Wolfsfeld, Gadi. 1997. Media and Political Conflict:  News from the Middle East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zelizer, Barbie. 2010. About to Die:  How News Images Move the Public. Oxford:  Oxford University Press.

23

Part I

Using images: metaphors, processes, affects

24

25

Images of the world, images of conflict

1

Ben O’Loughlin1

In the short story ‘The Fearful Sphere of Pascal’, Borges wrote, ‘It may be that universal history is the history of a few metaphors’ (Borges 2007, 189). The history of world politics certainly seems marked by a few recurring concepts and metaphors:  the universal and the particular, the inside and the outside, the balance of power and the ideal of symmetry and actuality of chaos. If these metaphors are the basis for how we understand world politics today, then they also shape how we remember past events in world politics and anticipate its future. Does international relations become the repetition of a few types of events? Not quite; it becomes a series of events understood through the same metaphors, thereby reaffirming the notion such events are normal, in turn naturalising those kinds of event and contributing to their repetition. The few metaphors discussed here are international relations as a family and international relations as made up of bodies in movement. Humanity or nation-​ states understood through kinship –​the ‘Family of Man’ (Lakoff and Turner 1999, 317) –​comprise a community of members which new states and peoples are born into and supported while others are rejected, ignored or punished. In modernity, the body became most prominently assumed to be the sovereign nation-​state. I ask how those metaphors function and in what way these lead to violence. Certainly, kinship assumes an in-​and out-​group and the body in movement assumes action. But these metaphors do not float freely and dictate behaviour autonomously of their mediation. While commonsense metaphorical understandings of international relations become manifest in events and their visual representation, perhaps the creation of new visualities could generate new metaphors and alternate ways of thinking and doing international relations. Does the changing mediation of these metaphors affect their function and whether they lead to violence? A changing media ecology offers new structures and logics of world making. News organisations’ claims to cover ‘the world’ make that world through repetitious representations that form audiences’ imaginations of geography, history and humanity (Gürsel, this volume). The digital archive means

26

26

Image operations

that news organisations, cultural institutions and even individuals must organise data and expression through the grid or the vortex (Mitchell, this volume); tensions between database and narrative and between mass-​and self-​communication could lead to new ways of expressing old metaphors of kinship and body, or create conditions for conceptual novelty and invention. In Gürsel’s terms (Gürsel, this volume), do these changing medial ‘infrastructures of worldmaking’ offer opportunities to move to an alternative few metaphors? Conceptual metaphors involve communication in which one conceptual domain is expressed and understood in terms of another (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Lakoff and Turner 1999). International relations is often taken to operate like a family; the movement of an actor is understood as like that of a body moving through space. These metaphors are meaningful because they are embodied: we know from an early age how it feels to move from point A to point B or to feel welcomed or be estranged from a parent figure or a group. To express one thing in terms of those processes thus evokes universal meaning; the sense and structural logics that stem from these metaphors is not purely linguistic (see Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999; Steen 2011; Gavins 2014). Critiques of media coverage of war or conflict as biased, militaristic and so on make little headway because they fail to address the conditions of political sensemaking that make those perspectives seem normal to so many people. Through the axes of the political and the medial, this chapter examines a few metaphors to address those processes through which the intelligibility of international relations is formed. The first half of this chapter introduces those metaphors, while the second addresses the media representations and regimes that visualise those metaphors and asks whether the medial can feed back and shape political thought. Take, for example, the sovereign body floating in a sea of anarchy. For successive thinkers the state or sovereign is understood as a body in ungoverned space, managing its relations with other bodies. Thucydides wrote, ‘among neighbours antagonism is ever a condition of independence’ (quoted in Lijphart 1974, 44). In Leviathan, Hobbes wrote: ‘in all times, Kings, and Persons of Soveraigne authority, because of their Independency, are in continuail jealousies, and in the state and posture of Gladiators … which is a posture of War’ (Hobbes 1973, 65). The endurance of this metaphor is suggested by Alexander Hamilton (1788, quoted in Rossiter 1961, 54): ‘To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties … would be to disregard the uniform course of human events.’ That idea of sovereignty amid anarchy implies ‘solutions’ that assume interactions of still-​discrete bodies:  a balance of power that allows for the management of sovereigns amid anarchy that stops any sovereign body pushing all the others around, or a security community that perpetuates peace by collectively punishing transgressors. We find, then, different variations on a ‘common image of the world’ (Lijphart 1974, 49) –​what in the 1970s Puchala and Fagan (Puchala and Fagan 1974) called the ‘security politics’ image of the world. They found this image accurate in the decades following World War II; international relations was constituted by old,

27

Images of the world, images of conflict

battered states and new states free of former colonial empires. However, by the 1970s outcomes in international relations were understood to be generated by various types of actor, integrating in novel ways on multiple issues, not just security. Attention since on ‘human security’ instead of just national security, and to various risks, uncertainties and connectivities, points to the possibility of finding a new world image. However, no metaphor intuitively has cognitive or embodied resonance like sovereign bodies moving in space. A network metaphor is not felt, embodied, in the same way –​or not as yet. Across eras, these concepts have shaped the image of world politics held by leaders, citizens and scholars. International relations is obsessed with images of the world –​the image of the Westphalian system, the image of the Cold War, the difficulty of finding an image of a world post-​sovereignty. In his 1918 Fourteen Points speech, Woodrow Wilson set out a vision of US aims in World War I of creating a postwar world by translating the principles of liberal idealism into actual institutions. In 1945, after the US, China, Russia and the UK met at Dumbarton Oaks just outside Washington, DC to plan the United Nations, the US realist scholar Hans Morgenthau wrote: [In 1918] we witness the heroic and futile attempt to transform the political scene according to the postulates of liberal rationality. At the end of the journey, we are in the presence of a less heroic and, we are afraid, no less futile attempt to model the political reality in the image of Machiavelli’s thought. (Morgenthau 1945, 145)

For Morgenthau, Machiavelli was a utopian thinker because he sought to unify Italy. By applying Machiavelli’s image, the leaders of 1945 were trying to unify the world by creating the UN. The point is that this is how many scholars and practitioners of international relations conceptualise the relation between theory and practice:  it is possible to make the world in accordance with an image, an image derived from a theory, a theory that rests on a conceptual metaphor. Given that metaphors underpinning international relations barely changed between Thucydides and World War II, the history of IR can be seen as the realisation of a few key images. This chapter begins with that slip, the slip made when people talk about an ‘image of international politics’; they mean a mental construct, not a visual image. For example, John Ikenberry (2011) argues that we see change today. The Westphalian system upon which the liberal order is built is crumbling. The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia marked an agreement in principle that the sovereignty of nation-​states prohibits interference in each other’s affairs. Today, the international community has a duty to intervene in sovereign states to protect human rights (R2P or Right to Protect). There are global uncertainties and non-​state threats, while a systemic financial crisis emanates from the ‘lead’ state, the US (Ikenberry 2011, 286). Ikenberry argues we need a new image of international relations since the Westphalian system no longer reflects how sovereignty and authority operate. However, Ikenberry never reflects on how such images function or the relationship between mental images (which may be intersubjectively held) and visual

27

28

28

Image operations

images of those mental images. Visual images may reinforce mental images, but could also challenge them. In which case, we must ask how. Do new visual, mediated images come about through routine or exceptional moments of media usage? This matters because if the contention is true that the practice of international relations is the enactment and realisation of a few images, then strategic actors will try to shape which images are in play and how these images are realised. This idea is not new. Nietzsche wrote, ‘Truth is a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, anthropomorphisms, in short a sum of human relations which have been subjected to poetic and rhetorical intensification, translation and decoration’ (Nietzsche 1989, 250). Selection as well as intensification, translation and decoration must all involve some degree of reflexivity by actors, since choice of language in politics is never purely habit. Nevertheless, the question emerges of why there is so limited a choice. We might ask, do we control our memory of international politics or does our memory –​manifest as a few images –​control us? If metaphors or images trap actors, how can we escape these traps? For if the causes of violence can be attributed to understandings of politics that become entrenched, if actors’ perceptions of events run down tramlines with little possibility of deviation, then it becomes difficult to move on from grievances and conflict and build political relations differently. Let me be clear: we are not concerned with how actors think international relations should work and the agreements they reach to put that into practice. We are concerned with how actors understand international relations at all. Many scholars have already identified a certain continuity in the underpinning myths, symbols and metaphors of international relations. I  will focus on two metaphors:  international relations as family –​the kinship metaphor –​and international relations as involving bodies in movement –​latterly the sovereign state. The explanations of international events offered by international relations theories like realism and liberalism only operate in terms of second-​order processes. There are first-​order, underlying causes –​deeper understandings, I argue –​a few core metaphors that form the image of world politics.

Diplomacy: kinship and religion Iver Neumann (Neumann 2011) traces the history of the myths and metaphors underpinning diplomacy. He argues that contemporary diplomacy is based on religion and kinship. Since Augustine, the idea circulated that the world is made up of cities united in God, and that cities must be united in peace and justice. Diplomacy signifies human weakness: it is needed when people have strayed from God. Envoys between city-​states and eventually between states became necessary. They were not to be harmed because they are the means to peace, for all God’s children to be one. Christian states tried to extend this principle of reciprocity and non-​harm to Ottoman and Chinese leaders, with varying results, but by modernity these practices were widespread (Neumann 2011). The family in these more secular times was the international community.

29

Images of the world, images of conflict

Ian Clark’s (Clark 2005) history of international society documents how different concepts of kinship have allowed states to demarcate ‘rightful’ members of that community. In the sixteenth century that society was characterised as universal, both because all God’s children belonged and because of the idea that all humans were capable of rationality. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries membership was restricted to certain states because of their conduct and their level of ‘civilisation’, with barbarians excluded. Membership expanded in the mid-​ twentieth century with the birth of postcolonial states and the principle of self-​ determination. Clark speculates that membership of international society may be contracting in the twenty-​first century because it is conditional again  –​conditional on granting and realising certain levels of human rights. Membership of the international family becomes manifest visually and verbally. In recent Iran–​US relations, for example, Iran’s President Ahmadinejad began to communicate directly to US President Bush. Ahmadinejad sent a letter in 2006 writing as if they were brothers, both men of God trying to uphold moral communities or nations-​as-​families. Ahmadinejad admonished Bush personally for war on terror policies that failed to live up to Christian morality and for letting victims of Hurricane Katrina suffer. Bush was a poor father, letting his children suffer. Bush ignored these overtures (see Hoskins and O’Loughlin 2010, 137–​8). President Obama tried to break the lack of progress that characterised previous diplomatic efforts. He became concerned with Iran’s children and Ahmadinejad’s poor fathering skills. In his 20 January 2009 inaugural address he said: To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist. (Obama 2009, n. p., emphasis added)

Obama mixes the kinship and body metaphors:  the US state-​as-​body would unclench its fist to welcome Iran into legitimate international society. However, three months later, on 22 April, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Iran of ‘crippling sanctions’ (Parasiliti 2009). If Iran did not enter negotiations, its body politic was under threat. Under what circumstances could this be interpreted as the potential for a ‘bloodied fist’? Such language evokes a masculine subtext structuring the logics of international relations. The state must act heroically, must suffer pain to show the endurance of its values, and must be prepared to fight for honour (Orford 1999; Steele 2012). This takes us to the analysis of the metaphor of the state as a body.

The metaphor of the moving body Is not international relations a matter of action; states acting –​swiftly or hesitantly, gracefully or brutally, with calmness or in panic? ‘At some point in time, certain

29

30

30

Image operations

nation-​states accustomed to crafting their power to meet security threats shifted towards a more basic sensual celebration of the style and physique necessary for and found within movement’, Steele writes (2012, 9). Following the logic of this metaphor, powerful actors must be seen to act in a powerful way. And it can even be enjoyed if events unfold as planned: ‘The use of power … is emotionally satisfying’ (29). It satisfies the need to see one’s imagined community as a body, moving, decisively. In other words, the metaphor must be visualised and it must be seen. It must lead to action witnessed in one’s home media and global media. Steele argues great powers face a new security dilemma. He calls this an ‘aesthetics of insecurity’. More capably ‘powerful’ states are somewhat imprisoned by their ability to influence more outcomes in international politics, and in this sense these capabilities, rather than allowing these states more freedom to act … compromise this sense of freedom. (Steele 2008, 69)

It is not just that powerful states must remain powerful through military interventions. The domestic public may get desensitised to the effects of their state’s violence and, as Steele writes, ‘individuals become routinized and satiated only through further scenes of violence’ (Steele 2012, 43). The state may actively seek out situations to prove itself, and legitimise this through visual templates and icons of past defeats that must be exorcised or past successes that new generations must emulate and surpass. If it is through decisions and actions that it proves itself, then the state goes searching for decisions and actions. Hence, the US under Bush was widely criticised for seeing any world problem as a nail requiring a hammer  –​ its hammer at that. In November 2003 the US even launched Operation Iron Hammer to  –​according to the Pentagon’s press team  –​‘nail’ insurgents in Iraq (Banusiewicz 2003). The new media ecology adds an additional layer to this security dilemma, what James C.  Scott characterises as the weakness of projected strength (Scott 1985; Steele 2012, 8). The moving body must be witnessed. The tyrant must keep impressing the natives. Projections today of US or British or French power can be criticised from many angles and in many places. The internal political debates and schisms of those countries are visible to those outside it –​to their enemies and their allies. Today, in the new media ecology, states cannot hide. The body is in plain sight. States are continually recreating and shoring up their identity by participating in international affairs. The slow response of the Japanese state in 2011 to the Fukushima triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown projected weakness to others. Japan failed to live up to an idealised image of the state as a coherent, acting, effective unit, and citizens and civil society bore most of the burden of disaster relief and stabilisation. The verbal retreat by US President Obama from talking in 2012 about Syrian President Assad crossing a ‘red line’ if he used chemical weapons, to saying Assad crossed ‘the world’s red line’ in 2013, to not enforcing any line whatsoever, shows again that powerful states are trapped. They

31

Images of the world, images of conflict

are expected to move decisively and authoritatively, but such action may be impossible in complex and uncertain situations.

From mental images to media images While international relations scholars have offered impressive histories of these metaphors in political thought (López 2003; Marks 2011), there is little study of how these metaphors are communicated. There are impressive genealogies of sovereignty, anarchy and the balance of power, but no genealogies of how these ideas were expressed and what difference these expressions made. This points to a broader lacuna in political theory and philosophy –​the failure to ask about the mediation of its own ideas (see Kittler 2009). The mediation of these few metaphors or concepts makes a difference to the practices of international relations. The medial conditions the political. For critical scholars of international relations, these concepts and the images they translate into are responsible for conflict, for they become concrete in the states, borders and security dilemmas that propel us from conflict to conflict (Walker 2010; Dillon 2013). Recently, analysis has focused on swift, decisive technologies that extend the state-​body-​at-​war, such as drones and helicopter gunships (Holert, this volume; Christensen, this volume). This sustains a relationship between ‘the image of world politics’ and actual visual images of world politics; between metaphorical, conceptual understandings of the ontology and mechanics of international relations and the horrific news and events witnessed every day. The critical task then is not simply to come up with new theoretical images and concepts, but to get these to take hold in the public sphere, on the ‘public screen’ (cf. DeLuca and Peeples 2002) of international politics. The field of war and media has established that news reproduces and visualises –​overwhelmingly –​the kinship and body metaphors. In particular, the peace journalism schools of Johan Galtung (Galtung and Fischer 2013), Jake Lynch and Anna McGoldrick (Lynch and McGoldrick 2005) have shown how news represents the international community in terms of ‘people like us’, in terms of ethnic and national identity. This results in a hierarchy of the human in humanitarianism (Chouliaraki 2013). Humanitarian emergencies bring ‘the family’ together but what news media cover is selective and reconstitutes existing identity differences. Western news organisations’ tendency to focus on Western casualties in distant catastrophes such as the Asian tsunami of 2004 or Nepal earthquake in 2015 show how routine practices and news values lead to reporting that brings complaints from those of a cosmopolitan perspective. In this way we see the move from bodily, conceptual metaphors of humanity as family to verbal expressions of which victims are reported (and for radio listeners these may conjure up mental images) to concrete, material pictures in news media:  visualisations of those metaphors and mental images.

31

32

32

Image operations

Turning to the body, framing theorists like Robert Entman have shown how journalists index their coverage to the question of whether powerful actors will stall or move to act decisively (Entman and Page 1994). Journalists feel they have a duty to alert audiences to the most likely outcomes in any event, and powerful actors have the most to say in determining those outcomes. Hence, whether or not a great power will intervene overseas is newsworthy; what matters is what each member of the UN Security Council is prepared to do. We witness these two metaphors sustained by news values and production practices. Can the arrow of causation implied so far be reversed so that, rather than mental images being routinely translated and enacted in policy to produce visual outcomes, can visual images be created that inform new mental images for those conducting war and foreign policy? Windows of opportunity emerge to change political discourse in moments of policy failure and discord and uncertainty among policy elites. When policymakers cannot offer a coherent image of international affairs or plausible accounts of cause and effect in relations between states, can civil society step in with alternative images that are meaningful through alternative conceptual metaphors? Consider the scope for the emergence of new images and metaphors of world politics. First, could a new media ecology facilitate more metaphors and images? Hoskins (Hoskins 2014, 52) argues that post-​scarcity culture sees ‘a gathering and splintering of individual, social and cultural imaginaries’. There is, simultaneously, a fragmentation (the long tail) and cohering (via open databases and archives) of visual media in a digital ecology (Hoskins and O’Loughlin 2012). Will there be a fragmentation of metaphors as people can produce their own content and narratives and more easily challenge established ones? This is unlikely: Lone voices and niche communities only attain influence when they are picked up and publicised by mainstream media, mainstream politics and mainstream culture. Any forces of fragmentation are bound by centripetal forces of integration. A vivid example is contained in Sarah Maltby’s study of Falkland Islanders’ responses to the thirtieth anniversary of the UK–​Argentina conflict of 1982 (Maltby 2016). Her analysis suggests how the islanders live up to and reinforce mainstream media frames about how the conflict should be remembered and what their identities should be. Journalists reduced the commemoration to a few images –​returning veterans, flags on houses and grateful, patriotic islanders. Some islanders expressed frustration that their lives have been reduced to little more than constantly being seen to honour the dead and remember military sacrifices that allow them to live freely. They are, in effect, forced to pay homage to the metaphor of sovereignty in a sea of anarchy, guarded and maintained by the (British) state as a body willing to move to protect that sovereignty. British media coverage during the anniversary was anchored around these few metaphors. A tiny island has significance only when appropriated by mainstream news coverage of the powerful state body. From that perspective, the core metaphors can be expected to live on. However, could the antonyms of those core metaphors create fruitful tensions?

33

Images of the world, images of conflict

The kinship metaphor collides with the reality of heterogeneous norms in international affairs. There is division within the UN Security Council between powerful states about the primacy of sovereignty and human rights, while mid-​ size states like Turkey, Iran and Japan contest what counts as normal conduct (Zarakol 2010). The body-​in-​movement metaphor jars against the fragmented nature of national political communities. For instance, diasporic communities are both non-​identical with and exceed categories of national wholeness, and indeed wholeness as a concept. Could metonyms generate alternative perspectives –​instances in which a part stands for the whole? Foreign policy leaders tweet images and soundbites of themselves and their positions, as if they stand for a whole nation’s body and perspective. Do these tensions interrupt the force of the core, embodied metaphors of kinship and body? Again, I  am unconvinced. Instances of states contesting norms and stigmatisation are notable for their rarity. Attention to fragments brings an urge to complete. Metonyms have a long history in politics and can be strategically exploited to ensure that citizens’ feelings of particularity lead to an urge to unify (see Ferrari 2012). In short, the logics structurally embedded in the core metaphors can incorporate disruptions, particularly when skilful leaders conduct the verbal and visual communication to suture those disruptions. So it seems that the practice of international relations, including the making of war and peace, is informed by a few images of the world, based on a handful of metaphors, which are visualised and imaged with slight variations through history. If this is correct, then the changing status or volume of the image will entail a different relation between image and practice. This has not been explored. Yet the exploration begun here finds little scope for change or challenge to those metaphors.

Conclusion Borges concludes his story, ‘It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors’ (Borges 2007, 192, emphasis added). If so, we are doomed to variations on the same bleak events and the practice of international relations is ultimately tragic, as many of its founders believed. Foreign policymakers charged with making war and peace will continue to think in these terms. Neumann argues: If it had not been a Christian variety of the theme that we are all God’s children that had informed global diplomacy, it would in all probability have been some variation on the same theme. (Neumann 2011, 311)

Does this leave us trapped? Neumann continues: As Foucault (1997, 147–​8) once remarked, the important question ‘isn’t whether a culture without restraint is possible or even desirable, but whether the system or

33

34

34

Image operations constraints in which society functions leaves individuals the liberty to transform the system’. (311)

Do the core metaphors of international relations allow us scope to transform the international system, even if we still think in terms of those metaphors? Can we move towards peace or justice while still thinking in terms of anarchy and sovereignty, inside and outside, universal and particular? Or are alternative intonations of core metaphors possible: the bodies-​in-​movement could be dancing, dovetailing and creating together (Howard 2014); the international system as a musical movement with many conductors, or as a cybernetic system of self-​balancing dynamics (Ringmar 2008)? An exploration of how these political intonations can materialise through the medial circulation of visual imagery suggests such prospects are limited. Even in a changing media ecology, mainstream news values and skilful strategic communication keep the traditional ‘security politics’ image of the world front and centre. Prospects for changing intonations are slim when world affairs are visualised as swift moves or weak, hesitating stillness –​a world of Operation Hammer, for ever.

Note 1 I am grateful for comments from Federica Ferrari, Zeynep Gürsel, Andrew Hoskins and Alister Miskimmon and those of the editors. All errors are my own.

References Banusiewicz, John D. 2003. ‘U.S. Forces Wield “Iron Hammer” to Nail Insurgents.’ US Department of Defense, 13 November. Accessed 31 January 2015. www.defense.gov/​ News/​NewsArticle.aspx?ID=27801. Borges, Jorge Luis. 2007. Labyrinths, and Other Stories. New York: New Directions. Chouliaraki, Lilie. 2013. The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of Post-​Humanitarianism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Clark, Ian. 2005. Legitimacy in International Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DeLuca, Kevin Michael, and Jennifer Peeples. 2002. ‘From Public Sphere to Public Screen:  Democracy, Activism, and the “Violence” of Seattle.’ Critical Studies in Media Communication 19(2): 125–​51. Dillon, Michael. 2013. Deconstructing International Politics. London: Routledge. Entman, Robert M., and Benjamin I. Page. 1994. ‘The News before the Storm.’ In Taken by Storm: The Media, Public Opinion, and US Foreign Policy in the Gulf War, edited by W. Lance Bennett and David L. Palet, 82–​101. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ferrari, Federica. 2012. ‘ “Through a Woman’s Eyes”: Narratives of the Nation: Gender as and beyond a Category of Analysis.’ Journal of Multicultural Discourses 7(3): 243–​62. Galtung, Johan, and Dietrich Fischer. 2013. ‘High Road, Low Road: Charting the Course for Peace Journalism.’ In Pioneer of Peace Research, edited by Johan Galtung, 95–​102. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer. Gavins, Joanna. 2014. ‘Metaphor Studies in Retrospect and Prospect:  An Interview with Gerard Steen.’ Review of Cognitive Linguistics 12(2): 493–​510.

35

Images of the world, images of conflict Hobbes, Thomas. 1973 [1651]. Leviathan. London: Everyman. Hoskins, Andrew. 2014. ‘The Right to Be Forgotten in Post-​Scarcity Culture.’ In The Ethics of Memory in a Digital Age:  Interrogating the Right to Be Forgotten, edited by Alessia Ghezzi, Ângela Pereira and Lucia Vesnic-​Alujevic, 50–​64. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hoskins, Andrew, and Ben O’Loughlin. 2010. War and Media: The Emergence of Diffused War. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hoskins, Andrew, and Ben O’Loughlin. April 2012. ‘Return of the Mass:  Structures of Attention, Mediatized Sociality, and Why It Matters for IR.’ International Studies Association (ISA) Annual Convention, San Diego. Howard, Neil. 2014. ‘The Transforming Power of Metaphor.’ openDemocracy, 12 February. Accessed 31 January 2015. www.opendemocracy.net/​transformation/​neil-​howard/​ transforming-​power-​of-​metaphor. Ikenberry, G. John. 2011. Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kittler, Friedrich. 2009. ‘Towards an Ontology of Media.’ Theory, Culture & Society 26(2–​3): 23–​31. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago:  University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books. Lijphart, Arend. 1974. ‘The Structure of the Theoretical Revolution in International Relations.’ International Studies Quarterly 18(1): 41–​74. López, José. 2003. Society and Its Metaphors: Language, Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Continuum. Lynch, Jake, and Annabel McGoldrick. 2005. Peace Journalism. Stroud: Hawthorn Press. Maltby, Sarah. 2016. Remembering War: Media, Memory and Identity in the Commemoration of the Falklands War. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Marks, Michael B. 2011. Metaphors in International Relations Theory. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Morgenthau, Hans J. 1945. ‘The Machiavellian Utopia.’ Ethics 55(2): 145–​7. Neumann, Iver B. 2011. ‘Euro-​Centric Diplomacy: Challenging but Manageable.’ European Journal of International Relations 18(2): 299–​321. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1989. ‘On Truth and Lying in an Extra-​Moral Sense.’ In Friedrich Nietzsche on Rhetoric and Language, edited by Sander L. Gilman, Carole Blair and David J. Parent, 246–​57. New York: Oxford University Press. Obama, Barack. 2009. ‘Inaugural Address.’ The White House, 21 January 2009. Accessed 4 December 2015. www.whitehouse.gov/​blog/​2009/​01/​21/​president-​barack-​obamas​inaugural-​address. Orford, Anne. 1999. ‘Muscular Humanitarianism:  Reading the Narratives of the New Interventionism.’ European Journal of International Law 10(4): 679–​711. Parasiliti, Andrew. 2009. ‘Iran: Diplomacy and Deterrence.’ Survival 51(5): 5–​13. Puchala, Donald J., and Stuart I. Fagan. 1974. ‘International Politics in the 1970s: The Search for Perspective.’ International Organization 28(2): 247–​66. Ringmar, Erik. 2008. ‘Metaphors of Social Order.’ In Political Language and Metaphor:  Interpreting and Changing the World, edited by Terrell Carver and Jernej Pikalo, 57–​69. London: Routledge. Rossiter, Clinton. 1961. The Federalist Papers:  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay. New York: Mentor.

35

36

36

Image operations Scott, James C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak:  Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Steele, Brent J. 2008. Ontological Security in International Relations: Self-​Identity and the IR State. New York: Routledge. Steele, Brent J. 2012. Defacing Power:  The Aesthetics of Insecurity in Global Politics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Steen, Gerard. 2011. ‘From Three Dimensions to Five Steps:  The Value of Deliberate Metaphor.’ Metaphorik.de 21: 83–​110. Walker, R. B. J. 2010. After the World, before the Globe. London: Routledge. Zarakol, Ayşe. 2010. ‘Ontological (In)Security and State Denial of Historical Crimes: Turkey and Japan.’ International Relations 24(1): 3–​23.

37

Worldmaking frame by frame Zeynep Devrim Gürsel

Every photograph is in fact a means of testing, confirming and constructing a total view of reality. Hence the crucial role of photography in ideological struggle. Hence the necessity of our understanding a weapon which we can use and which can be used against us. (Berger 1974, 182)

Worlds are made. Moreover they are made through seemingly banal everyday practices. This chapter is about professionals whose daily work can be described as visual worldmaking. Philosopher Nelson Goodman uses the term worldmaking to underscore that representations contribute not only to the understanding but also to the building of the realities in which we live (Goodman 1978). Images play a constitutive role in both the understanding and the building of realities, particularly in the arena of political conflict addressed by many of the chapters in this volume; they intervene in the world while representing it. It is precisely this function of photography that John Berger famously highlighted in the quotation with which I begin this chapter: photography is a crucial weapon in ideological struggle. Perhaps nowhere is this clearer than in visual journalism, where photographs provide views of the world and make the world knowable. News images test, confirm and construct what Ben O’Loughlin refers to as the metaphors that shape international relations (O’Loughlin, this volume). Worldmaking involves both ideological and material structures, and as an anthropologist researching news images I  attended to both kinds of infrastructures of worldmaking. News images are complex cultural products that circulate simultaneously as aesthetic constructions, journalistic representations and commodities. For the professionals responsible for producing and circulating news images, ‘the world’ as a knowable entity is part of the commodity they produce, evaluate and circulate. They edit the world section of major news magazines or newspapers, some of which promise to bring you the world. They work at global news agencies that circulate images worldwide or at visual content producers that provide clients a world of images through massive imagebanks. Every February the World Press Photo competition recognises the most powerful journalistic images of the preceding year. In these ways, and many others, worlds are made.

2

38

38

Image operations

The individuals I  researched are professional image brokers (Gürsel 2016a, 2017). Image brokers are the people who act as intermediaries for images through acts such as commissioning, evaluating, licensing, selling, editing and negotiating. They may or may not be the producers or authors of images. Rather, image brokers move images or restrict their movement, thereby enabling or policing their availability to new audiences. Image brokers act as mediators for views of the world, and in so doing they also become mediators of our imagination. This volume brings together research on many kinds of image brokers, from soldiers to activists, drone operators to terrorists. Here I focus on professionals who broker news images and the institutions in which this brokerage takes place. Against the backdrop of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the industry-​ wide transition from analogue to digital technologies, I conducted fieldwork at significant points of production, distribution and circulation of international news images in the industry’s centres of power in New York and Paris (Gürsel 2016). Specifically, the fieldwork for this project took place in:  (1)  the newsroom of a large corporate ‘visual content’ provider; (2)  the Paris headquarters of Agence France-Presse; (3)  the editorial offices of two mainstream US news magazines; and (4)  an Amsterdam-​based international platform for documentary photography (World Press Photo) that organises the most prestigious annual photography competition and offers seminars in photojournalism. I also attended (5)  Barnstorm, a photography workshop for news photographers founded by Eddie Adams, an American photojournalist who made several iconic images of the Vietnam war.1 My final site of research was (6) Visa pour l’Image, the largest annual photojournalism festival, held in Perpignan, France. Specifically, this research investigated processes of decision-​making in an attempt to understand the step-​by-​step mechanics of worldmaking. By observing everyday moments of selection at critical sites, I observed the discourses of image brokering and myriad decision processes without having to intervene awkwardly and ask informants to translate visual practices into verbal ones for me, the anthropologist. In other words, I placed myself where I might hear everyday talk about photographs, arguments for a particular image or against another, a desire for a specific kind of photograph and disappointment with a result, expressed not for my benefit but in the daily work routines of image brokers. This research took place during a period of transition in the infrastructures of representation, a time worth revisiting for what it illuminates about how practices of visual worldmaking came to be what they are today. At the turn of the twenty-​ first century, digital technologies radically changed the image industry, affecting both the labour practices behind images and the players involved. Moreover, images in the press, from photographs to cartoons, not only illustrated current events but oftentimes were also factors in causing these events, thereby playing a critical and highly controversial part in political and military action. On the one hand, amateur images –​the Abu Ghraib photos produced by rogue US soldiers and circulated widely in May 2004 most famous among them –​could dominate headlines. Their transmission was as subversive as their content in that, at

39

Worldmaking frame by frame

least initially, they bypassed the infrastructures that had traditionally circulated news images. On the other hand, terrorists made political demands in the form of direct-​address videos and photos promising and delivering severed heads, images that were then validated as they circulated through reputable news infrastructures (see Klonk, this volume). The War on Terror was always also being fought in a visual register and was, hence, a war of images. The last decade has provided ample evidence that governments, terrorists, corporations, militaries, non-​governmental organisations and activists are increasingly conscious of how they are visualised, and are becoming skilled at staging spectacles. These groups have themselves become image brokers. Wars of images are amplified by numerous new technologies for circulating images. Simultaneously, the very production of certain images has allegedly triggered violent acts both on the part of militaries –​such as increased US air strikes in Iraq and Syria following videos showing Western journalists being beheaded by members of ISIS/​ISIL –​and on the part of individual terrorists, most recently in the tragic murders of cartoonists at France’s satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in January 2015. Perhaps there has never been a greater need for critical news images and journalists who can interrogate the world visually rather than merely validate and circulate illustrations of spectacles staged to be mediated (Gürsel 2017). Much recent scholarship on documentary photography –​including some of my own and the excellent work of many in this volume –​has focused on images of violent acts, whether military operations, insurgent terrorism or other atrocities (Batchen et al. 2012; Kennedy 2014). This focus on images of violence has a long history in studies of visual forms of documentary but has been particularly amplified since 2001 when the main international news story was a violent act highly visual in nature; the war of images is inseparable from the War on Terror as a discursive entity. While I agree with the critical importance of analysing what Judith Butler calls ‘frames of war’ (Butler 2010), I also believe that focusing our scholarly attentions on images of war alone narrows the horizons of research. Just as embedded positions for journalists in military operations strategically limit or ‘frame’ what might possibly be made visible to the public, scholarship on photography that privileges images of violence risks not seeing the structures that make the production of those images possible in the first place. In what follows I will show how political conflict shapes news images of all sorts of events when the subject matter of the images is not conflict per se. The longstanding scholarly focus on the ethics of what has been termed photographs of agony, pain, war, violence and atrocity has led to many significant debates, but it has also left invisible the politics by which images construct the world. Image making is central to worldmaking. The significance of this cannot be overstated. Before any image of war, the very binaries that inform the narratives used to rationalise that war have already informed how the parties have been visualised. War is not made imaginable by the photograph showing the first day of military violence but long before by the photographs used to illustrate various groups. It is the politics of such structures of representation that are obscured

39

40

40

Image operations

when scholars focus exclusively on images ‘of conflict’. By not focusing exclusively on war, or even on violence, but rather on the everyday labour of image brokers I  hope to render visible how framing mechanisms are always at work with significant political ramifications before, during and after violent acts. To borrow Berger’s language once again, journalistic photography is central to the ‘testing, confirming and constructing’ of political conflict (Berger 1974, 182). By deliberately looking beyond images of conflict, I want to make apparent the ways conflict is differently framed as part of the aesthetic practices in producing and publishing news images. The manner in which image brokers make use of aesthetic conflict, often in the form of binaries, directly shapes the production of categories of people –​categories which are central to how political conflict is imaginable even before it is actionable. Moreover, aesthetic conflict has become a mark of strong photography. In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes’s famous distinction between punctum and stadium actually evolves from his reflecting on why a particular photograph of rebellion in Nicaragua taken by Koen Wessing moves him whereas others by the same photographer showing similar subject matter are of less interest and appear to him merely as scenes. In one frame there is ‘a co-​presence of two discontinuous elements, heterogeneous in that they did not belong to the same world’ (1981, 23). Barthes draws the readers’ attention to two helmeted soldiers, and behind them two nuns. Barthes then proceeds to discuss the punctum in several different ways, returning to the soldiers and nuns image to conclude that ‘the detail which interests me is not, or at least is not strictly, intentional, and probably must not be so’ (47). However, I would argue that we need to think separately about the intentions of photographers and image brokers. Barthes does not address the political ramifications of identifying elements in images as ‘not belonging to the same world’, even if the photograph is a news image appearing in a news publication and the elements in the image are therefore certainly coeval.2 Let me turn to two examples to illustrate this practice of structuring news images around binaries. In the first, I will be looking at how image brokers at a major news publication assume conflict in how they package a visual story for publication. In the second, I will turn to a moment when young photojournalists are taught how to harness the power of binaries when framing individual photographs. Together these two examples illustrate the role of political conflict in imagemaking, and therefore worldmaking, frame by frame.

Imaging modernity My first example comes from the world section of a major US news magazine, Newsworld. You have never heard of Newsworld because it is a pseudonym, but this example is based on fieldwork and interviews with image brokers at three prominent news magazines:  US News & World Report, Newsweek and TIME. In 2004 their aggregate circulation was 9.3 million. As they perform their weekly duties

41

Worldmaking frame by frame

as image brokers collectively editing the world section of the magazine, the art director, text editors, writers, photographers, designers and photo editors all act as mediators for views of the world. Their decisions at each stage of production and circulation of news images are informed by how they imagine various communities –​both those represented in the photographs and those in which the photographs will circulate, which may be the same community, but often is not. Images and imagined communities then are produced, reproduced and circulate together. One week I  observed a particular editorial team at Newsworld, a text editor (Sarah), a photo editor (Jen) and an art director (Mary) working on a photo essay about Iran. A veteran photographer had been sent to do a story on youth in Iran. Mary, the art director, was pleased with the story because she considered it a well-​ rounded portrait of the country. Sarah, the text editor, explained Mary’s statement for me:  ‘everything from couples stealing kisses to hundreds of fanatics’. There were in fact photographs of large numbers of people praying, a couple kissing on a hilltop, young boys airdancing in the mountains, girls in school and girls in an outdoor market. Mary explained her layout choices: ‘Here I am contrasting girls in school with girls buying mirrors.’ She had left in a photo of the theatre because she had recently read two different stories on Iran that mentioned the significance of the theatre. In other words, image brokers don’t work in a vacuum, their labour is influenced by others’ reporting. Continuing in this mode of presenting what she called ‘a balanced story’, Mary added, ‘I think if you spend one whole spread [two pages] on romance on a hilltop then you need to end with something more conservative. Praying with guys in a mosque for example.’ Jen, the photo editor, was worried that the need for balance  –​the mandate that ‘if you have illicit lovers on a hill to show balance you have to have prayer’ –​ would mean that the best photography would get left out. ‘It will be left, right, left, right’, she worried. Jen was often frustrated by clichés winning over excellent photographs. What troubled her was not that aesthetic difference was standing in for journalistic objectivity but rather that the process was not being driven by identifying what for her were the strongest images. Indeed, to Jen’s chagrin, when the photo essay was shown to a senior editor, the story was laid out in contrasting pairs. Joel, the senior editor, expressed concern about the subjects in the images. ‘These guys won’t go to jail for breakdancing?’ Jen reassured him that they had all given consent and been photographed knowing it was for this particular American news magazine. ‘So this is a story about Iran loosening up?’ he inquired. Jen’s boss, the senior photo editor, stepped in to explain the value of the images in relation to photographs of Iran circulating in other Western publications. ‘The whole thing feels visually fresh: Inside of Iran. Stolen moments of Iran. An intimate look. When you look at it from the context of what you normally see, it’s pretty extraordinary in terms of how you see.’ Sarah, the text editor, then interpreted the images, ‘bad guys, bad guys, good guys, good guys. Traditional versus modern, traditional versus modern.’ She drew attention to the classroom image, which she believed highlighted a significant contrast within a single frame. Pointing to the

41

42

42

Image operations

microscopes in the image, she commented, ‘Very traditional women, but they’re studying anatomy.’ Joel had moved on to the image of the young women in the market. Once again drawing on an implicit conflict between what he saw in the photographs before him and how he imagined readers picture Iran, he inquired of Sarah, the text editor, ‘Is it surprising to you that they actually have sunglasses?’ ‘It’s whimsical’, she replied. Later, Sarah explained her reasoning about the story to me. ‘With the Iran story you don’t want to give the false impression that Iran is liberalising so you need to touch all necessary bases.’ As was often the case, the imagined reader hovered in the room as part of the conversation. It is the reader for whose benefit the categories of traditional and modern are visualised and then balanced through the particular layout of specific visuals.3 The couple kissing or the individual students learning about anatomy are assumed instantly to index modernity, whereas the praying collective is automatically an illustration of tradition. Everyday labour at news publications involves simultaneous processes of producing representations and reproducing particular world views. Moreover, the very ideology of representativeness becomes a powerful way to police certain categories of people and their placement in the world. Berger might ask what kind of total view of reality these photographs confirm and construct. In the context of explaining what news images add to reporting on political conflict or struggles over territory, Jen, the often-​frustrated, hardworking photo editor told me, ‘Our job is to put a human face to a map.’ Yet, much of her frustration had to do with the particulars of which faces were deemed appropriate for what parts of the map. During fieldwork I  continually observed image brokers making decisions about photographs –​whether to buy them, publish them or circulate them –​based not only on the aesthetic composition of the indexed body but also on the evaluation of the imagined body politic (see O’Loughlin, this volume). Each body in a photograph is highly singular and indexed to a particular individual, and yet many of the bodies in news images –​almost all except images of celebrities  –​circulate as stand-​ins for large numbers of bodies sharing the same condition, bodies that are metonyms for body politics. News images serve as points of departure for imagining collectives that are represented but not present in the frame itself. The kind of conflict –​such as that presupposed in the editors’ interpretation of the photograph of the anatomy lesson –​is not only something that editors and art directors respond to when making aesthetic decisions about each frame or how they ought to be juxtaposed. Photographers are also taught that such conflict makes a good image. To be clear, I cannot make a claim about whether the photographer who shot this story about youth in Iran intended for his image of Iranian schoolgirls looking through microscopes next to a life-​size plastic anatomical model of a torso to capture a binary between modernity and tradition, as I did not have the opportunity to interview him about it. Nor do I believe such intentions are always knowable, either to the photographer himself or to the inquiring researcher. However, during fieldwork I did observe several moments when young

43

Worldmaking frame by frame

photojournalists were explicitly instructed on how best to capture such conceptual or political conflicts visually to render their photographs valuable as news images.

Showing photographers how to see I turn now to a moment when photographers were being instructed in ways of seeing, specifically a moment from the two-​year professional seminar offered to a group of photojournalists in Turkey by World Press Photo. Located in Amsterdam, World Press Photo is an independent, non-​profit organisation with a twofold mission: generating wide public interest in and appreciation for the work of photographers and supporting and advancing high standards in photojournalism. World Press Photo organises the most prestigious annual photography competition and also offers seminars in photojournalism both for top young photographers and for press photographers in the developing world. Judged by an international jury whose makeup is always announced along with the list of winners, the competition results in an annual yearbook and exhibition that then travels to dozens of countries worldwide. The director explained to me that it was by taking the exhibition to countries that they had begun establishing connections with local photography organisations. Eventually they began receiving grants from the Dutch Foreign Ministry to subsidise the exhibition travelling to countries that could not fund it domestically. As the exhibition and accompanying catalogue raised the profile of press photography, entries were sent in to the competition from more and more countries. Eventually, the local organisations also asked World Press Photo for educational programmes and, thus, the idea of offering photojournalism seminars in developing countries was born. World Press Photo began offering a series of seminars specifically aimed at photojournalists in developing countries in an attempt to increase the expression of ‘democratic values’ in the press. At least initially, these World Press Photo seminars in the developing world were funded by the Dutch Ministry for Development Cooperation. Seminars have been hosted by countries such as India, Macedonia, Mali, China, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Turkey and Vietnam. A staff member just back from facilitating the seminar in Uganda had made the larger purpose of the seminars more explicit to me in the following terms: With democracy comes freedom of speech and with that comes photojournalism. What I’ve seen in developing countries is that they don’t have a tradition of storytelling. They might know about news pictures and mug-​shots but it seems their culture is perhaps more orally developed. In publications in developing countries there aren’t many examples of strong visual storytelling. Perhaps it is natural that photojournalism developed in the first world because of democracy and free speech. Hence, we need to teach them storytelling.

World Press Photo was founded in 1955, the same year that Edward Steichen curated the Family of Man exhibit at the MoMA (New York). Organised around

43

44

44

Image operations

humanity’s supposedly universal experiences such as birth, childhood, love, the arts and war, the exhibition was seen by over 9 million people and travelled the world until 1964 (Sandeen 1995). In other words, this was a time when there was both significance to speaking about the world as a category of investigation and a belief that photography could be a powerful way to cover the world. Moreover, it was a moment when thinking of covering the whole world through photography was itself a political project. Early World Press Photo competitions seem to have served as an occasion to bring together jury members and images from different political ideologies, mainly those from the two sides of the Cold War. One veteran jury member described it for me as ‘an Olympics of the media’, underscoring that judging it provided not only an occasion to celebrate the best photographic accomplishments of the year, but also an opportunity to encounter people coming from countries with very different political ideologies. World Press Photo’s efforts have since turned towards bridging not only ideological but also significant economic differences and, hence, to expanding the ‘world’ it hopes to include in its competition and activities. By the time that I began attending World Press Photo events in the early twenty-​first century, many in the organisation were using the language of ‘north/​south’ and ‘global south’ as well as ‘developed and developing’ when describing their efforts as an institution.4 I draw attention to these terms to highlight that World Press Photo, from its inception, has not only been a platform supporting photojournalism but has also been enmeshed in the logics of development narratives. While the idea of the photojournalist as empathetic, noble and brave observer who aids simply by shedding light on certain dark corners of the world is shared by many in the photojournalism world, a development paradigm more familiar in institutions such as the UNDP or the World Bank is much more apparent in World Press Photo events. The ‘world’, then, in World Press Photo is not one that is given or even simply made, but one that can be developed through photography. When I asked the director about the current selection process for the jury, he explained the lengths they went to in order to have a jury representative of international photojournalism. ‘If we have a female photographer from North America, then we would try to balance that with a male photographer from Asia …. [We include] editors and distributors, we try to reflect the various different aspects of the photography business.’ Yet, while he acknowledged that there was sometimes confusion about what was and was not allowed among photographers, he emphasised that the jury members relied on the assumed integrity of photography. ‘The jury members take this integrity for granted. It is assumed that the photographers will respect the code within the profession.’ Hence, in the selection of jury members there is a clear acknowledgement of significant diversity within the photojournalism community depending on a person’s origins, gender or role in the industry. Yet, at the same time, there is not only confidence that differences can be balanced and neutrality achieved by bringing together the right combination, but also a belief that there exists an unarticulated universal code of ethics that guides the profession. Perhaps not

45

Worldmaking frame by frame

surprisingly, World Press Photo marked its fiftieth anniversary with the publication of a commissioned book and exhibition that opened at Amsterdam’s International Photography Museum titled Things As They Are –​ Photojournalism in Context since 1955. This title captures both the assumed universal code undergirding photojournalism as a form of reporting on ‘things as they are’ and a paradoxical acknowledgement of the importance of context. The various activities of World Press Photo provide an ideal site to interrogate this assumed code within the profession, because, depending on the activity, World Press Photo is involved in acknowledging, celebrating and teaching this code that they also presume ‘exists everywhere’. The first day of the second of three week-​long sessions of the seminar organised by World Press Photo in Istanbul brought together a dozen Turkish photographers, Marijke, the Dutch World Press Photo coordinator, two Turkish mentors and Anna and Eitan, two non-​Turkish ‘masters’ around a table. Anna was a highly respected editor in the photojournalism world and had most recently been a regional director for the photography department of one of the major wire services. Eitan was an established Israeli photographer. Over the course of the seminars that met three times over a period of two years with each session lasting several days, much of what the masters showed the young Turkish photographers was how to look differently. While exercises were presented as instructions in photojournalism, they were often perceived both by the Turkish mentors and some of the students as not only aesthetic recommendations, but also ideological framings (Gürsel 2016a). There was often slippage between conversations about aesthetics and ethics. That first day after lunch Marijke told the photographers they would be going on a walk with the masters. ‘They will show you some nice pictures in Istanbul. What they see in Istanbul.’ And so the group followed Anna and Eitan through the streets of Beyoğlu. Some of the Turkish photographers were from out of town, others had never been down these alleyways and others knew them very well. Anna had been to Istanbul before, but it was Eitan’s first visit. He got quite excited when, through his viewfinder, he spotted a street vendor selling brooms approaching the group. ‘This is a great picture. Now I wait until something very specific walks into my frame.’ Eitan had been telling the photographers about the importance of a human presence in any shot. Once he found what he wanted to photograph, he told them, he would frame the shot and wait for something that would make it interesting to move into the frame. Unlike a setup where he would have asked someone to take a certain pose or behave in a certain manner for the camera, Eitan did not seem to think that framing the shot and waiting for the perfect moment was in any way problematic. Rather, as he instructed the group, it was the secret to producing a compelling image. Without explicitly naming it as such, Eitan was modelling Henri Cartier-​Bresson’s idea of a ‘decisive moment’, a photographer constructing a good image by choosing when to shoot a frame (Cartier-​Bresson 1952). Eitan was also trying to get the students to think about how they might later pitch these photographs and therefore encouraging them to think about what

45

46

46

Image operations

might sell. In front of a lingerie store on a main street crowded with people, Eitan instructed the students to ‘look for Islamic content stories’. Alternately, he offered, ‘The European Union. Just go with an idea.’ He was anticipating ‘story lines’ that would make international editors interested in particular images from Istanbul (Hannerz 2004). Moreover, he was trying to capture visual contrasts that would be easy to pitch as illustrations of ‘story lines’. Eitan framed his shot of the lingerie store and waited once again, explaining his strategy to the group, ‘Let’s wait to see someone come by. Maybe a religious man will walk by and think this is ridiculous.’ Eventually a woman covered from head to toe in a black chador passed and Eitan got the contrast he was looking for, untroubled by the fact that the woman was quite incongruous with the swarms of people buzzing by in this neighbourhood. Some of the Turkish photographers were smiling at the fact that there were signs in the lingerie store’s window wishing customers a happy Mother’s Day, suggesting that racy lingerie might make a good gift for mom, but this detail was lost on the non-​Turkish speakers. In other words, they too had caught a contrast –​motherhood versus sexy femininity  –​but it did not translate into a visual binary, and also required Turkish language comprehension. Eitan’s contrast trumped the one noticed by the Turkish photographers. The group left the main street and headed down the alleys. Anna marvelled at the intricate webs of laundry hung to dry between the buildings. Another street vendor pushing a wooden cart piled high with cucumbers passed the photographers, and Eitan gathered all of them together, ‘The whole group just walked in front of a very interesting photo without stopping. There it is: old world/​new world. Small hand/​big hand of economy.’ While some of the photographers had not been down these particular side streets, nor perhaps others like them, neither the layers of laundry, nor the cucumber seller had caught their attention. It was not merely that these were familiar sights to be expected in certain neighbourhoods, but also that the Turkish photographers were not seeing through the binaries in which Eitan was narrating the potential frames. Eitan and Anna were showing the students what to see, how to visualise modernity or development versus tradition. Their instructions in image making were also instructions in worldmaking, frame by frame. By titling this chapter ‘Worldmaking frame by frame’, I want to encourage us to think beyond the ways in which militaries and governments frame conflict for publics. Image brokers determine not only the specific images we will see, but also how we encounter them frame by frame, often arranged side by side or sequentially. (Online slideshows provide ever more opportunities for this.) We need to attend to ways in which aesthetic balance comes to connote journalistic objectivity or even stands in for it. Perhaps the labour of image brokers can be added to the list of ways images are curated to reinforce the illusion of rational objectivity (Mitchell, this volume). We need to pay closer attention to ways photojournalists are taught to capture conflict within individual frames, especially when this is part of a programme of development and a promise for democratic transparency. Many have long talked about the ideological mobilisation of photographs. I encourage us to investigate the everyday practices of image brokering by which conflict

47

Worldmaking frame by frame

structures worldmaking in journalism. Rather than jumping to the conclusion that such framings are intentional on the part of individual actors, I suggest that the demand for balance and objectivity and the belief that strong photographs bring heterogeneous elements together have led to binaries playing a central role in how the world is visualised. In conclusion, these two vignettes in the newsroom of a major US news publication and at a World Press Photo seminar show how the professional brokering of news images  –​visual commodities with ever-​widening digital distribution networks –​involves simultaneous processes of producing representations and reproducing world views. Understanding these processes is key to understanding global infrastructures of worldmaking, with its production of certain categories of people and possibilities for certain kinds of visibility and not others.

Notes 1 Eddie Adams shot perhaps his best-​known photograph while covering the Vietnam War for the Associated Press. The picture shows police chief General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a prisoner, Nguyen Van Lem, at point-​blank range on a Saigon street, on 1 February 1968 during the opening stages of the Tet Offensive. 2 I am grateful to Karen Strassler for reminding me of this moment in Camera Lucida. 3 See Lutz and Collin’s classic, Reading National Geographic (1993) for more on how modernity and tradition have been visualised for an imagined Western reader. 4 In this way World Press Photo seems to have incorporated the change from talking about developed and developing nation to using world geographic divisions –​north/​ south –​to signify political and economic divisions. The United Nation Development Program initiative of 2003, ‘Forging a Global South’, was important to the spread of the concept global south both among governments as well as organisations such as World Press Photo.

References Barthes, Roland. 1981. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Batchen, Geoffrey, Mick Gidley, Nancy K. Miller and Jay Prosser. 2012. Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis. London: Reaktion Books. Berger, John. 1974. ‘Understanding a Photograph.’ In The Look of Things: Essays, 178–​82. New York: Viking. Butler, Judith. 2010. ‘Torture and the Ethics of Photography:  Thinking with Sontag.’ In Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?, 63–​100. London: Verso. Cartier-​Bresson, Henri. 1952. The Decisive Moment. New York: Simon & Schuster. Goodman, Nelson. 1978. Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co. Gürsel, Zeynep Devrim. 2016. Image Brokers: Visualizing World News in the Age of Digital Circulation. Berkeley: University of California Press.

47

48

48

Image operations Gürsel, Zeynep Devrim. 2017. ‘Visualizing Publics: Digital Crowdshots and the 2015 Unity Rally in Paris.’ In New Media, New Publics, Special Issue of Current Anthropology, edited by Charles Hirshkind, Maria de Abreu and Carlo Caduff. Hannerz, Ulf. 2004. Foreign News: Exploring the World of Foreign Correspondents. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kennedy, Liam, and Caitlin Patrick. 2014. The Violence of the Image:  Photography and International Conflict. New York: I.B. Tauris. Lutz, Catherine, and Jane Lou Collins. 1993. Reading National Geographic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sandeen, Eric. 1995. Picturing an Exhibition:  The Family of Man and 1950s America. Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico Press.

49

Working images: Harun Farocki and the operational image Volker Pantenburg

‘Images without a social goal, not for edification, not for reflection.’ This is the negative definition of ‘operational images’ that Harun Farocki provides in the first part of his three-​part installation Eye/​Machine.1 The filmmaker and video artist was one of the first to examine in depth the various uses of images as instruments. His work consists in a continuous examination of the operational potential of images in different fields of practice. Farocki’s Eye/​Machine series (2000–​3) as well as its fifty-​eight-​minute tele­ vision version War at a Distance (2003) provide a paradigmatic investigation of operational images located in the context of warfare and military operations.2 We are shown POV-​shots from camera-​bombs that throw themselves onto the target and detonate, material broadcast on television in the Gulf War 1991. We see missile simulators, tracking software trying to identify bridges and other landmarks of military importance, or bulky training devices to simulate bombing from Germany in the 1940s. However, operational images are by no means restricted to the military sector, but determine various practices. As Farocki’s three installations show, they have come to pervade an array of different realms: both military and non-​military, both private and public, both industrial and post-​industrial. Farocki was interested in more than just their specific use at the service of violence and destruction. At stake for him was a typology, a history or archaeology, or even –​in his own modest way –​ a theory of the operational image. It goes without saying that this is a quite comprehensive project; a project, furthermore, whose relevance increases with today’s omnipresence of practices like data mining, image retrieval, face-​recognition software and related practices. The field is vast. Wherever algorithms of pattern recognition are employed, images become part of and merge with a technical operation. Yet the ubiquity of images has a paradoxical effect, since in many cases ‘image’ no longer seems to be the adequate term. Indeed, the operational image emulates the look and feel of traditional images, but on closer inspection, this turns out to be a secondary function, almost a gesture of courtesy extended by the machines: The computer does not need the image. More accurately, then, operational images in

3

50

50

Image operations

Figure 1  Harun Farocki, Eye/​Machine, video, 2000

the strictest sense would have to be characterised as visualisations of data that could also take on other, different guises. Even if the notion of the operational image seems to emerge in Farocki’s work at the beginning of this millennium, it does have a history, not only within his work but also in a larger cultural context. In this chapter, I  will trace some of the origins and implications of this type of image (or non-​image), as it has come to be explored in Farocki’s texts and installations. To do so, I  will first revisit three concepts that have explicitly informed Farocki’s notion of the operational image: Roland Barthes’s ‘operational language’, Vilém Flusser’s ‘techno-​images’ and conceptualisations of a computer-​aided ‘Bildwissenschaft’. In a second step, I will hint at some specific strategies of dealing with operational images that are prominently featured in Farocki’s work. Given the omnipresence of operational images, Farocki asks how a counter-​operational strategy could be envisioned. Finally, I will suggest that Farocki’s work leads us to distinguish more generally between three different kinds or levels of operational images. One of Farocki’s earliest texts is a review of Roland Barthes’s Mythologies (Farocki 1965a). In a radio programme, also on Barthes’s book (Farocki 1965b), Farocki quotes extensively from the theoretical chapter on ‘The Myth Today’: If I am a woodcutter and I am led to name the tree which I am felling, whatever the form of my sentence, I ‘speak the tree’, I do not speak about it. This means that my language is operational, transitively linked to its object; between the tree and

51

Working images

Figure 2  Harun Farocki, Eye/​Machine, video, 2000 myself, there is nothing but my labour, that is to say, an action. This is a political language: it represents nature for me only inasmuch as I am going to transform it, it is a language thanks to which I ‘act the object’; the tree is not an image for me, it is simply the meaning of my action. But if I am not a woodcutter, I can no longer ‘speak the tree’, I can only speak about it, on it. (Barthes 1972, 146)

In Barthes’s account, the operational character of the woodcutter’s language has a utopian quality. As a strictly functional extension of the worker’s body and his tools, it escapes the mythological temptations of meta-​language by merging with its object and becoming an integral part of the work process. Corresponding to its etymology, the operational is firmly linked to the concept of ‘labour’. Barthes even goes so far as to champion its political, revolutionary potential. To Farocki, this connection between politics, activism and transformation must have been appealing. In a text written in the context of Eye/​Machine, Farocki comes back to Barthes’s distinction to specify his motivation: If we take an interest in pictures that are part of an operation, this is because we are weary of non-​operative pictures, and weary of meta-​language. Weary of the day-​ to-​day practice of re-​mythologizing quotidian life, weary of the ever-​changing and many-​channelled program of images custom-​made to mean something to us. What is shown in these programs comes neither from the micro-​nor from the macro-​ cosmos, but rather from the middle level. (Farocki 2004, 18)

51

52

52

Image operations

Forty years after his reading of Barthes, the operational image now promises to act as an antidote to the mediocre image practices that cinema and television offer. Unburdened with ‘meaning’, the operational image nurtures post-​hermeneutic hopes of an image world free of symbolisation. The functional rigour that Farocki emphasises here also contains a faint but audible echo of the early modernist celebrations of non-​human, machine images, especially Dziga Vertov’s programmatic ‘Kino/​Eye’ manifesto, in which the movie camera is celebrated as an artificial mode of perception that exceeds the capacities of the human eye by far.3 Farocki’s early review of Mythologies, I would argue, is more than just a casual text written by an adolescent. Indeed, the filmmaker kept referring back to Barthes’s dichotomy until the very end of his career, always accentuating the ambiguity of the operational –​ the utopian potential that lies in its affinity to labour as well as the risk of being cut off from human experience.4 If Farocki’s early encounter with Barthes provides the element of functionality, it does not account for other characteristics. The operational image is not only a ‘working image’, but also an image that is the result of a calculation, as opposed to other forms of image production. It is therefore not surprising that Vilém Flusser, one of the major theoreticians of the ‘technical image’, was to become another pivotal influence on Farocki. When Flusser’s books Towards a Philosophy of Photography and Into the Universe of Technical Images appeared in 1983 and 1985, Farocki reviewed them (Farocki 1986) and made a short television programme (Schlagworte, Schlagbilder, 1986), discussing the front image of the tabloid BILD with the philosopher. Flusser’s influence is also noticeable in As You See (1986), where the history of calculated images is traced back to the Jacquard loom and its simultaneous combination of image production and automation. What defines these images is that they are composite images made up from single, discrete entities (grain, dots, lines, pixels). More than by their concreteness and their functional character, they are characterised by their formal composition. Flusser describes them as follows: In fact, the situation disintegrates into a swarm of particles and quanta, and the writing subject into a swarm of bits and bytes, moments of decision, and molecules of action. What remains are particles without dimension that can be neither grasped nor represented nor understood. They are inaccessible to hands, eyes, or fingers. But they can be calculated (‘pebbles’) and can, by means of special apparatuses equipped with keys, be computed. The gesture of tapping with the fingertips on the keys of an apparatus can be called ‘calculate and compute’. It makes mosaic-​ like combinations of particles possible, technical images, a computed universe in which particles are assembled into visible images. (Flusser 2011, 10)

Contrasting both types of images, Flusser goes on to write: ‘The difference between traditional and technical images, then, would be this: the first are observations of objects, the second computations of concepts’ (10). For Flusser, the era of the technical image began with photography, and his account of the increasing ubiquity of ‘technical images’ reads rather apocalyptically at times. Farocki does not share this

53

Working images

anthropological scepticism. Again, just as in his reference to Barthes, he stresses the ambiguity of the operational character of the images: There is, indeed, a shift from the concrete ‘observation of objects’ to a more abstract ‘computation of concepts’, but this development does not give rise to pessimism, since it bears as many opportunities as risks. This becomes clear when we look at a third theoretical context that Farocki got involved with in the second half of the 1990s and that quite explicitly fed into his notion of the operational image. In his attempt to join forces with Friedrich Kittler and researchers at the ‘Bild Schrift Zahl’ project at Humboldt University Berlin,5 Farocki tried to find an environment between academia, film production and contemporary arts. The Suchbilder conference at Kunst-​Werke Berlin in 2001 bore witness to this attempt, but it also revealed the limits of combining hermeneutic approaches to film history and other image archives with the dawning age of purely image-​based forms of image retrieval and pattern recognition (Ernst, Heidenreich and Holl 2003). The central question of the conference was, to what extent was it possible to address images not by searching with the means of linguistic terms, but by addressing purely visual similarities –​similarities in shapes, colour, or movement, for instance. A  group of programmers, theorists and artists investigated the passages ‘between algorithms and archives’ (as the subtitle of the accompanying publication stated). In Claus Pias’s words: ‘Is it possible to sort images with the help of images, and not by “supplementing” texts?’ (Pias 2003, 99). In his contribution to the Suchbilder volume, Pias emphasises the crucial differences between the prospective capacities of computer-​generated imagery and the retrospective process of addressing, sorting and displaying existing images from the past. According to Pias, a project like Aby Warburg’s notorious Mnemosyne Atlas –​an example that is often evoked as a model for computerised methods of image retrieval (see Mitchell, this volume) –​has little to offer for the endeavour of algorithmic searches. Its juxtapositions and diagrammatic displays mostly rely on criteria that are not given in their visual and formal properties. What can be computed and calculated are, as Pias reminds us, elements present and visible in the image, not the historical or contextual subtexts that are located elsewhere –​be it in cultural connotations or in associations generated by the person who is in charge of the act of comparison. The ‘operational’ approach to the image, by contrast, is based on purely formal criteria, devoid of historical or social contextualisation.6 This is a severe restriction, and it quite clearly separates the images that Farocki scrutinises from his own idiosyncratic and surprising methods of searching, sorting and assembling. Barthes’s ‘operational language’, Flusser’s ‘techno-​images’ and the brief flirtation with a computer-​aided ‘Bildwissenschaft’ delineate three important theoretical backgrounds for Farocki’s project of an investigation of operational images. However, Farocki is primarily a filmmaker and video artist, not a theoretician, even if his films can productively be characterised as contributions to a theoretical discourse in their own right.7 It is therefore important to emphasise what kinds

53

54

54

Image operations

of filmic operations Farocki has used to contribute to the research of operational images. If we try to pinpoint one recurring interest that has preoccupied Farocki both in his filmmaking and his theoretical efforts, it is the question of comparing images. Just like Vertov, Sergei Eisenstein, Jean-​Luc Godard and other filmmaker/​theoreticians, he did not get tired of investigating the epistemic potential of images. What genuine kind of knowledge do images mobilise? Is there an epistemic realm that escapes the grasp of words and concepts? Among the tools to approach these questions, montage has remained of paramount importance.8 Farocki’s essayistic films since the mid-​1980s dealt already with an array of different material –​photographs, documents, voice-​over –​to catalyse abstract concepts from concrete material, but they stuck to a regime of linear succession. His installations since 1995 have led him to explore a different mode of montage, which he referred to as ‘soft montage’. Reflecting his experience of Godard’s Numéro Deux (1975), but also Andy Warhol’s work with image repetition and juxtaposition  –​works that repeatedly juxtapose two images and leave us no choice but to make sense of their relation –​the majority of Farocki’s installations consists of two image tracks that are displayed side by side. Theorising this practice, he has described the arrangement as follows: There is succession as well as simultaneity in a double projection, the relationship of an image to the one that follows as well as the one beside it; a relationship to the preceding as well as to the concurrent one. Imagine three double bonds jumping back and forth between the six carbon atoms of a benzene ring; I envisage the same ambiguity in the relationship of an element in an image track to the one succeeding and accompanying it. (Farocki 2009, 70)

Farocki has expressed his hope that this confrontation of images produces a different rhetorical effect than the linear succession of images, ‘more trial, less assertion. Equivocality can be attained with the simplest means’ (2009, 73). It is worth noting that Farocki’s use of ‘soft montage’ runs parallel to his exploration of operational images –​the potentialities of a spatial arrangement of two (or, in some cases, more) images provided the adequate dispositif to deal with this material. From this vantage point, ‘soft montage’ is a means of confronting the mathematical process of pattern recognition with a second, hermeneutical kind of comparison by diagrammatically juxtaposing two image tracks. If pattern recognition needs to produce univocal results, the ‘soft montage’ of two images side by side introduces ambiguity and doubt. Instead of deciding between two alternatives, it keeps things in a balance, allows the formulation of hypotheses rather than rigid statements. This is inherently linked to a structural correspondence: The double image of the installation display duplicates the internal double structure of the operational image itself, which can only perform its task as a bifurcated, double image.9 It exists only as a process of permanent comparison in which a present image is evaluated against an immense amount of image-​data stored in the computer (as in GPS navigation, in iris scanning, in every kind of pattern recognition). It is this structure that Farocki describes when he says:

55

Working images The key to ‘intelligent weapons’ is image processing. Images of the terrain it is to traverse are stored in a rocket. During its flight, it photographs the terrain below and compares the two images, the goal image and the actual image, as it were. The idea of working with two image tracks to illustrate the process of comparing performed by the software is an obvious corollary. (Farocki and Dziewior 2011, 210)

What the operational image does is that it performs work. It is, as I indicated earlier, etymologically and literally speaking a ‘working image’. Since it is permanently engaged in confronting different images (therefore, doing ‘montage’), it can also be addressed as a protagonist in the history of labour. Since his Marxist Lehrfilme zur politischen Ökonomie (Instructional Films on Political Economy), co-​directed by Hartmut Bitomsky in the early 1970s,10 Farocki’s films have investigated the history as well as the increasing obsolescence of human labour, tracing it from the 1930s alliance between German fascism and the heavy industry, via the mechanical automatisation of manual work to the substitution of vision by machines and algorithms. This is another reason why the operational image has preoccupied Farocki so continuously. Subsequent to the increasing replacement of hands by robots and machines in industrial production, the operational image is a key player in today’s replacement of the eye. In it, questions of labour and questions of the image cannot be dissociated. For a documentary filmmaker, i.e. someone concerned with registering the visible, this is challenging. It forces him to deal with things that escape the visible realm to an ever-​greater extent. It becomes his task to extract images from processes that are no longer destined to be watched:  ‘Not for edification, not for reflection.’ Present work processes, just like hi-​tech military operations, can no longer be analysed by close observation, since their most important aspects have drifted into a sphere of non-​visibility (see Holert, this volume).11 Since it is a crucial part of industrial production as well as of military operations, the operational image offers the possibility to think about the relations between the two fields; this is an aspect that the second instalment of Eye/​Machine (2000–​3) addresses more explicitly when it starts with the inter-​title:  ‘There must be a connection between production and destruction.’ Again, this updates an argument that was already present in Farocki’s seminal Images of the World and the Inscription of War, made in 1988, where aerial photographs of Auschwitz offered a way to reflect on the interplay between production and destruction. The material destruction and the extinction of millions of human existences are inherently linked to their visual preservation in the image. ‘Preserving photograph, the destroying bomb, these two now press together’, the voice-​over states at one point. Yet another way of thinking about operational images is to look at their effects. Not only do they work, but they also have a strong impact –​they produce and destroy, they guide military and non-​military vehicles, perform an ever-​growing number of multiple tasks. In this capacity to ‘act’, they could be called the cynical inheritors of the aims and hopes that political or educational filmmaking has always fostered.12 Instructional films or agit-​prop cinema in the Brechtian

55

56

56

Image operations

tradition are explicitly directed against notions of artistic autonomy and aestheticism. Farocki’s early films in particular provide ample evidence that he was hoping for and counting on this performative effect. A successful political film would have to have an impact and generate repercussions in its social and political context. Farocki’s later work is much less self-​assured about these claims. Indeed, installations like Eye/​Machine have provoked the objection that they lack a political position and give in to the fascination with what is technically feasible. To me, it seems that this is rather a matter of a shifted focus:  When the overtly functional, the rhetoric of directness and impact has been usurped by machines and algorithms, the political filmmaker, in his approach to images, needs to resort to more subtle, ambiguous strategies. In his persistent consideration of specific operational images, Farocki raises paradigmatic questions that transcend his work:  what effects do these images have, apart from the processes that they are immediately steering? To what position do they bring the observer? Many operational images have the purpose of putting a distance between the event and its potential initiator. They allow targets to be bombed from thousands of miles from the combat zone without risking the aggressor’s life;13 a city’s sewer’s to be checked without getting your hands wet and dirty; surgery to be performed without having to cut patients open. By doing so, the relation between proximity and distance has considerably changed. The psychological effect –​or translated into aesthetic terms: issues of empathy and distanciation –​becomes complicated. The images are close at hand and often convey a real-​time experience, but the relation to the event remains vague and abstract. If the event and its trigger are temporally synchronised but spatially dissociated, this also forces us to rethink agency and authorship (Who ‘makes’ these images? Where does a weapon start and where does it end?). Which element of the process is to be held responsible? Eye/​Machine (2000–​3) focuses on the machine aspect of military warfare that increasingly replaces the human subject and its agency. ‘For the next step of rationalization, do there have to be future wars?’, an inter-​title in Eye/​Machine II reads. Despite this vague hope that future wars might completely cancel the soldier’s body from the military equation, Farocki is by no means claiming that the question of the human body becomes obsolete. In Serious Games, a cycle of four installations made between 2009 and 2010, the post-​human scenario of vision machines fighting amongst themselves is confronted with its verso: the human soldier and his body make their return.14 What Farocki shows us in Serious Games is how combat situations are first anticipated using simulation software, and how the soldiers are later, after their return with various kinds of ‘post-​traumatic stress syndrome’, treated therapeutically to cope with the effects. In both cases, at both stages and with opposing intentions (training versus therapy, future versus past, inflicting violence versus being subjected to mental and bodily injuries), the software strikingly resembles computer games familiar from the entertainment industry. Just like the operational images in Eye/​Machine, these images are meant to fulfil a function –​to simulate military training by delegating it to a virtual battlefield, to

57

Working images

Figure 3  Harun Farocki, Inextinguishable Fire, 16mm film, 1969

address a trauma by restaging the situation virtually. But in this case, the images belong to a regime of simulation rather than of real-​time operation. These images need the human since they are explicitly designed for him or her as a user, they create a ‘Virtual Iraq’ (as the software is called) just as games create virtual playgrounds and scenarios for the player.15 What Farocki’s work teaches us is that the notion of the operational image does not exist in the singular, but needs to be unfolded and transformed into an array of different concepts. To arrive at a more nuanced perspective on the operational image (not only in Farocki), it will be necessary to distinguish between different degrees of operationality. A rough sketch would include three different levels, proceeding from the technical to the non-​technical, from algorithms to various kinds of image generation, from the purely formal to the contextual. (1) A narrow definition of the operational image restricts the term to images that are purely functional and can only be thought of as elements of a technical process (pattern recognition that automatically guides robots, cars or missiles). On this level, it would indeed no longer be justified to speak of images, since the visual presentation of the data is a mere epiphenomenon of processes of calculation. Images of this kind are closely linked to the digital, since they involve computation and algorithms. (2) Less rigorously delimiting the spectrum of operational images means including a wider array of images that are instrumental to either establish or facilitate a military or non-​military operation. On this level, we can think of visually

57

58

58

Image operations

Figure 4  Harun Farocki, Inextinguishable Fire, 16mm film, 1969

aided guiding devices for missiles, images as an element of visual remote controlling (e.g. of drones), the simulation software depicted in Serious Games and similar technical applications. In terms of their media origin, operational images of this category can be electronic or film images, like the animated films explaining the function of guided missiles that the German military produced in the 1940s and that Farocki quotes in Eye/​Machine. (3) Expanding the definition and enlarging the circle of operational images even further would lead to the inclusion of all kinds of images that actively initiate processes and actions, be they technical or non-​technical, produced by humans or machines. This is where techniques like montage or voice-​over commentary come in as instruments to inject a sense of agency that the images in themselves would not have. ‘Operational’ becomes synonymous with performative, a theory of the image would need to be reformulated as a general theory of the ‘Bildakt’ (Bredekamp 2010).16 Eye/​Machine (2000–​3) was made at a time when mobile phones did not include cameras and were far from being the miniaturised heavy-​duty computers that they are today. Technologically, much has changed since then. Pattern recognition has become a default mode of software, and almost everybody carries his or her pocket-​size vision machine around. In an era of ubiquitous computing, the question becomes, from which position is it possible to envision strategies of counter-​operationality? How can the research undertaken in military and industrial laboratories be countered by applying techniques of data-​mining and surveillance technologies for the purposes of a counter-​forensic project?17

59

Working images

In almost five decades spanning the period from the mid-​sixties to his sudden death in 2014, Farocki has been addressing all three modes and levels of operationality sketched above. Indeed, we could think of large parts of his work as a sustained reflection on the operational potential of images. To make a case for this, let me come back to the beginning of Farocki’s career as a filmmaker. The self-​ inflicted cigarette burn on his wrist marks the opening of Inextinguishable Fire in 1969, and it remains an astonishing and powerful gesture. ‘How can we show you napalm in action?’, Farocki asks: And how can we show you the injuries caused by napalm? If we show you pictures of napalm burns, you’ll close your eyes. First you’ll close your eyes to the pictures. Then you’ll close your eyes to the memory. Then you’ll close your eyes to the facts. Then you’ll close your eyes to the entire context. If we show you a person with napalm burns, we’ll hurt your feelings. If we hurt your feelings, you’ll feel as if we’ve tried napalm out on you, at your expense. We can give you only a hint of an idea of how napalm works. (Farocki, Inextinguishable Fire, 1969)

It is almost uncanny to see that, right from the start, in Farocki’s first major film made forty-​eight years ago, weapons, images and questions of distance and ­proximity enter into a complicated relation. Distant victims, far away in Vietnam, are killed, and Farocki tries to come up with an image that can hint at this without either exploiting the situation or rendering it harmless. He resorts to the gesture of hurting himself, of retranslating the anonymous and abstract deaths into a concrete and personal injury. By doing so, he turns his own body into a powerful image. This is not a representation, it is not exactly a ­metaphor, but an image that has an effect. Perhaps we should think of it as an act of counter-​violence. This act, too, produces an image, which performs a certain kind of work. It is a traditional, ‘hand-​made’ image, but also, in its own way, an operational image of sorts.

Notes 1 In writings about Farocki, the term ‘operative Bilder’ is sometimes translated as ‘operative images’, sometimes as ‘operational images.’ In this chapter, I use the word ‘operational’. 2 In an illuminating essay on Trevor Paglen and Harun Farocki, Jimena Canales has reminded us that ‘Operational Art’ is a key term in the vocabulary of the US military. She quotes from the Field Manual 100–​5 (1993), which gives the following definition: ‘In its simplest expression, operational art determines when, where, and for what purpose major forces will fight. It governs the deployment of those forces, their commitments to or withdrawal from battle, and the sequencing of successive battles and major operations to attain major objectives’ (Department of the Army 2003, 6–​2; see Canales 2014, 37–​54). 3 Farocki has explicitly related his project of dealing with machine vision to Dziga Vertov’s ‘Kino Eye’ in the installation Counter-​Music (2004). Hal Foster has emphasised this continuity, but also the crucial difference between the two approaches: ‘In this way Farocki intimates that a new “robo eye” is in place, one that, unlike the “kino eye” celebrated by modernists like Dziga Vertov, does not extend the human prosthetically so much as it replaces the human robotically’ (Foster 2004, 160).

59

60

60

Image operations 4 In one of the very last texts written before his death in summer 2014 (and published posthumously), Farocki has come back to Barthes’s definition:  ‘Roland Barthes postulated an operative language, one that does not speak about things but speaks things themselves. The lumberjack would speak the tree. That’s a wonderful idea, even if it’s certainly not true that tools are “not mythological”, as Barthes would have said’ (Farocki 2014a, 66). 5 For a project description (in German) see www.kulturtechnik.hu-​berlin.de/​content/​ theorie-​und-​geschichte-​der-​kulturtechniken (accessed 19 January 2015). 6 As Tom Holert has pointed out, the phantasm of a purely algorithmic search isolates the question of the image from all political and social contexts to create a ‘post-​political, post-​ideological, post-​semantic, post-​social etc. process of transforming critique into programming’ (Holert 2003, 141). 7 This is an argument that I have developed at greater length in my book on Farocki and Jean-​Luc Godard (Pantenburg 2015). 8 Recently, Georges Didi-​Huberman has devoted a large part of his book on remontage to Farocki’s work (Didi-​Huberman 2014). 9 Here, Farocki’s notion is quite close to what has recently been described as ‘the differential image’ (Hoel and Lindseth 2014). 10 For a discussion of these films, The Division of all Days (1970) and Something Self Explanatory (15×) (1971), see Holert 2009. 11 To a certain extent, this problem radicalises Brecht’s often-​quoted remark that a photograph of the AEG factory reveals nothing about capitalism since the crucial things have shifted into the realm of the functional. 12 Around 1970, Farocki was interested in combining contemporary approaches to political film with current research in educational tools and cybernetics. See the Xeroxed brochure Kapital im Klassenzimmer (n.d., c. 1970) and Tom Holert’s discussion of this phase in Farocki’s work (Holert 2009). 13 This is the aspect from which Grégoire Chamayou develops his Theory of the Drone (Chamayou 2015). 14 This is why Pasi Väliaho discusses Farocki’s Serious Games in the context of bio-​politics and ‘operational screens’ (Väliaho 2014, 61–​88). 15 For a more extended discussion of Serious Games see Farocki 2014b and Blümlinger 2011. 16 In the discussion of an earlier version of this text, Jens Schröter argued that rather than being an exception the operational image is the norm today. Illustrations in the menu at a Chinese restaurant, he proposed, are also ‘operational’ since they allow us to order our meal and thus initiate an act. 17 See Eyal Weizman and Thomas Keenan’s project of a forensic aesthetics whose spectrum was showcased in the ‘Forensis’ exhibition (15 March to 5 May 2014, Berlin, Haus der Kulturen der Welt). See the accompanying publication (Forensic Architecture 2014) and earlier publications such as Keenan and Weizman 2012.

References Barthes, Roland. 1972 [1957]. Mythologies. Translated by Annette Lavers. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Blümlinger, Christa. 2011. ‘War as a Challenge to Digital Realism.’ In Harun Farocki: Soft Montages, edited by Yilmaz Dziewior, 34–​47. Bregenz: KUB. Bredekamp, Horst. 2010. Theorie des Bildakts. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

61

Working images Canales, Jimena. 2014. ‘Operational Art.’ In Visibility Machines: Trevor Paglen and Harun Farocki, edited by Niels van Tomme, 37–​54. Baltimore: University of Maryland Baltimore County. Chamayou, Grégoire. 2015. A Theory of the Drone. New York: The New Press. Department of the Army. 1993. FM 100–​5. Operations. Washington, DC:  Headquarters, Department of the Army. Accessed 16 January 2015. www.fs.fed.us/​fire/​doctrine/​genesis_​and_​evolution/​source_​materials/​FM-​100-​5_​operations.pdf. Didi-​Huberman, Georges. 2014. Remontagen der erlittenen Zeit: Das Auge der Geschichte II. Translated by Markus Sedlaczek. Paderborn: Fink. Ernst, Wolfgang, Stefan Heidenreich and Ute Holl, eds. 2003. Suchbilder:  Visuelle Kultur zwischen Algorithmen und Archiven. Berlin: Kadmos. Farocki, Harun. 1965a. ‘Der tägliche Mythos.’ [Review of Mythen des Alltags, by Roland Barthes, translated by Helmut Scheffel] Spandauer Volksblatt, 16 May, 22. Farocki, Harun. 1965b. ‘Einf[ührung]: “Mythen des Alltags” von Roland Barthes.’ In Thema [Reihe], by Lore Ditzen, radio broadcast, 26 June. Freies Berlin [typescript]. Farocki, Harun. 1986. ‘Das Universum ist leer: Zu Vilèm Flussers Philosophie der technischen Bilder.’ Falter 12: 40. Farocki, Harun. 2004. ‘Phantom Images.’ Public 29: 12–​22. Farocki, Harun. 2009. ‘Cross Influence/​ Soft Montage.’ In Harun Farocki:  Against What? Against Whom?, edited by Antje Ehmann and Kodwo Eshun, 69–​74. London: Koenig Books. Farocki, Harun. 2014a. ‘On Image Questions: Harun Farocki Responds to Texte zur Kunst.’ Texte zur Kunst 94: 62–​7. Farocki, Harun. 2014b. ‘Serious Games.’ In Visibility Machines: Trevor Paglen and Harun Farocki, edited by Niels van Tomme, 113–​ 20. Baltimore:  University of Maryland Baltimore County. Farocki, Harun, and Yilmaz Dziewior. 2011. ‘Conversation, October 23, 2010, Kunsthaus Bregenz.’ In Harun Farocki:  Soft Montages, edited by Yilmaz Dziewior, 204–​ 26. Bregenz: KUB. Flusser, Vilém. 2011 [1985]. Into the Universe of Technical Images. Translated by Nancy N. Roth. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press. Forensic Architecture, ed. 2014. Forensis:  The Architecture of Public Truth. Berlin: Sternberg Press. Foster, Hal. 2004. ‘Vision Quest:  The Cinema of Harun Farocki.’ Artforum November: 156–​61, 250. Hoel, Aud Sissel, and Frank Lindseth. 2014. ‘Differential Interventions: Images as Operative Tools.’ The New Everyday:  A  MediaCommons Project, 24 January. Accessed 12 June 2016. http://​mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/​tne/​pieces/​differential-​interventions​images-​operative-​tools-​2. Holert, Tom. 2003. ‘Vorbeihuschende Bilder.’ In Suchbilder:  Visuelle Kultur zwischen Algorithmen und Archiven, edited by Wolfgang Ernst, Stefan Heidenreich and Ute Holl, 134–​43, 172–​3 (notes). Berlin: Kadmos. Holert, Tom. 2009. ‘Tabular Images: On The Division of all Days (1970) and Something Self Explanatory (15×) (1971).’ In Harun Farocki: Against What? Against Whom?, edited by Antje Ehmann and Kodwo Eshun, 75–​92. London: Koenig Books. Keenan, Thomas, and Eyal Weizman. 2012. Mengele’s Skull:  The Advent of a Forensic Aesthetics. Berlin: Sternberg Press. Pantenburg, Volker. 2015. Farocki/​Godard:  Film as Theory. Amsterdam:  Amsterdam University Press.

61

62

62

Image operations Pias, Claus. 2003. ‘Ordnen, was nicht zu sehen ist.’ In Suchbilder: Visuelle Kultur zwischen Algorithmen und Archiven, edited by Wolfgang Ernst, Stefan Heidenreich and Ute Holl, 99–​108, 168–​9 (notes). Berlin: Kadmos. Väliaho, Pasi. 2014. Biopolitical Screens: Image, Power, and the Neoliberal Brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Films and video works As You See, directed by Harun Farocki. Germany, 1986, 16mm, b/​w and col., 72 min. Counter-​Music, double channel video installation, directed by Harun Farocki. Germany, 2004, col., 23 min. Eye/​Machine, double channel video installation in three parts, directed by Harun Farocki. Germany, 2000–​3, col., 23 min., 15 min. and 23 min. Images of the World and the Inscription of War, directed by Harun Farocki. Germany, 1988, 16 mm, b/​w and col., 75 min. Inextinguishable Fire, directed by Harun Farocki. Germany, 1969, 16mm, b/​w, 25 min. Schlagworte, Schlagbilder:  Ein Gespräch mit Vilém Flusser, directed by Harun Farocki. Germany, 1986, video (1 inch), col., 13 min. Serious Games, double channel video installation in four parts, directed by Harun Farocki. Germany, 2009–​10, col., 8 min, 7 min., 20 min. and 8 min.

63

Affective image operations Jens Eder1

Images enter the interactional networks of political conflict in various ways. Often, they motivate political action by evoking emotions and affects. This is evident, for instance, in visual propaganda, images of terror, donation campaigns or activist videos like Kony2012. Aiming to mobilise a movement against a brutal warlord, the documentary made calculated use of cinematic techniques to maximise viewers’ emotional responses. It went viral on social media platforms and was soon watched more than 100 million times. The film moved its audience to donate about $20 million, led to political resolutions, contributed to US support of the Ugandan army and caused a critical debate (Engelhardt and Jansz 2014). Countless other images also aim at being effective by being affective. This chapter explores how they do that and offers some conceptual tools for analysing the affective and political force of still and moving images. To begin with, we can distinguish between cold and hot image operations. ‘Cold’ images function independently of affective responses. They are processed by machines in missile guidance or industrial production (Pantenburg, this volume), serve as devices of surveillance or interactive simulation or provide information in military reports and other ‘discourses of sobriety’ governed by emotion control (Nichols 1991, 3–​4). In contrast, ‘hot’ image operations crucially depend on the affective force of images. They aim to trigger intense affective responses as motors of action in the general public, political factions or powerful individuals. In political conflict such operations are performed by governments, corporations, religious institutions, NGOs, political movements or individual activists, and their forms are manifold. Witness videos cause outrage, visual campaigns evoke compassion, pictures of martyrs are revered, military advertisements create desire for drones and images of terror raise painful dilemmas (see the chapters by Christensen, Ghosh, Holert, Klonk, and Straub in this volume). In all those cases, images have indispensable affective functions, their producers follow affective strategies and their audiences are affectively motivated to perform political actions such as donating, petitioning, protesting, legislating or attacking adversaries. Conversely, the lack of collective action

4

64

64

Image operations

in relation to major political problems like climate change is often related to a lack of emotion. Various kinds of affective image operations seem omnipresent, but there is surprisingly little research and even less systematic theory about them. With few exceptions (e.g. Hoskins and O’Loughlin 2010), the literature either consists in specific case studies or confines itself to only one side of the triangular relation between politics, images and affects. The basic questions are still unanswered: how are images used in political conflict to cause events by evoking affects? What types of affective image operations can be distinguished? What kinds of images are used, by whom, and with what effects, opportunities and dangers? Drawing on interdisciplinary research and summarising thoughts from a new book (Eder forthcoming), this chapter suggests some conceptual differentiations that I hope will be useful for further investigations. It starts by discussing what emotions and affects are and how they are related to political action, then turns to the question of how images trigger emotions and finally brings both topics together by identifying some frequent types of affective image operations which are illustrated with brief case studies of political web videos.

Emotion and affect in political conflict In recent interdisciplinary research, a widespread consensus has emerged to understand emotions as multi-​layered processes defined by ‘multiple elements coming together to form a distinctive Gestalt’ (Cowie, Sussman and Ben-​Ze’ev 2011, 14). More specifically, many agree that affective processes are characterised by the coordination of conscious or pre-​conscious stimulus appraisals, bodily processes, action tendencies, expressive and instrumental behaviour and subjective feelings (see Moors 2009). Imagine, for example, Occupy activists reacting to the violent dissolution of their protest camp: they perceive that event as a brutal injustice (appraisal), their adrenaline level rises (bodily process), they want to defend the camp (action tendency), they get up and shout (expressive behaviour) and experience a ‘hot’, ‘explosive’ feeling. Taken together, this may be called moral outrage. In the following, I  use the terms ‘emotion’ and ‘affect’ synonymously to include any phenomenon that shows such a coordination of concern-​based stimulus appraisals, bodily arousal, subjective feelings, motivational and behavioural tendencies. Different emotions are characterised by the specific profiles and interactions of their layers that develop over time: sense stimulus perceptions lead to conscious thoughts; bodily arousal increases; action tendencies change from avoidance to approach; emotional episodes crystallise into long-​ term affective dispositions. If emotions are defined in this way, they can range from automatic startle responses to prototypical joy or fear and to complex phenomena like guilt.

65

Affective image operations

By following this broad working definition, I deliberately avoid rigid separations like those between primary and secondary emotions or between ‘representational’ emotions and ‘non-​representational’ affects (e.g. Thrift 2008, 171–​97). Such distinctions may be helpful when dealing with specific questions, but too often they separate phenomena that are closely related, making it difficult to examine their interconnections. It seems more productive to understand concepts of affective phenomena in a prototypical manner, i.e. as tools for roughly singling out certain areas of a multi-​dimensional field wherein the dimensions –​intentional focus, valence, duration, intensity, consciousness, control, culture dependence, etc. –​are mostly matters of degree. While emotions are often thought to be purely private, research indicates the opposite  –​they are actually highly intersubjective. A  wide range of factors contribute to making different people experience similar emotions, including common bodily structures grounding reaction tendencies like the startle response or somatic empathy (Turner and Stets 2005, 4–​9; Gallese and Guerra 2012), general appraisal factors like novelty (Moors 2009), cross-​cultural moral intuitions (Haidt and Kesebir 2010), emotion concepts and norms of cultures (Reddy 2001) or more specific ‘emotional communities’ (Rosenwein 2006), identities and concerns of social groups (Smith and Mackie 2008), gendered rules for feeling and expressing emotions (Hochschild 1983), shared life experiences and personality structures (Hogan 2003, 239–​64) and modes of media reception (Suckfüll 2013). These intersubjective dispositions contribute to the fact that media audiences and social groups regularly develop emotions that are collective, shared, congruent or interdependent. Collective emotions emerge in three interconnected processes (von Scheve and Ismer 2013). People with similar dispositions respond similarly to similar situations, even if they are disconnected from each other. However, they may also become mutually aware of their feelings towards causes or groups they all identify with. For example, when activists realise that they all are angry about the dissolution of their camp, this realisation may reinforce their anger and evoke feelings of solidarity. Moreover, they may respond with emotional contagion to each other’s bodily expressions of anger, and this may reciprocally intensify their feelings. The definition of affects and emotions as multi-​layered, multi-​dimensional, intersubjective and often collective has significant consequences for understanding image operations in political conflicts. Among other things, it implies that emotions can be elicited by partly intersubjective perceptions and interpretations of images, are closely connected to thought and action and pervade everyday life and politics. Recent work in political sociology stresses that emotions are ‘central to our understanding of the social and political world. They are important at all levels, from international relations and the global political system, through nation states and national political parties, to social movements and groups in civil society’ (Clarke, Hoggett and Thompson 2006, 8–​9). In all these political contexts,

65

66

66

Image operations

most emotions are social, resulting ‘from real, anticipated, recollected, or imagined outcomes of social relationships’ in terms of power and status (Kemper 1978, 43). Many are also moral, governed by concerns about care, fairness, loyalty, authority or purity (Haidt and Kesebir 2010, 41). Political emotions, among them complex experiences like ‘civic love’ (Nussbaum 2013), include social and moral emotions caused by interrelations between and inside of groups. Between those groups and their individual members, certain patterns of conflict and emotion regularly recur. When conflicting parties confront each other, they are supported by allies and helpers, observed by witnesses, media and audiences, and are driven by adversarial emotions like hate, fear, envy, contempt and anger. Empathy with opponents is blocked and sympathetic emotions for the in-​group intensify. Conflicting actions evoke rage, euphoria and the admiration of ‘heroes’ or condemnation of ‘traitors’. The successful feel triumph and relief; the defeated struggle with despair or shame. Both sides may be traumatised and experience grief and guilt. Allies and observers share some of those feelings with lesser intensity, but also develop witness emotions like compassion. In this general structure of conflict, many more subtle and intricate affects develop that are often related to affective image operations with highly specific structures (see the last part of this chapter). Political-​affective interactions are deeply interwoven with visual communication. Images in various media enable, form, complement or modify political action by evoking emotions. They form shared emotional standards (Hutchinson and Bleiker 2014), operate as collective stimuli in political situations and symbolise group concerns. They take part in conflicts by triggering emotions in the conflicting parties, their elites and allies, in external observers and the general public. They fuel or temper adversarial emotions, enthuse or frighten supporters, keep reciprocal affects in groups alive, suppress or foster feelings of guilt or shame, block or facilitate empathy with opponents and victims. They focus on moral issues, on concerns and expressions of social groups, on their gain and loss of power and status. In doing so, images often trigger collective situations saturated with group feelings, affective contagion and affective scripts for possible action. More specifically, images select, intensify, combine and frame stimuli for affective responses, define targets of shared emotions, make group members aware that they share them and show bodily and facial expressions in visual proximity. Through all of the above-​mentioned reactions, they influence the development of political events.

Images and emotions But how exactly do images evoke political emotions? Their affective force is connected to the visual potentials mentioned in the Introduction to this book: the mimetic resemblance of images to visual aspects of reality enables easy recognition, spontaneous attention, crossing of language barriers, impressions of

67

Affective image operations

‘presence’ and direct evidence. Compared to words, images are processed faster, categorised more efficiently and remembered better (Grabe and Bucy 2009, 12; Bruce, Green and Georgeson 2014). In verbal communication, affective stimuli have to be imagined; in visual communication, they can be sensually, synaesthetically and kinaesthetically perceived, triggering affects in faster, stronger and more direct ways. Subcortical affective processes feed into conscious experiences and foster also the symbolic potential of images to condense complex, abstract information into vivid, polysemous signs (Coëgnarts and Kravanja 2012). Moreover, images offer interactive potentials: still pictures freeze moments for contemplation, moving pictures ‘transport’ viewers into represented worlds, digital simulations enable real-​time interactions with virtual environments. All this enhances their affective power. To analyse affective image operations, it is helpful to consider images as constellations of affective cues, of material or semiotic elements with the potential of intersubjectively eliciting affect (Smith 2003). These cues are of very different kinds, including represented bodies, minds, actions, arguments, colours or patterns. The specific constellation of affective cues, unfolding in space and time, may be called the affective structure of the image. Interdisciplinary comparison of relevant theories suggests that the structure of images has four general layers, corresponding to the development of viewers’ perceptual and cognitive processes when contemplating pictures or watching films (Eder 2008, forthcoming): (1) Forms:  The basic, mostly preconscious perception of visual forms, colours, textures, patterns, rhythms, in films as well as movements and sounds, triggers perceptual affects and moods. This level of sensual, often cross-​modal or synaesthetic experiences is addressed when we speak of ‘sad’ hues, ‘beautiful’ forms, ‘unpleasant’ textures, ‘unbalanced’ compositions, ‘nervous’ rhythms, etc. It dominates in abstract images and grounds the following layers of experiencing representational images. (2) Worlds: The perception and imaginative reconstruction of a represented world (which may be factual or fictional) evokes a whole range of representational or diegetic emotions: desires for knowledge, control and orientation in time and space; sympathy, antipathy or empathy with represented persons and groups; emotional side-​taking in their conflicts; curiosity, suspense and surprise about actions and events; situational feelings of shock, hope, fear, joy, etc. This is also the field of affective contagion by facial and bodily expressions; of para-​social interactions with political actors; of storytelling and emotional ‘paradigm scenarios’ (de Sousa 1987). Such emotions crucially depend on the perspective the image takes on the world. (3) Meanings:  Viewers regularly search images, their forms and worlds, for explicit messages or implicit meanings of a higher-​level, more abstract or indirect kind. Tapping their sociocultural and iconological knowledge, viewers identify themes, comprehend general messages and arguments or interpret

67

68

68

Image operations

symbols, metaphors, tropes or allusions –​elements of the represented world that express or stand for something else. These cognitive activities evoke thematic emotions related to the viewers’ own identities, world views and experiences. Meanings are felt; they ‘pulse through our bodies in order to guide and motivate action’ (Jasper 2014, 41). Visual metaphors are embodied and affective, political symbols like flags elicit enthusiasm or outrage. (4) Reflections:  Beyond intended meanings, viewers often reflect on actual or possible practices and contexts images are involved in: They admire the aesthetic design of images or criticise their lack of authenticity. They reflect on their own responses and feel meta-​emotions like pride about their ability to empathise. They scrutinise image-​makers’ intentions and anticipate impacts on other audiences (moderate Muslims, for instance, abhor Islamist terrorists when watching their videos). Such affective responses may be called reflective or communicative emotions, as they presuppose reflections about visual communication, its causes and consequences. These emotions may be evoked by the forms, worlds and meanings of an image, but also by further cues of contextual and paratextual information such as titles, captions, credits, self-​references, etc. These four layers form a rough grid for analysing the affective potentials of images. For each layer, the specific system of affective cues can be described in more detail by using aesthetic, iconographic, rhetorical, narratological and other concepts. Explaining viewers’ responses presupposes further assumptions about their intersubjective dispositions (see above). However, taking all four layers of the affective structure into account is a necessary first step for adequate analyses. To ignore certain layers (for instance, forms or reflections) is problematic, because the layers are closely interrelated. For instance, viewers watching a documentary about Irom Sharmila (see Ghosh, this volume) can only interpret her as a symbol of Manipur (layer 3) after they have recognised the female hunger striker in the represented world (layer 2), and they can only recognise her after perceiving the moving pictures and sounds representing her (layer 1). Moreover, the layers are in constant interaction with each other and viewers’ emotional episodes evolve across all of them. Actions such as watching films or contemplating photographs comprise a structured temporal flow of experiences where cues on each level interact: a shocking action, for instance, may be stressed by shocking forms or downplayed by gentle ones. The affective structures of images resemble physical force fields whose effects result from interactions of various vectors. For these as well as other reasons, those affective potentials are all but straightforward. For instance, images of terror aim to evoke very different emotions in several audiences at once: shock, horror and anxiety in the enemy’s public; pleasurable feelings of power, pride and malicious glee among the perpetrators and their followers; submissive admiration in rivalling factions; and outrage among

69

Affective image operations

the adversary’s elites. Moreover, the affective potentials of images are differently realised in different contexts, and viewers’ actual responses often diverge significantly from those intended by the image-​makers. Adapting the terminology of Stuart Hall (1980), we may speak of dominant, negotiated and oppositional affects. Viewers may react, for instance, with ridicule to terror videos or with disgust to euphoric propaganda. The probability that actual affects diverge increases with each layer of the affect structure, because the underlying perceptual-​cognitive processes become more complex and less intersubjective. Perceptual affects like the startle response are hard to avoid, and so are basic responses to cues of cuteness or erotic desire. Viewers may, for example, find pictures still beautiful (level 1) and protagonists still attractive (level 2), while at the same time recognising that they are misused for messages they disagree with (level 3) by image-​makers they despise (level 4). Understanding this multi-​layeredness of responses is an important aspect of media competency and of the ability to assess and resist the affective pull of images.

Affective image operations and media practices: typologies and case studies How, then, are different kinds of affective images used in political conflict? Generally, they exert short-​as well as long-​term influences. Viewers’ affects can immediately lead to spontaneous actions like commenting, donating or signing a petition. In longer timeframes, affective images motivate plans for future actions or form preconscious action tendencies based on emotional memories. Shocking images may, for example, surface again in the mind, intensify biases against out-​ groups or build up unspecific anger that might explode in later situations. Image operations can open up ‘short-​lived “discursive spaces” within which intense debates take place before the space closes and another space opens’ (Christensen, this volume). In media battles for limited ‘attention spaces’ (Collins 2001), affective images attract attention to political agendas; their repetition, however, may also lead to habituation and indifference. Such effects develop in the context of larger networks of actors, organisations, media and practices that perpetuate and transform emotions. Nevertheless, images are starting points and central reference points of such dynamic processes. Most frequent are three typical forms: (1) visually unremarkable evidence for politically relevant, affectively moving events like the recent shootings of African Americans by US police; (2) visually striking, iconic images which are instantly recognisable, symbolically dense and emotionally intense like Nick Ut’s photograph of the ‘Napalm girl’ in the Vietnam War; (3) transformations of existing images and their affective force, like Cameron’s Conference Rap (2014), a parody mash-​up of the former British Prime Minister’s television performances.

69

70

70

Image operations

A wide range of political actors actively circulate images with emotional intentions, targeting the general public, specific populations or powerful individuals. Journalists, photo agencies, publishers, television stations, whistle-​blowers, search engines, social media algorithms and other entities involved in distribution assess impacts on attention and affective response. ‘Viewsers’ transform and redirect those impacts by repurposing or commenting on images, producing counter-​images and counter-​affects. The number of agents, the differences of their affective dispositions, the multi-​layered structure of images, their multi-​ modal embedding, their dynamic and transactional distribution and appropriation  –​all contribute to an enormous affective variance that image producers struggle to contain. ‘Image warfare’ (Roger 2013) is fought by using long-​term strategies to coordinate large campaigns on the one hand, and short-​term tactics to fight specific battles on the other. Some assume that powerful institutions use well-​planned strategies, whereas protesters react with spontaneous tactics (de Certeau 1984). However, no activist group could survive without long-​term strategies, and protesters often choose from tried-​and-​tested tactical repertoires. Guidebooks like Beautiful Trouble (Boyd 2012) advise image activists to ‘put movies in the hands of movements’, to follow principles like ‘show, don’t tell’ and to use specific methods like ‘guerrilla projection’. Help is offered also by activist organisations like Witness or Tactical Tech (Gregory, this volume; Hankey and Tuszynski, this volume). Most hot image operations today are carried out by using social media. Current developments of user-​generated visual content, cross-​media distribution, citizen journalism and video activism constitute what we might call image operations 3.0. One of the most significant changes is the increase in political videos across websites of organisations, video platforms like YouTube and social networking sites like Facebook. In the following, political web videos serve as an exemplary field to illustrate how image operations follow affective strategies and cluster affective cues on certain layers –​making either the forms, worlds, meanings or the reflection of images dominant in eliciting affects. Provisionally, we can distinguish between at least five frequent types of affective strategies: (A) sensual symbolism; (B) exhibition of evidence; (C) visual narration; (D) visual argumentation; (E) spreadable intervisuality. This is not an exhaustive list, of course, and the types often overlap.

Sensual symbolism Some political videos do not represent a concrete world at all, but rather cluster their affective cues on other layers of the affective structure, for example, the perception of audiovisual forms, the understanding of abstract meanings or the reflection about communicative contexts. A  case in point is Amnesty International: Stop the Show (2013), an animation short created by visual artist

71

Affective image operations

Max Hattler. The film was part of an international campaign supporting a UN treaty to regulate the arms trade. It starts with black crosshairs on a white background and the sound of releasing a gun. The crosshairs are then replaced by a flurry of kaleidoscopic op-​art transformations of political symbols in the colours of flags:  the US stars and stripes, the star and crescent in black and green, the blue and white star of David, the yellow stars on a blue background of the flag of the European Union. Faster and faster, bigger and bigger, louder and louder, these and other symbols clash in ever-​changing centrifugal movements, accompanied by threatening background noise, culture-​specific sound bites, cries, shots and explosions. After a climax, the sound suddenly fades out, and a slogan in black and white appears: ‘Stop this cruel show //​Support us /​to pressure our governments /​to regulate the international /​arms trade’. On layer (1), the video starts with ambivalent affects; the colourfulness, symmetry and formal variation of the visual track can be experienced as pleasant, but the sounds are subtly threatening. When speed and loudness increase, unpleasant feelings of perceptual overstrain arise, until sudden silence and whiteness create a sensual shock. On the meaning layer (3), the political symbols are affectively charged (relative to group memberships); however, the explicit message of the slogan is more salient. Depending on the viewers’ attitude, probable responses will either be feelings of pleased agreement, puzzlement or angry dissent. Reflecting about production contexts (layer 4), many will admire Hattler’s innovative artwork and morally approve of Amnesty International’s initiative. Altogether, the affective response will not be very intense. Nevertheless, the video still contributed to directing attention to the decade-​long campaign which in 2013 finally lead to the adoption of the Arms Trade Treaty by the UN. Generally, this example illustrates how sensually symbolist videos ground responses to higher-​level meanings and reflections in perceptual affects.

Exhibition of evidence This category comprises usually short, non-​professional ‘witness’ videos providing visible evidence of politically relevant events of violence, suffering or protest. Examples for this are the recent videos documenting the shootings of African Americans by US police or the demonstrations in Hong Kong. Complementary to type (A), the affective structure of these videos is firmly centred on the represented world (layer 2). Their forms mostly depend on circumstance and their meanings on viewers’ varying interpretations, but their worlds contain strong, highly intersubjective cues of violent or non-​violent events and often imply moral transgressions that force viewers to take sides. In the case of violence, bloody, mutilated or dead bodies cause horror or disgust, and intense expressions like painful faces and cries lead to emotional

71

72

72

Image operations

contagion, empathy or compassion. If the videos show non-​violent protests, they often create what could be termed ‘audiovisual effervescence’ –​viewers are not only invited to identify with their in-​group and feel for it, but they are audiovisually immersed in a multitude whose bodily expressions invite emotional contagion. Thereby, evidence videos transport viewers into political situations shown from a certain perspective. On the level of reflection (4), the appraisal of producers is tantamount; for instance, they will evoke distrust and moral indignation if they violate expectations of authenticity. Moreover, audiences often consider the impact of the video on larger audiences, for instance, hoping that it will mobilise protest or fearing that it will cause riots. The recent videos of African Americans killed by police demonstrate the impact of such images, as they have led to massive protests, indictments and equipping police with body cameras.

Visual narration Moving images often organise visual material into intensely emotional stories. The main affective force of visual storytelling is situated on the level of represented worlds (2), but its spaces and bodies become sensually concrete on the level of perception (1), and its perspectival framing carries higher-​level meanings and messages (3) inviting reflection (4). Audiovisual narratives about political conflicts are supposed to: a) show the problem is unresolved and urgently demands social action; b) raise enough empathic anger or moral indignation in viewers to surmount the pressing concerns of our own lives and problems; and c) point us toward concrete actions as opposed to just leaving us feeling inchoate distress; and d) succeed in making the release of the film an historical ‘event’. (Kozloff 2013, 24)

Although visual narratives take different forms, many follow established conventions of storytelling. The most popular videos have relatively simple, linear plots showing how sympathetic protagonists struggle to achieve clear goals (often helping victims) against a series of obstacles, usually actions by political opponents. This pattern facilitates comprehension and focuses empathy and sympathy on protagonists (usually in-​group members), antipathy on the antagonists. It generates suspense concerning if, how and when the goal will be achieved, and allows for a temporal rhythm of emotional intensification culminating in a narrative climax. While entertainment stories usually come to permanent closure in the form of a happy ending, political storytelling often leaves the protagonists’ problem unsolved and invites the viewers to contribute to a future solution. Often, this appeal to support the cause manifests in links to websites and petitions. This conventional mode of storytelling is emotionally effective but

73

Affective image operations

also has serious disadvantages, tending to squeeze facts into the pattern and to oversimplify political situations. Upon reflection, viewers may feel manipulated and react with anger and distrust. This happened in the case of Kony2012, mentioned at the start of this chapter. Narrated by filmmaker and protagonist Jason Russell, the film tells how the activist and his organisation Invisible Children try to mobilise political action against the antagonist, the warlord Joseph Kony, to stop him abducting Ugandan children, personified by little Jacob. The professionally crafted film orchestrates its affective cues to maximise curiosity, shock, pity, suspense, but most of all, moral sympathy. At the climax, it immerses the viewers in collective activities of euphoric activists whose expressions, supported by mood music, create audiovisual effervescence. As virtual members of the group, the viewers are prompted to help and donate. Even though the film was effective in directing attention to its cause, it was also widely criticised for its emotionally manipulative misrepresentation of the political situation (Engelhardt and Jansz 2014). This points to a recurring dilemma between the aims of building trust and intensifying affective responses. Kony2012 also illustrates another important aspect of affective structures: the role of perspective in mobilising viewers. Visual narratives make viewers feel more or less close to narrators or actors, enabling them to approximate their perceptual, epistemic, evaluative or affective experiences to different degrees (Eder 2006). Often, viewers are invited to take the perspective of victims or benefactors (as in Kony2012). The WikiLeaks video Collateral Murder (2010) however, forces viewers into the perceptual perspective of US soldiers shooting civilians, but simultaneously suggests an affective perspective that is absolutely contrary to the soldiers’ cynical remarks. By way of such perspectival and moral structures, visual stories distribute sympathy, antipathy and empathy across their conflict constellations. Counter-​narratives like Collateral Murder may change perspectives and reverse the dramatic roles of perpetrators and victims, thereby contributing to making lives ‘grievable’ (Butler 2009).

Visual argumentation The videos of the fourth type support political claims with arguments and evidence, aiming to persuade viewers to adopt corresponding attitudes and action tendencies. Their rhetorical structure can take various forms (Hesling 1989). Some films start with claims which are then justified, while others present the evidence first and then draw conclusions. Their arguments may be explicit or implicit, inductive or deductive, causal or analogical, be warranted by authorities, examples or common knowledge. Generally, however, visual argumentation does not proceed by cool logic. It is open, enthymemic and highly charged with emotions, following the principles of movere et delectare in classical rhetoric. In doing that, general meanings and messages (layer

73

74

74

Image operations

3) become central sources of emotions. For example, the Chinese web documentary Under the Dome (2015), produced by former television journalist Chai Jing, got at least 160  million views in the few days before it was censored. Jing first presents data showing that air pollution harms millions of Chinese, then evidence that the pollution is caused by anachronistic industry standards and the lack of law enforcement. Based on this assessment, she concludes that China should act against pollution and reform the energy system. This macro-​argument relies on several local points of contention: Jing, a well-​known, competent, good-​looking journalist, presents abundant research results and expert statements to a huge studio audience (argument from source and authority). Factory visits show just who is responsible (exemplary evidence). The video uses also the specific potentials of visual argumentation to make the complex, abstract or imperceptible emotional. It starts with the personal story of Jing’s own daughter, born with a tumour caused by pollution, and shows cancerogenic smog particles as ruthless perpetrators in a cartoon sequence. By visualisation and personalisation, complex political problems are connected with strong emotions, pathos and humour. More generally, argumentative messages are embedded in perceptual and representational affects (layers 1 and 2). For example, Under the Dome repeatedly shows close-​ups of the studio audience, whose expressions of concern invite emotional contagion, or uses music to create affective atmospheres. By its dramatic sequence of anxiety, discontent, moral anger, hope for a healthier life and pleasurable feelings of knowing how to achieve it, Under the Dome briefly put pressure on the Chinese government and led to a brief upsurge of investments in green technologies (Noble 2015).

Spreadable intervisuality This last category comprises videos whose affective structures predominantly invite viewers’ communicative reflections (layer 4)  by self-​referentially stressing formal features and intervisual relations. This is epitomised by videos that piggyback on existing memes and their viral ‘spreadability’ (Jenkins, Ford and Green 2013) to become viral themselves. However, the affective structure of such videos does not exclusively focus on aesthetic or intellectual pleasures like recognising allusions. The following case illustrates that they may also create tensions between familiar forms and shocking storyworlds. In the summer of 2014, the Ice Bucket Challenge campaign went viral. To generate money for research on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), hundreds of Western celebrities sat in front of webcams and poured buckets of ice water over their heads. Inventive Palestinians like the journalist Ayman al Aloul jumped on this huge viral trend. They created the Rubble Bucket Challenge to direct public attention

75

Affective image operations

to the suffering of Gaza after its devastation by Israeli forces. Standing between ruins, al Aloul dryly explains to the viewers that instead of ice, he has to dump rubble over his head because there was no water in Gaza but only an abundance of destroyed houses. The sensual contrast between both Challenges is striking. The materials, textures and sounds of the video do not suggest the refreshing shock of iced water, but rather the feeling of hot dust and rubble pouring over sweaty skin, into the mouth, nostrils and lungs. Whereas the viewers’ sensual perception was previously focused on shock-​frozen celebrities, they are now challenged to viscerally imagine the situation of Gaza inhabitants. This contrast demonstrates the affective potentials of web videos, whose spreadability contributes to a certain ‘distribution of the sensible’ (Rancière 2004). Images are able to reconfigure audiences’ habitual patterns of perception and feeling, particularly perceptions of political conflict. The sensual force of these videos expresses the atmosphere of political spaces and the feelings of people in those spaces, suggesting also new ways to act. These types of affective video operations often mingle, of course. However, the typology indicates how the multi-​layered structures of images make certain affective interactions between visual forms, worlds, messages and reflections especially salient, inviting specific patterns of viewers’ responses. This is valid not only for videos but also for other kinds of images, such as photographs that condense narratives and arguments into emotional moments. I hope that the conceptual tools developed in this chapter can be useful to better understand the relations between affective imagery and political processes and contribute to evaluating current visual practice in political conflict, including forms of propaganda, manipulation, exploitation, sentimentality or numbing. The examples above also illustrate some affective strategies shared by today’s digital image operations. Many seek to combine sensuality with spreadability to evoke empathetic responses to conflict and suffering even under conditions of increasing competition in the virtual attention space. This points to one of the greatest challenges of affective image operations –​images have to attract enough attention to create strong, persistent affects that lead to action. Attention spaces and the affective texture of a culture are not only formed by media, but also by their users. Ultimately, the issue comes down to the viewer. It is our responsibility to reflect on what we feel in order to decide what to watch and how to act –​ an ability that has to be learned anew, again and again, in our changing digital environments.

Note 1 I am grateful to Katja Crone, Charlotte Klonk and Chris Tedjasukmana for comments, and to Susan Montoya for correcting my mistakes in English.

75

76

76

Image operations

References Boyd, Andrew, and Dave Oswald Mitchell, eds. 2012. Beautiful Trouble:  A  Toolbox for Revolution. New York: OR Books. Bruce, Vicki, Patrick R. Green and Mark A. Georgeson. 2014. Visual Perception: Physiology, Psychology, and Ecology, 4th edition. Hove; New York: Psychology Press. Butler, Judith. 2009. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? New York: Verso. Clarke, Simon, Paul Hoggett and Simon Thompson. 2006. ‘The Study of Emotions:  An Introduction.’ In Emotion, Politics, and Society, edited by Simon Clarke, Paul Hoggett and Simon Thompson, 3–​13. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Coëgnarts, Maarten, and Peter Kravanja. 2012. ‘From Thought to Modality: A Theoretical Framework for Analysing Structural-​Conceptual Metaphors and Image Metaphors in Film.’ Image & Narrative 13(1): 96–​113. Collins, Randall. 2001. ‘Social Movements and the Focus of Emotional Attention.’ In Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements, edited by Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper and Francesca Polletta, 27–​44. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cowie, Roddy, Naomi Sussman and Aaron Ben-​Ze’ev. 2011. ‘Emotion:  Concepts and Definitions.’ In Emotion-​Oriented Systems:  The Humaine Handbook, edited by Paolo Petta, Catherine Pelachaud and Roddy Cowie, 9–​30. Berlin: Springer. De Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley:  University of California Press. De Sousa, Ronald. 1987. The Rationality of Emotion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Eder, Jens. 2006. ‘Ways of Being Close to Characters.’ Film Studies 8: 68–​80. Eder, Jens. 2008. ‘Feelings in Conflict.’ Projections:  The Journal for Movies and Mind 2(2): 66–​84. Eder, Jens. Forthcoming. Affekt und Emotion in audiovisuellen Medien. Marburg: Schüren. Engelhardt, Johannes von, and Jeroen Jansz. 2014. ‘Challenging Humanitarian Communication: An Empirical Exploration of Kony 2012.’ International Communication Gazette 76(6), 464–​84. Gallese, Vittorio, and Michele Guerra. 2012. ‘Embodying Movies:  Embodied Simulation and Film Studies.’ Cinema 3: 183–​210. Grabe, Maria Elizabeth, and Erik Page Bucy. 2009. Image Bite Politics. Oxford:  Oxford University Press. Haidt, Jonathan, and Selin Kesebir. 2010. ‘Morality.’ In Handbook of Social Psychology, 5th edition, edited by Susan T. Fiske, Daniel T. Gilbert and Gardner Lindzey, 797–​832. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Hall, Stuart. 1980 [1973]. ‘Encoding/​Decoding.’ In Culture, Media, Language:  Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972–​79, edited by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, 128–​38. London: Hutchinson. Hesling, Willem. 1989. ‘Documentary Film and Rhetorical Analysis.’ In Image-​Reality-​ Spectator, edited by Willem de Greef and Willem Hesling, 101–​31. Leuven: Acco. Hochschild, Arlie. 1983. The Managed Heart:  Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hogan, Patrick Colm. 2003. The Mind and Its Stories:  Narrative Universals and Human Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hoskins, Andrew, and Ben O’Loughlin. 2010. War and Media: The Emergence of Diffused War. Cambridge: Polity Press.

77

Affective image operations Hutchinson, Emma, and Roland Bleiker. 2014. ‘Theorizing Emotions in World Politics.’ International Theory 6(3): 491–​514. Jasper, James M. 2014. ‘Feeling-​Thinking: Emotions as Central to Culture.’ In Conceptualizing Culture in Social Movement Research, edited by Britta Baumgarten, Priska Daphi and Peter Ullrich, 23–​43. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Jenkins, Henry, Sam Ford and Joshua Green. 2013. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York: New York University Press. Kemper, Theodore D. 1978. A Social Interactional Theory of Emotions. New York: Wiley. Kozloff, Sarah. 2013. ‘Empathy and the Cinema of Engagement: Reevaluating the Politics of Film.’ Projections: The Journal of Movies and Mind 7(2): 1–​40. Moors, Agnes. 2009. ‘Theories of Emotion Causation: A Review.’ Cognition and Emotion 23(4): 625–​62. Nichols, Bill. 1991. Representing Reality. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Noble, Josh. 2015. ‘Investors Weigh Impact of “Under the Dome”.’ Financial Times Online, 4 March. Accessed 3 June 2015. http://​blogs.ft.com/​beyond-​brics/​2015/​03/​04/​ investors-​weigh-​impact-​of-​under-​the-​. Nussbaum, Martha C. 2013. Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Rancière, Jacques. 2004. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. Translated and introduced by Gabriel Rockhill. London: Continuum. Reddy, William. 2001. The Navigation of Feeling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roger, Nathan. 2013. Image Warfare in the War on Terror. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Rosenwein, Barbara H. 2006. Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Smith, Elliot R., and Diane M. Mackie. 2008. ‘Intergroup Emotions.’ In Handbook of Emotions, 3rd edition, edited by Michael Lewis, Jeannette M. Haviland-​Jones and Lisa Feldman Barrett, 428–​39. New York: Guilford Publications. Smith, Greg M. 2003. Film Structure and the Emotion System. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. Suckfüll, Monika. 2013. ‘Emotion Regulation by Switching between Modes of Reception.’ In Psychocinematics: Exploring Cognition at the Movies, edited by Art P. Shimamura, 314–​ 36. New York: Oxford University Press. Thrift, Nigel. 2008. Non-​Representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect. London: Routledge. Turner, Jonathan H., and Jan E. Stets. 2005. The Sociology of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Von Scheve, Christian, and Sven Ismer. 2013. ‘Towards a Theory of Collective Emotions.’ Emotion Review 5(4): 406–​13.

Videos Amnesty International: Stop the Show, directed by Max Hattler. Germany/​Spain, 2013, animated web video. Accessed 30 May 2015. www.youtube.com/​watch?v=Wre5VWHxSug. Collateral Murder, produced by WikiLeaks. No country, 2010, web video. Accessed 30 May 2015. https://​collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/​. KONY 2012, directed by Jason Russell. USA, 2012, web video. Accessed 30 May 2015. www. youtube.com/​watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc.

77

78

78

Image operations Rubble Bucket Challenge (‫)ماكرلا ولد لولاعلا نميأ‬, directed by Ayman al Alloul. Gaza, 2014, web video. Accessed 30 May 2015. www.youtube.com/​watch?v=duSBig1-​VUA. Under the Dome, directed by Chai Jing. China, 2015, web documentary. Various translated versions, e.g. Chai Jing’s Review:  Under the Dome  –​Investigating China’s Smog 柴静雾霾调查 : 穹顶之下 (full translation). Accessed 30 May 2015. www.youtube.com/​ watch?v=T6X2uwlQGQM.

79

Method, madness and montage: assemblages of images and the production of knowledge W. J. T. Mitchell

The most fundamental ‘image operation’ may well be the one that we never show to an audience: it is the array of images on the slide table that is assembled prior to an academic lecture (Plate 1). This layout is merely a ‘working arrangement’: it does not rise to the level of the artistic collage, which invites us to contemplate an array of images as a compositional whole. In its sequential arrangement it may suggest a relation to cinematic montage, and if an automated running of the images is arranged in either a mechanical or digital projector, it may produce an effect of the kind that Chris Marker’s classic film La Jetée (France, 1962) builds upon: one almost entirely composed of still images. It is not normal practice to automate the sequence of slides, but to control them in relation to a discourse, as illustrative material or targets for interpretation. The automated slide show never reveals its total, synchronic order, it unfolds them in diachronic order (as with artist James Coleman’s installations) to produce what Jacques Rancière has called ‘image sentences’ (Rancière 2007, 46ff.). Art history, for example, tends to confine its moments of simultaneity and synchronic presentation to what might be called ‘dialectical display’, the practice of comparing two slides side by side, a routine that Robert S. Nelson has traced back to the Hegelian ancestry of art history (Nelson 2000). There are notable exceptions to this rule of concealment, two of the best known being Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne project, the Bilderatlas, which he assembled in Hamburg during the last few years of his life, and the Musée Imaginaire of André Malraux, assembled during the 1950s, as part of the editing process that would give rise to the books with this title. But even these famous exceptions were not seen as final products for public display; they were intended as working assemblages for private study by professionals, subject to constant rearrangement. Any compositional order they displayed was understood to be provisional. They were not, in other words, an ‘end in themselves’, but procedural works intended for final realisation in the form of albums or atlases.

5

80

80

Image operations

This has not, of course, prevented artists from imitating the atlas form, as in the well-​known projects by Gerhard Richter and Hanne Darboven, which assemble a wide range of found images in a grid-​like array with the aim of suggesting a total picture of a period or culture comprised of discrete images. Alan McCollum has taken this practice to what is perhaps its logical conclusion in his ‘surrogate picture’ arrangements, assembling framed blank pictures on walls in parodic imitations of the traditional ‘salon hang’. In the realm of sculpture, one might describe Robert Morris’s Scatter Piece as a three-​dimensional assemblage of all the materials used in Morris’s work, as something that has to be called a ‘piece’ and not just a collection of pieces. But I  want to put aside these attempts to transform the display of multiple images into a unified artistic composition and confine my attention to the humbler practice of the provisional assemblage, the image operations that go on behind the scenes as part of the production of image knowledge or Bildwissenschaft. At the same time, I want to draw our attention to other disciplines and other practices of image display, from the ambitious Warburgian project of a universal iconology, to the humblest display of randomly accreted images on the typical American refrigerator door. I will take this latter example as a kind of limit case at the lower end, of an almost completely random accretion of mementos, reminders, and relics, from precious infant photos and childish drawings to grocery lists and newspaper clippings. Even at this lower end, however, the refrigerator door reminds us of certain essential features: provisionality and impermanence coupled with synchronic array, contingency of relationships coupled with significant associations, and a mnemonic function that suggests the ever-​present possibility of interpretation, of an overall reading that would give us clues to the personality of the individual or family that deposits its traces to be held temporarily in a magnetic field of memory. It is the concept of the image as a clue that helps us to see the Bilderatlas in a context that takes us beyond art history to other sciences. Carlo Ginzburg’s book Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method notes specifically the link between the forensic sciences and art history: ‘The art connoisseur’, he remarks, ‘resembles the detective who discovers the perpetrator of a crime (or the artist behind a painting) on the basis of evidence that is imperceptible to most people’ (Ginzburg 1989, 97–​8). This resemblance operates at two levels: First, there is simply the realisation that something is to be seen as a clue, in other words, that it is a significant mark that, when assembled alongside other clues, will reveal something that has previously defied understanding. Second, there is the realisation that when the hidden pattern has been discovered it will be, as Giorgio Agamben has argued, ‘not a matter of signs’, and ‘not even a matter of anything that has ever been written down’ (Agamben 2009, 56). The artist, like the criminal, does not intentionally leave clues behind to aid decipherment of the work. When the criminal or the artist does plant clues intentionally, the wily investigator must ignore them, or even better, recognise them as ruses intended to mislead. The detective, like the art historian, must learn ‘to read what was never written’, to echo Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s formulation of the work of the astrologer contemplating a constellation (56).

81

Method, madness and montage

If the astrological model for the array of evidence seems a bit too close to mysticism or pseudo-​science, we might reassure ourselves with a sideways glance at the science of evolutionary taxonomy. The palaeontologist Norman Macleod assembles virtual atlases of biological specimens to decipher the formal transformations within a species over millions of years. Thanks to contemporary digital technologies (enormous databases of scans, plus three-​dimensional scanning and printing) it is possible for Macleod to trace evolutionary transformations that would have been unreadable with photographic or hand-​drawn representations of specimens. Like all natural scientists, Macleod has to read what was never written, the patterns disclosed in the book of nature. From an iconological standpoint, the images of biological specimens are not just representations of them, but clues to the natural processes and operations that leave their fossil traces behind. From the standpoint of genetic coding, images are not to be understood as reproductions of an original, but as something more like signs of algorithms, or (given the proper beholder stimulus) self-​executing programs that make reproduction possible. Giorgio Agamben has argued that the Warburgian Bilderatlas is best understood as a revival of the medieval doctrine of signatures or ymagines, the talismanic and magical understanding of significant marks as operations. ‘Whatever the matter of which they are made, the ymagines are neither signs nor reproductions of anything: they are operations through which the forces of celestial bodies are gathered’ (Agamben 2009, 55). Agamben goes on to associate these figures with Foucault’s notion of the ‘statements’ or discourses that accompany the strata of ‘visibilities’ in the archaeology of knowledge. As has often been noted, the images arrayed in Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas (Plate 2) are not mere examples, but something more like windows into ‘cases’ in a vitalist, even animistic metapicture of the history of art. Gertrud Bing thought of them as ‘psychic states that had become fossilized, so to speak, in the images’ (Didi-​Huberman 2004, 16). The open secret in all of Warburg’s images is that they are never properly understood as still, but rather as snapshots of a pervasive motion and life that has left the image behind as a clue. In that sense, they are very like film stills, as Philippe-​Alain Michaud has argued, and the lives of those images are, in their human forms, the signatures of passions or Pathosformeln encoded in ‘engrams’ which, according to Agamben, ‘are neither signs nor symbols but signatures …. The “nameless science” he [Warburg] was unable to found is something like an overcoming, an Aufhebung of magic by means of its own instruments, an archaeology of signatures’ (Agamben 2009, 57). Why was Warburg unable to found his science of ‘art history without a text’? David Freedberg has argued that in the Bilderatlas the images have little of their original force, and in their servitude to a curious kind of genealogical encyclopedism, all are strangely and improbably drained …. [W]‌hat Warburg’s failed Bilderatlas, pathetic in its reliance on reproduction and multiplication, foretells is the etiolation of contemplation that is implicit in the modern multiplicity of images that can only be generated and made infinitely manipulable

81

82

82

Image operations by the computer –​which Warburg, schizophrenic as always, would have disdained and loved at the same time. (Freedberg 2005, 17)

Was Warburg ‘schizophrenic … always’? What could that mean? Not that he was confined to Binswanger’s clinic, surely. That period only lasted a few years, and he was lucid in the afternoons, taking tea with visitors. We must, I  think, take Freedberg literally as claiming that Warburg was ‘always’ schizophrenic, even when he was lucid and rational. The Bilderatlas, then, has to be read not as a triumph of image science but as a symptom of a certain iconomania, and a pathology that has now become endemic in the era of Google Images. This is a conclusion that Warburg himself might have endorsed, given his conviction that ‘all mankind is eternally and at all times schizophrenic’, a conviction expressed, appropriately enough, in notes to the famous lecture on the serpent ritual that Warburg delivered as a way of proving his own sanity (quoted in Gombrich 1986, 223). ‘Schizophrenic as always’ might also mean that Warburg understood himself as a ‘seismograph of the soul’, who had lived through the Great War only to witness the rise of fascism and the beginnings of the Warburg family’s flight from Europe. And Warburg’s witnessing of the historical madness of his time would have been framed, no doubt, within Nietzsche’s famous aphorism:  ‘Insanity in individuals is something rare –​but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule’ (Nietzsche 2002, para. 156). Finally, Warburg’s schizophrenia might be an occupational hazard of the discipline and profession he helped to found, namely, art history itself. Georges Didi-​ Huberman has suggested that Warburg’s effort to ‘set art history in motion’ might have unleashed ‘something dangerous, something I would call symptomatic’. To create a knowledge-​montage was … to reject the matrices of intelligibility. To break through the age-​old guard rails. This movement with its new ‘allure’ of knowledge, created the possibility of vertigo …. The image is not a closed field of knowledge; it is a whirling, centrifugal field. It is not a ‘field of knowledge’ like any other. (Didi-​Huberman 2004, 12–​13)

Didi-​Huberman’s contrast between the ‘closed field of knowledge’ with its stable ‘matrices of intelligibility’ and the whirling vortex of Warburg’s mad montage might not be as clear-​cut as he would like it to be. In so far as the Bilderatlas provides, not a fixed grid of interpretive locations, but an array of symptoms or clues awaiting diagnosis by the detective, psychiatrist or image operator, it neatly bridges the gap between science and magic that the Enlightenment had thought to open up. Or perhaps, more humbly, it bridges the gap between the symptom and the symbol, the clue and the message. This bridging operation opens up the field Carlo Ginzburg calls ‘conjectural knowledge’; as important to the natural sciences as to the humanities (Ginzburg 1989). This is the field of historical epistemology that links Morelli’s connoisseurship to Freud’s psychoanalysis to Sherlock Holmes’s art of scientific detection, allowing us to read what was never written.

83

Method, madness and montage

The place of the Bilderatlas in this field where scientific method and madness converge is best captured in the medium that succeeds in actualising Warburg’s goal of setting images (and art history) in motion, namely cinema. Sometimes the atlas plays the minimal role of preserving memory in the face of amnesia and psychosis. In Christopher Nolan’s Memento (USA, 2000) for instance, the protagonist, Lenny, is a quasi-​detective seeking to solve the murder of his wife. But he is suffering from a trauma that erased his ability to form new memories, and consequently has to rely on an improvised atlas of images, texts and locations pinned to the wall of his hotel room to keep a record of the recent past. Even Lenny’s own body becomes a kind of Bilderatlas, as he has himself covered with tattoos to provide a permanent record of his rapidly fading experiences. The cinematic form of Memento, moreover, redoubles the effect of Lenny’s amnesia by unfolding the narrative in reverse chronological order, presenting a stiff challenge to the viewer’s short-​term cinematic memory, placing us in the position of detectives who must treat Lenny’s own behaviour as a complex mixture of rational investigation and psychotic symptoms. Or perhaps our position is more like that of a film editor, who must attempt to take all the thousands of images made during a film shoot and think about them synchronically, constructing from them diachronic pathways that unfold a narrative, or (the central aim of montage) making meaning from surprising cuts and juxtapositions. Whatever the case, the image atlas seems to appear with remarkable frequency in films about espionage or criminal investigation. A  standard feature of crime drama is the scene of the improvised wall atlas, with pictures of all the suspects and their location in a corporate/​familial structure. Alternatively, there is the cartographic wall atlas, which attempts to map patterns in the location of crime scenes, or the array of victims displayed as trophies by the serial killer himself, and imitated by the investigator in the array of evidence. In the recent HBO crime drama, True Detective (USA, 2014), the policeman who obsessively persists in the investigation of a murder twenty years earlier, and who is regarded as mentally unbalanced himself, constructs an evidentiary montage that mimics the symmetry of the ritualistic crime scene itself. In the espionage and terrorism thriller, Homeland (USA, 2011), a female CIA agent (who is suffering from bipolar disorder) assembles a colour-​coded chronological atlas of images and texts to track a Middle Eastern terrorist’s behaviour patterns over a ten-​year period. The evidentiary ‘smoking gun’ that is revealed by the wall atlas is not to be found in the positive signs on the wall, but in a blank chasm that interrupts the chronology, and provides the clue to the terrorist’s mysterious withdrawal from activity, during which the ultimate weapon, a converted or ‘turned’ American soldier, is trained for his suicide mission against his own country. Given her history of mental instability, the agent’s ‘conjectural knowledge’ is rejected as fantasy, even by her closest colleagues. Until, that is, her closest colleague suddenly has an intuitive breakthrough that allows him to piece the clues together in an evidentiary montage that reveals, of course, that (like Cassandra, the archetypal mad prophet) she had been right all along.

83

84

84

Image operations

But perhaps the most thorough rendering of the image atlas as a montage of madness is to be found in Ron Howard’s film A Beautiful Mind (USA, 2001), in which the brilliant mathematician, John Nash, is portrayed as a schizophrenic code-​breaker who believes he has been recruited by a secret US military intelligence unit to detect hidden clues in American magazines and newspapers. Nash’s gifts for pattern recognition, which have been established by his ability to intuitively grasp the form of celestial constellations, is transferred to the task of finding patterns in a seemingly chaotic array of evidence. The film conveys Nash’s search for patterns as a kind of cognitive searchlight effect that literally illuminates fragmentary verbal ‘clues’ and assembles them in what can only be described as the degree zero of madness and montage, when the walls disappear under a veritable forest of evidence. Our pursuit of the Bilderatlas has evidently crossed the boundary between symbols and symptoms, detective work and psychosis, clues and paranoid fantasies, science and magic. At one extreme, the atlas is a matrix for the display and interpretation of symptoms; at the other, the matrix itself becomes a symptom, a clue to the pathology of the investigator, whether detective, connoisseur or psychoanalyst. This is in keeping with Edgar Allan Poe’s first principle of the detective story: that the master detective is the one who is able to enter into the mind of the criminal, no matter how irrational it may be. Psychoanalytic transference is perhaps just a reversal of this process, and it explains the cliché of detective work: set a thief to catch a thief, think like a madman to catch a madman, as in the narrative of the film The Silence of the Lambs (USA, 1991), in which the FBI enlists a mad psychiatrist to catch a serial killer. The paranoid method of the surrealists was simply the most melodramatic version of this conversion ritual between method and madness. More could be said about the Bilderatlas as the interface between pictorial therapy and pathology, diagnostic instrument and symptomatic traces. It probably played both roles for Aby Warburg if he was, as David Freedberg argues, ‘schizophrenic … always’ (Freedberg 2005, 17). The space of the Bilderatlas alternates between the grid-​like structures of rational order (cartography, genealogy, taxonomy) and the vortex of motion and animation fossilised in the individual images. When the images on the wall begin to move literally –​as in the T_​Visionarium (in Sydney, Australia) that taps into all the world’s television networks in a simultaneous display –​the grid itself threatens to spiral out of control (Plate 3). The security of the controller’s position at the centre of this media panopticon gives way to the catatonic paralysis of the alien visitor trying to grasp the totality of the human world in The Man Who Fell to Earth (UK, 1976). The debate between scientific certainty and conjectural knowledge can never be finally resolved. We had better get used to vertigo.

References Agamben, Giorgio. 2009. The Signature of All Things. Translated by Luca D’Isanto and Kevin Attell. New York: Zone Books.

85

Method, madness and montage Didi-​ Huberman, Georges. 2004. ‘Knowledge:  Movement (The Man Who Spoke to Butterflies).’ In Aby Warburg and the Image of Motion, edited by Philippe-​Alain Michaud, 7–​20. New York: Zone Books. Freedberg, David. 2005. ‘ “Warburg’s Mask”: A Study in Idolatry.’ In Anthropologies of Art, edited by Mariet Westerman, 3–​25. Williamstown, MA: Clark Institute. Ginzburg, Carlo. 1989. Clues, Myths and the Historical Method. Translated by John and Anne Tedeschi. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Gombrich, Ernst. 1986. Aby Warburg:  An Intellectual Biography. Chicago:  Chicago University Press. Nelson, Robert. 2000. ‘The Slide Lecture or the Work of Art “History” in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.’ Critical Inquiry 26: 214–​434. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2002. ‘On the Natural History of Morals.’ In Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by Judith Norman and Rolf-​ Peter Horstmann. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. Rancière, Jacques. 2007. The Future of the Image. Translated by G. Elliott. London and New York: Verso.

Films and video works A Beautiful Mind, directed by Ron Howard. USA, 2001, DVD. Homeland, directed by Michael Cuesta [and others]. USA, 2011, DVD. La Jetée, directed by Chris Marker. France, 1962, DVD. The Man Who Fell to Earth, directed by Nicolas Roeg. UK, 1976, DVD. Memento, directed by Christopher Nolan. USA, 2000, DVD. The Silence of the Lambs, directed by Jonathan Demme. USA, 1991, DVD. True Detective, directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga. USA, 2014, TV.

85

86

87

Part II

Images in warfare, insurgency and counterinsurgency

88

89

Image operations: refracting control from virtual reality to the digital battlefield Timothy Lenoir and Luke Caldwell

In the post-​Cold War era, the US military invested heavily in a makeover to replace the massive US ground forces of the post-​World War II era with smaller, more flexible organisational units typified by special operations forces and weapons systems that exploited the new information technologies: what military historian Max Boot called ‘a new American way of war’ grounded in ‘speed, maneuver, flexibility … precision firepower, special forces, and psychological operations’ (Boot 2003). A smarter, more flexible military, supported by superior information technology, would be both fiscally responsible and strategically necessary for future wars. The new combat systems of the future would emphasise information technology, automated systems and increasing integration of robotics and unmanned systems to extract the greatest efficiency from military investments. In the spirit of reorganising the military to fully embrace technologies of the information society (Arquilla and Ronfeldt 1993), Vice-​Admiral Arthur Cebrowski and John Garstka branded the new American way of war ‘network-​centric warfare’ (Cebrowski and Garstka 1998). In this new approach, networked information technology would lead to battlefield dominance by providing improved command and control over w ­ eaponry at great distances, far superior intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities (ISR) and faster, more coordinated responses to real-​time intelligence. A central enabling requirement of network-​centric warfare is what we might call ‘image operations’. As long as humans remain in the loop, and until robotic and intelligent agents supplant them, visualisation technologies would be essential. Also crucial to the new way of warfare:  advanced training and simulation exercises to continually familiarise future combat elements with their technology and prepare them for coordinated teamwork with other distributed warfighting units for seamless transition from training and preparation to the different real-​ world complex scenarios and engagement environments imagined for twenty-​ first-​century warfare. Human visual interface technologies would be required, exceeding capabilities of static photographic or even video images in supporting human agency; the new ‘cyber’-​images needed to be intelligent, situationally

6

90

90

Image operations

aware and operationally active, supplementing and extending human agency by integrating artificial intelligence with robotics and simulation in real time. Computer modelling and simulation, virtual reality, robotics and artificial intelligence, along with the creation of the military SIMNET in which different levels of forces could train in information-​aware networked environments of the future, were major Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) contributions to realising the ‘image operations’ demanded by the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). In addition, new commercial videogame technologies played key roles in these efforts to construct what some DARPA visionaries imagined as a cyber ‘battleplex’ for training future warriors. A prototype and flagship model for image operations is the ‘Darth Vader Helmet’ designed by Thomas Furness III in the late 1980s at the Armstrong Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base (Furness 1986). The early pilots of modern F15 and F16 fighter planes had to contend with a deluge of information registered on displays and controls from over 300 instruments. The flight stick of the F15, for instance, had nine buttons, with seven more on the throttle, along with a large array of gauges and switches. Flying at supersonic speeds and cranking turns generating multiple G-​forces, easily capable of causing blackouts or loss of aircraft control, pilots had to execute correct manipulations of all these buttons and switches to maintain aircraft stability, let alone take down enemy targets while under attack (Beamon and Moran 1990). Multiple onboard computers on these high-​tech jets generated the plane’s status, location and orientation along with information from onboard radar, infrared sensors and incoming ground source communications relaying targets, anti-​aircraft fire and enemy plane locations, displaying all these data on an array of panels: a lot of attention-​draining information to manage. Furness designed a head-​mounted virtual reality system that projected the data into symbolic images on the visor of the pilot’s helmet, together with interactive symbols of the plane’s control buttons. During daytime flight these images projected onto the transparent visor overlay the view of the outside world, while at night digital terrain maps stored in the computer synthesised the view of the outside world. The pilot literally flew the plane into a symbolic world mapped onto the real world. A Polhemus tracking system allowed the virtual display to rotate in sync with the pilot’s head movements. Eye-​movement sensors and finger-​pointing controls from a dataglove worn by the pilot enabled the pilot to fix on an object and execute a command. A voice command –​‘zoom’, for instance –​allowed the pilot to focus the visual display in on approaching terrain or targeted objects. ‘Fire’ launched a missile at a selected target in the visor. The Super Cockpit system, as Furness called it, was planned for integration into F16s in the mid-​1990s, but as he explained in later public presentations and in a New York Times interview, in principle the virtual cockpit could allow the pilot to fly the plane from outside, either in another plane or on the ground through a satellite link. He also speculated that in the future a brain–​machine interface might enhance the system even further (Wilford 1986). Furness saw other applications of these ideas in the form of ‘augmented reality’ in engineering and medicine,

91

Image operations

which he pursued at the Human Interface Technology (HIT) lab he directed at the University of Washington from 1989. These types of integrated helmet/​display systems have been vastly improved since Furness’s Darth Vader prototype and are now standard features of high-​performance fighter aircraft: for instance, the Visionix Scorpion head-​mounted display helmet for the F22 Raptor, and most recently the jaw-​dropping Rockwell Collins helmet for the F35 Lightning, which uses a system of six distributed infrared video cameras mounted on different parts of the aircraft to provide a synthesised image giving the pilot the ‘plane’s view’ of the 360-​degree environment and allowing the pilot to literally look through the airframe to the ground directly below the plane (Davenport 2015). At the HIT lab, Furness pursued an even more literal version of ‘image operations’ by applying the same strategy of combining virtual reality systems, 3D modelling, robotics and real-​time imaging to surgery. The vision pursued at the HIT lab and several other research labs, including the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), the Johns Hopkins Institute for Information Enhanced Medicine, the Mayo Clinic and the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, was heavily nurtured by funds from DARPA, the NIH and NASA. Dr Richard Satava, who spearheaded the DARPA programme, aimed to develop ‘telepresence’ workstations that would allow surgeons to telerobotically perform complex surgical procedures demanding great dexterity in places such as remote battlefields envisioned for network-​centric warfare. These workstations would re-​create and magnify all of the motor, visual and tactile sensations the surgeon actually experiences working inside the patient. The goal of telepresence was to project full motor and sensory capabilities –​visual, tactile, force, auditory –​into even microscopic environments to perform operations that demand fine dexterity and hand–​eye coordination. Image operations  –​the integration of advanced robotics, computer modelling, simulation and virtual reality  –​were central to the development of computer-​assisted surgery. The development of various modes of digital imaging, such as CT (especially useful for bone), MRI (useful for soft tissue), ultrasound and later PET scanning made it possible to stack thousands of 2D image slices into 3D structures, which could then be used for precise quantitative modelling and preoperative planning of many types of surgery. For the first time computational modelling enabled the surgeon to plan and simulate a surgery based on a mathematical model reflecting the actual anatomy and physiology of the individual patient. The development of augmented reality, similar to that in the Darth Vader helmet and other helmet-​mounted displays, allowed these two preoperative steps to be used intra-​operatively, superimposing the preoperative three-​dimensional model of the patient onto the real intraoperative view. Augmented reality provides the surgeon with a view of the patient in transparency and can also guide the surgeon, thanks to the real-​time tracking of surgical tools during the procedure (Grimson et al. 1999; Oppenheimer and Weghorst 1999; Anvari 2004; Satava 2004). For certain types of surgeries physiological movements such as breathing or the heartbeat can be filtered out. As researchers at the HIT lab and Mayo Clinic demonstrated, the model need not

91

92

92

Image operations

stay outside the operating room. Several groups of researchers used these models to develop ‘augmented reality’ systems that produce a precise, scalable registration of the model on the patient so that model and three-​dimensional stereo camera images are fused. The 3D model and surgical plan become an overlay and interface for the actual surgery. The structures rendered from preoperative MRI or CT data are registered on the patient’s body and displayed simultaneously to the surgeon in near-​to-​real-​time. Intraoperative position-​sensing enhances the surgeon’s ability to execute the surgical plan based on 3D CT and MRI by providing a precise determination of his tools’ locations in the geography of the patient. This procedure has been carried out successfully in removing brain tumours and in a number of prostatectomies in the Mayo Clinic’s Virtual Reality Assisted Surgery Program (VRASP) headed by Richard Robb. Today real-​time volume rendering of CT, MRI and ultrasound data as the visual component in image-​guided surgery is just a step away (Robb 1995a, 1995b, 1996). As a promoter and DARPA programme funder of these systems, Richard Satava expects that in the future, by combining augmented reality and robotics, image-​guided robotic systems would enable automation of the surgical procedure, which, he predicts, will be the next revolution in surgery (Satava 2004). While ostensibly a recruitment tool for the military, the videogame America’s Army is an image operation: a simulation and training device for coordinated teamwork with potential for seamless transition from training and preparation mode to the different real-​world complex scenarios and engagement environments imagined for twenty-​first-​century warfare (see also Davis 2004a; Davis et al. 2004). At the August 2003 launch of the game’s 2.0 version, America’s Army: Special Forces, Colonel Casey Wardynski, the military sponsor and co-​creator of America’s Army, explained that the overall objectives and design goals behind building the game were not just recruitment but recruitment of the types of soldiers with ‘aptitudes related to information-​handling and information culture values seen as vital to the effectiveness of the high-​tech, network-​centric Army of the future, and young American gamers are seen as especially proficient in these capabilities’ (Webb 2004). While encouraging young gamers to consider the Army as a career option, the game would emphasise realism and Army values, ethics, codes of conduct and professional expectations, extending to accurate depiction of hierarchical command structures, missions, weapons, equipment, uniforms, settings, discipline, tactics and procedures. To convey these values, players of America’s Army must first complete basic training levels before they can access any core missions of the game. Learning basic fighting tactics and the use of Army weapons, and learning the rules of engagement (ROE) as well as basic computer skills in controlling your avatar, are all required before progressing beyond cyber bootcamp. In order to unlock certain roles and maps the player must also complete advanced modules, including the most rigorous and difficult training courses, emulating the challenges of real-​life Special Forces training. In addition to mimicking the visual style and gameplay mechanics of the extremely popular game, Counter-​Strike, Wardynski and the America’s Army design team implemented a state-​of-​the-​art player-​data tracking system which

93

Image operations

gathered information on how much time players spent online (top players averaged four hours a day), how many kills they made per play session and per hour, which battlefield they were best at, etc. The game was also instrumented to collect data useful for assessing a game player’s leadership abilities and psychological profile (Webb 2004). As we have argued elsewhere, the America’s Army game project grew out of the efforts in the late 1980s and 1990s to build the military SIMNET, one of the core elements of the programme to transition the twenty-​first-​century military to network-​based war (Lenoir and Caldwell 2017). A key idea behind a number of SIMNET projects was the use of networked simulation not only as a theatre for reconstructing and evaluating past military engagements but also as a valuable training system for preparing for future war. Appropriately, the final speaker at the MOVES Institute Open House conference celebrating these programmes and America’s Army as a tool for recruiting soldiers for network-​centric warfare was Jack Thorpe, the father of SIMNET. Thorpe’s talk, ‘Perspectives on Distributed Simulation, Persistent Worlds, Command, and Control’, addressed the significance of America’s Army for future military training. Thorpe introduced his presentation by reminding the audience of some key elements of Orson Scott Card’s novel Ender’s Game (Card 1977). Ender’s Game centres on a future military cadet who saves the world from aliens in a war game where the videogame simulation is not just the training ground for real-​world warriors but the actual war itself. Thorpe analogised the programme at the heart of America’s Army to the Battle School Ender attends. Thorpe envisioned a future military Battleplex similar to Ender’s Battle School:  ‘a lifelong learning environment for combat decision leaders guided by a proactive pedagogy for advanced learning … like a sports complex for the US command leaders and our allies’ (Thorpe 2003, 2010). Beyond representing the utility of virtual environments, Ender’s Game teaches us that the game is the reality: that virtual and actual are not distinct when they are tied together by image operations. Thorpe reminded his audience that ubiquitous computing with sensors embedded throughout the environment is just over the horizon. Computers will be embedded in everything we do, so ‘games’ will potentially be everywhere. In this future ubiquitous computing environment, Thorpe observed, whereas it might feel like you and I are playing a game, we might actually be executing something, controlling something, solving a real-​world problem …. [W]‌e can use modeling and simulation to better understand what we want to do, given that they are advanced information technologies; and then, once we build a simulation (or game), we have not only the prototype for actually building a real system, we have the system itself. We knew this was coming. America’s Army demonstrates how we go about it. That’s why it’s so important. (Davis 2004b, 31)

At the moment, America’s Army replicates how you start as a recruit, work through basic training, and reach advanced instruction in the military skill you choose. But Army personnel could adapt it to their needs by designing rehearsal modules for

93

94

94

Image operations

specific operations, resulting in both training opportunities and data capture from real soldiers. Drawing these themes of ubiquitous computing together with the merger of the virtual and the real, Thorpe speculated: ‘If there is no difference between the virtual and the live, and if the instructive and the real were all the same, then eventually we are going to be able to execute and these things are all going to be at the same place.’ He gave an example of a future imaginary Special Forces scenario involving drones, Special Forces and insurgent forces cooperating with the US unit on the ground. Thorpe pointed out that the military was very close to having surveillance technology that could take the aerial images from drone fly-​overs and render them in near-​to-​real-​time into 3D environments to include in a simulation game environment. All this, he said, allows us to think about putting out a game that’s played worldwide and allows people to solve some particular problem that up to now only very specialised groups could solve …. Targets are named publicly online by elements of a population, not all of which are at war with you …. [The game allows you to] address the will of the people, change the will of the people, and look at the key mechanisms needed for success. (Thorpe 2003)

What Ender and America’s Army teach is: if you can game it, you can win. While the concept and assets behind America’s Army made it an attractive candidate for training, organising and possibly conducting network-​centric warfare, Bohemia Interactive Simulations’ Virtual Battlespace (VBS) software line eventually displaced it as the primary platform for US military simulation. Fully owned, produced and operated by the Army, America’s Army was affordable, but it lacked an open framework for integration with diverse military network infrastructures already in place (Herz and Macedonia 2002). Virtual Battlespace, designed for maximal openness, provided tools for the easy creation of custom training scenarios and environments as well as offering programming interfaces for defence contractors to create sophisticated plug-​ins. Where America’s Army collapsed the distance between the civilians and military by way of ludic images, VBS inched closer to the world of Ender’s Game, shrinking further the distinction between virtual and real. VBS was built atop Bohemia Interactive’s commercial videogame series ARMA, now in its third generation. Game engine and graphical advances therefore reciprocally feed back from one domain to the other, benefitting both civilian and military consumers. Where VBS really shines is in its extensive integration into the increasingly networked military. Rapid asset generation tools hook into DOD geospatial databases to allow troops to run simulations in virtual environments nearly identical to areas they will deploy (Bohemia Interactive Simulations 2013). These simulation environments premediate the execution of actual operations, allowing troops to benefit from the vast data collection practices of the networked military. Without synthesis into cheap, accurate and immersive environments suited to the embodied practices of human sensation, the countless data points collected by

95

Image operations

the military would be of limited use. Rather than relying on static or video images that merely represent the real, VBS functions as an experiential interface –​a point of translation –​for engaging many possible future scenarios in an embodied and dynamic fashion that replicates and mediates the real. This positioning of the image as an operation between the virtual and the real can be seen in another feature of the latest Virtual Battlespace, VBS3: the importation of physical and performance metrics into an individual soldier’s virtual appearance and capabilities. Taking cues from America’s Army, VBS3 restricts the use of virtual weapons to those who have completed actual certification and training for those systems. But rather than having soldiers sit in virtual classrooms and fire weapons from a computer keyboard, these soldiers must gain actual proficiency to unlock them virtually. Enhanced game performance motivates learning actual skills. Moreover, VBS avatars are visually modified to match soldiers’ actual height and weight and are assigned stamina levels aligned with real-​life physical endurance metrics. Soldiers who are overweight or who score poorly on the Army Physical Fitness Test will see their avatars tire faster than teammates with better evaluations (Lopez 2014). VBS thus operationalises images into points of mediation between individuals and the vast digital stores of the networked military. VBS not only allows soldiers to engage future operations at the level of embodied practice necessary for reducing risk in combat; it also uses these virtual images to motivate soldiers to change reality to enhance digital performance. While simulation technologies like VBS3 have historically received criticism for teaching people how to kill, the military primarily uses such technologies to practise coordination and teamwork rather than to lower barriers to pulling the trigger. One benefit of networked simulation environments is that game engines track where everyone is and what they are doing from moment to moment –​far more difficult to accomplish in live manoeuvres. In simulations, the fog of war is an artefact of individual perspective and can be surmounted by synthesising all available data into an exhaustive image of the battlefield. Leaders can therefore evaluate the conduct of those in their command from a position of absolute knowledge and can play back events from the simulation in granular detail. As products of the networked military, generals have intensely pursued means to gain similar levels of absolute vision over the real battlefield as well (Plate 4). Notable in this regard was the massively ambitious Future Combat System (FCS, 2003–​9), which aimed to modernise the Army for the warfare of the future. Despite many aspects of the programme resulting in dramatic and expensive failures, its success was to leverage networked communication and sensor technologies, materials science and robotics to revolutionise Army readiness for the conduct of network-​centric warfare. The FCS aimed to create a ‘system of systems’, networking all elements of the US armed services in a battlefield environment to enable unprecedented levels of joint connectivity and ‘battlespace’ awareness. Featuring sensors at overlapping scales (at the levels of platoon, company, battalion and brigade), the system would synthesise information from dismounted troops, infantry vehicles, aircraft radar, infrared sensors and UAV and satellite

95

96

96

Image operations

surveillance into a picture of the battlefield rivalling the absolute knowledge of training simulators. Just as a game engine tracks the location and actions of participants within a simulation, so the FCS would track the position of friendly forces with GPS sensors, reveal and track enemies with full spectrum surveillance and project all of these information sources into virtual maps updated in real time (Pernin et al. 2012). At the individual troop level, the network-​centric warrior would be tied into this system as both a producer and consumer of information. Through their vehicles, soldiers mounted on infantry carriers could access all information on the network. Dismounted, their special helmet-​mounted displays would seamlessly project necessary information across their visors, alerting them to the positioning of enemies and friendly forces alike. The system would allow tactical leaders to launch UAVs and smart munitions to critical points on the battlefield and, ideally, peer through the fog of war by collecting massive amounts of information –​all without being observed by the enemy. Soldiers and intelligent machines would transmit information upward to those with greater vision of the entire battlefield, making them function effectively as flexible nodes within an expanded network. The synthetic images produced by such far-​reaching information collection infrastructures will enable the coordination and strategic application of forces at a scale previously impossible. They will effectively create a simulation from the real, using all possible sources of information so that the conduct of war becomes a process of adjusting, optimising and balancing variables in step with real-​time feedback –​a very game-​like process. Future high-​tech infantry systems plan to integrate sophisticated bio-​and neuro-​surveillance systems so leaders will automatically be notified if individuals are injured or overly fatigued, allowing them to dispatch human or robotic medical assistance or provide them with reinforcements. While the FCS programme was cancelled as a result of budget cuts in 2009, such integrated sensor systems have gradually found their way onto the battlefield (Shachtman 2007; Ackerman 2012). Future products such as the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit being researched by DARPA and the Special Operation Command, as well as the Future Force Warrior programme, will help realise the FCS’s network-​centric vision. Expected to incorporate specialised armour with a robotic exoskeleton, 3D augmented-​reality displays and sophisticated biometric and environmental sensors, the soldiers of the future and their wars will be more digitally mediated and networked than ever before (Devereaux 2015) (Plate 5). As the use of digital images enables the multiplication of human agency on the increasingly digital battlefield, so image operations are also a keystone for the expansion of warfare into the digital domain itself. In order to counter the growing threats of network intrusion, digital sabotage and espionage, the Department of Defense has provided $125 million in funding for DARPA’s Plan X to develop foundational technologies enabling the conduct of offensive and defensive cyberwarfare by non-​technical operators. Plan X focuses on creating images that dramatically simplify the processes of cybersecurity. With cyberthreats emerging fast and furious, outstripping the supply of highly trained technicians, Plan X would

97

Image operations

automate many cybersecurity processes, pushing them behind an interface optimised for the human sensorium. Plan X uses the image to give network administrators and cyber-​soldiers access to real-​time information, extracting labour from unskilled operators while placing obscure and technical aspects of network defence behind the scenes (Sorcher 2015). Early prototypes of Plan X utilise fifty-​five-​inch touchscreens to allow users to visualise and manipulate network information without typing complicated commands. Computers are clustered in groups and can be clicked on individually to view additional information such as the processes running on the device as well as incoming and outgoing networking connections. If Plan X or the operator detects an intrusion, the graphical layout changes to highlight the threat and provide additional information about the type of attack and possible strategies for mitigating it. The programme also proposes creating an application database similar to Apple’s App Store, where trained technicians could create push-​button applications to execute attacks or raise digital defences for non-​skilled operatives to deploy in response to certain conditions (Plate 6). With Plan X, the image becomes an interface allowing human interaction with sophisticated computational architectures. DARPA aims to tackle the challenge of creating a visual language that allows for intuitive understanding of cyberwarfare. Where traditional forces have established iconography like tanks, jets and missiles to communicate threats, cyberattacks do not. Cyberwar takes place in a non-​visual register; the creation of a visual syntax must translate this domain to human interaction. Touchscreen interfaces and artificial intelligence that anticipates the needs of human operators bring the power of information technology within human reach. In addition to employing touchscreens and artificial intelligence feedback loops to anticipate user needs, Plan X is also experimenting with using the Oculus Rift virtual reality gaming headset to display and frame interaction with network information (Greenberg 2014). By pushing expert technicians behind the interface of the image, the skirmishes of cyberwar are made accessible to everyday users. The creation of interfaces that obscure and simplify interactions with information technology takes us one step closer to the military realisation of the Ender’s Game scenario. Such digitally mediated systems open the door to the seamless integration of simulations into everyday work in a form similar to that already employed by the Transportation Security Agency: to keep agents alert, images of contraband are periodically superimposed over X-​rays of actual baggage to assess individual performance (Transportation Security Agency 2014). Cyber-​warriors could likewise be probed, tested and evaluated through even more pervasive means. Without the skills necessary to determine if the image is real or fictitious, Plan X operatives are at the whim of the mediating interface. Reality and simulation merge in the image operation. Another DARPA programme called the Crowd-​Sourced Formal Verification (CSFV) programme goes a step beyond even Ender’s Game. The CSFV programme has created a public game interface that harnesses unpaid civilian labour

97

98

98

Image operations

to complete military tasks, with its outputs differing in kind from the work put in by users. Partnering game companies, defence contractors and academic institutions, the CSFV programme, under the moniker Verigames, produced a series of web-​based games that seem superficially to be puzzle games of increasing difficulty. Players are encouraged to log in and track their progress through games that reward player behaviour with flashy animations and cool sound effects for solving challenges. Underneath the interface, however, the CSFV programme maps the completion of game activities to the production of mathematical proofs to check the security of military software written in Java or C programming languages. Formal verification, as this process is called, is generally labour-​intensive, requiring attention from field experts. As Verigames’ website boasts, these games ‘empower non-​experts to effectively do the work of formal verification experts –​ simply by playing and completing game objectives’ (elkhawajah 2013). These games therefore use their digital interface to translate the ludic labour of civilians directly into forms valuable for the DOD. While translating civilian play into military labour for the sake of eliminating software bugs is not inherently problematic, it marks the culmination of a disturbing trend that could bring to fruition Jack Thorpe’s vision of a citizenry co-​ opted into military service through means of image operations. Ender thought he was playing a game when he was in fact commanding an actual battle with real consequences. As the military multiplies points of mediation to allow human operators to fully utilise the power of network-​centric warfare and cyber-​conflict, the relationship between cause and effect, virtual and actual blurs. Whether these interfaces are helmet-​mounted displays enabling interaction with technologies like fighter jets or robotic surgeons, means of visualising the battlefield like the Future Combat System, cyberwar interfaces like Plan X or games like America’s Army, Virtual Battlespace or Verigames’ puzzles, the image absorbs human agency en route to eliminating it altogether. While policing the boundary between civilian play and military labour remains a concern, the use of image operations within the military has likely passed the point of no return.

References Ackerman, Spencer. 2012. ‘It Only Took the Army 16 Years and 2 Wars to Deploy This Network.’ Wired, 28 June. Accessed 22 June 2016. www.wired.com/​dangerroom/​2012/​ 06/​army-​data-​network-​war/​. Anvari, Mehran. 2004. ‘Robot-​Assisted Surgery.’ Surgical Innovation 11(2): 61. doi: 10.1177/​ 107155170401100201. Arquilla, John, and David Ronfeldt. 1993. ‘Cyberwar Is Coming!’ Comparative Strategy 12(2): 141–​65. Beamon, William S., and Susan I. Moran. 1990. Raster Graphic Helmet-​Mounted Display Study. NSA-​Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA:  General Electric Simulation and Controls System Department. [Contractor Report 4331, AFSCOM Technical Report 90-​B-​008].

99

Image operations Bohemia Interactive Simulations. 2013. ‘Bohemia Acquires TerraSim.’ 17 April. Accessed 10 May 2015. https://​bisimulations.com/​content/​wed-​04172013-​1450/​ bohemia-​acquires-​terrasim. Boot, Max. 2003. ‘The New American Way of War.’ Foreign Affairs 82(4 (July/​August)): 41–​58. Card, Orson Scott. 1977. Ender’s Game. New York: Tom Doherty Associates. Cebrowski, Arthur K., and John H. Garstka. 1998. ‘Network-​Centric Warfare: Its Origin and Future.’ Proceedings Magazine 124(139). Accessed 10 May 2015. www.usni.org/​magazines/​proceedings/​1998-​01/​network-​centric-​warfare-​its-​origin-​and-​future. Davenport, Christian. 2015. ‘Meet the Most Fascinating Part of the F-​35:  The $400,000 Helmet.’ Washington Post, 1 April. Accessed 22 June 2016. www.washingtonpost.com/​ news/​checkpoint/​wp/​2015/​04/​01/​meet-​t he-​most-​fascinating-​part-​of-​the-​f-​35-​the-​ 400000-​helmet/​. Davis, Margaret, ed. 2004a. America’s Army PC Game: Vision and Realization: A Look at the Artistry, Technique, and Impact of the United States Army’s Groundbreaking Tool for Strategic Communication. Monterey, CA: United States Army and the MOVES Institute. Davis, Margaret. 2004b. ‘He Saw It Coming: An Interview with Jack Thorpe.’ In America’s Army PC Game: Vision and Realization: A Look at the Artistry, Technique, and Impact of the United States Army’s Groundbreaking Tool for Strategic Communication, edited by Margaret Davis, 30–​1. Monterey, CA: United States Army and the MOVES Institute. Davis, Margaret, Russell Shilling, Alex Mayberry, Phillip Bossant, Jesse McCree, Scott Dossett, Christian Buhl, Christopher Chang, Evan Champlin, Travis Wigelsworth and Michael Zyda. 2004. ‘Making America’s Army: The Wizardry behind the U.S. Army’s Hit PC Game.’ In America’s Army PC Game: Vision and Realization: A Look at the Artistry, Technique, and Impact of the United States Army’s Groundbreaking Tool for Strategic Communication, edited by Margaret Davis, 9–​15. Monterey, CA: United States Army and MOVES Institute. Devereaux, Ryan. 2015. ‘ “Iron Man” Suit Lives on in Dreams of Special Operations Commanders.’ The Intercept, 2 June. Accessed 22 June 2016. https://​firstlook.org/​theintercept/​2015/​06/​02/​special-​operations-​iron-​man-​suit-​lives/​. elkhawajah. 2013. ‘Verigames:  About Us.’ 16 October. Accessed 10 May 2015. www.verigames.com/​about-​us.html. Furness, Thomas. 1986. ‘Configuring Virtual Space for the Super Cockpit.’ In Proceedings of Aerospace Simulation II, edited by Monte Ung, 103–​10. San Diego: Society for Computer Simulation. Greenberg, Andy. 2014. ‘DARPA Is Weaponizing Oculus Rift for Cyberwar.’ Wired, 23 May. Accessed 22 June 2016. www.wired.com/​2014/​05/​darpa-​is-​using-​oculus-​rift-​to-​prep-​ for-​cyberwar/​. Grimson, W. Eric L., Ron Kikinis, Ferenc Jolesz and Peter McL. Black. 1999. ‘Image Guided Surgery.’ Scientific American 280(6): 62–​9. Herz, J. C., and Michael R. Macedonia. 2002. ‘Computer Games and the Military:  Two Views.’ Defense Horizons 11–​12 (April): 1–​8. Lenoir, Timothy, and Luke Caldwell. 2017. The Military–​ Entertainment Complex. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lopez, C. Todd. 2014. ‘Latest “Virtual Battle Space” Release Adds Realism to Scenarios, Avatars.’ Army News Service, 3 April. Accessed 10 May 2015. www.army.mil/​article/​ 123316/​. Marescaux, Jacques, and Luc Soler. 2004. ‘Image-​ Guided Robotic Surgery.’ Surgical Innovation 11(2): 113–​22. doi: 10.1177/​107155170401100208.

99

100

100

Image operations Oppenheimer, Peter, and Suzanne Weghorst. January 1999. ‘Immersive Surgical Robotic Interfaces.’ Presented at Medicine Meets Virtual Reality (MMVR 99), San Francisco. Pernin, Christopher G., Elliot Axelband, Jeffrey A. Drezner, Brian B. Dille, John Gordon IV, Bruce J. Held, K. Scott McMahon et al. 2012. Lessons from the Army’s Future Combat Systems Program. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. Accessed 10 May 2015. www. rand.org/​pubs/​monographs/​MG1206. Robb, Richard A. 1995a. ‘Computer Aided Surgery Planning and Rehearsal at the Mayo Clinic.’ Journal of Computer Aided Surgery 1 (supplement): 36–​7. Robb, Richard A. 1995b. ‘VRASP: Virtual Reality Assisted Surgery Program.’ In Interactive Technology and the New Paradigm for Healthcare:  Medicine Meets Virtual Reality III Proceedings [San Diego, CA, 19–​22 January], edited by Richard M. Satava, Karen Morgan, Hans B. Sieburg, Rudy Mattheus and Jens P. Christensen, 309–​22. Amsterdam; Oxford; Washington, DC: IOS Press. Robb, Richard A. 1996. ‘Virtual Reality Assisted Surgery Planning Using Patient Specific Anatomic Models.’ IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology 15(2): 60–​9. Satava, Richard M. 2004. ‘Future Trends in the Design and Application of Surgical Robots.’ Surgical Innovation 11(2): 129–​35. doi: 10.1177/​107155170401100210. Shachtman, Noah. 2007. ‘How Technology Almost Lost the War:  In Iraq, the Critical Networks Are Social –​Not Electronic.’ Wired, 27 November. Accessed 22 June 2016. http://​ archive.wired.com/​politics/​security/​magazine/​15-​12/​ff_​futurewar?currentPage=all. Sorcher, Sara. 2015. ‘The Pentagon Is Building an App Store for Cyberoperations.’ Passcode, 17 February. Accessed 10 May 2015. http://​passcode.csmonitor.com/​planx. Thorpe, Jack. August 2003. ‘Perspectives on Distributed Simulation, Persistent Worlds, Command, and Control.’ Presented at the MOVES Institute, Monterey, CA. Thorpe, Jack. 2010. ‘Trends in Modeling, Simulation, & Gaming:  Personal Observations about the Past Thirty Years and Speculation about the Next Ten.’ Presented at Interservice/​ Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/​ITSEC) 2010, Orlando, FL. Transportation Security Agency. 2014. ‘Security Technologies.’ Transportation Security Administration, 30 October. Accessed 10 May 2015. www.tsa.gov/​about-​tsa/​ security-​technologies. Webb, Gary. 2004. ‘The Killing Game.’ Newsreview.com, 14 October 2004. Accessed 6 December 2015. www.newsreview.com/​sacramento/​killing-​game/​content?oid=31755. Wilford, John Noble. 1986. ‘Pilot’s Helmet Helps Interpret High-​Speed World.’ New York Times, 1 July. Accessed 22 June 2016. www.nytimes.com/​1986/​07/​01/​science/​pilot-​s-​ helmet-​helps-​interpret-​high-​speed-​world.html.

101

Sensorship: the seen unseen of drone warfare Tom Holert

Since the 1990s  –​with increasing frequency from the early 2010s  –​vision and other sensorial modes have been incorporated into intelligent and robotic systems, especially into a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), more commonly referred to as ‘drones’. As we witness the steady conversion of the heavens into ‘robotic skies’1 and the development of ‘recreational drones’ as popular consumer gadgets (Murphy 2014), assessing the impact of drone technology has become crucial for any understanding of how contemporary societies are being governed and how robotised image-​spaces have become instrumental to political rule and dominance.2 The political-​sensorial means of ‘innervations’ –​a neurological term used by Walter Benjamin to describe the changing media worlds of his time (Holert 2008; Hansen 2012, 146ff.) –​are instrumental to the way in which subjectivities are shaped and formatted, educated and controlled. They have been significantly altered and optimised, based on decisions taken, primarily by the US government, in the aftermath of the 9/​11 attacks, to foster the research and development of drone technology. The result has been its deep integration into a largely US-​controlled global surveillance assemblage. Following some general observations on the game-​changing nature of drones and drone warfare, this chapter is going to attend more closely to the imaginary of the military and the weapons industry, to the ways in which drone warfare is visualised and marketed. Towards the end, the possibilities of a counter-​vision to the dominant drone gaze will be discussed.

The game-​changing nature of drones and drone warfare Exploring the iconology, phenomenology and epistemology of the drone may ­contribute to an enhanced ‘understanding’ of empire (Understanding Empire 2014). Inquiries into the knowledge, perceptions and visualities altered by the advent of robotised (though hardly ‘unmanned’) sensor platforms and their collateral ‘cultural optics’ (Stahl 2013) not only guide research into the areas of

7

102

102

Image operations

international justice, political geography or technological studies, but also pertain to issues of ethics and psychology. Changes in the techno-​sensorial conditions of warfare determine the forms and norms of subjectivisation in an ever-​expanding, pervasive, ‘global’ battlefield (Gregory 2011; Grondin and Racine-​Sibulka 2011; Mégret 2012; Lubell and Derejko 2013). Acting in concert, the appearance of drones in the realm of public media culture and the destructive effects they have on the ground in those regions where the ‘drone wars’ are being conducted, engender various kinds of individual and collective trauma. Noteworthy contributions to the literature on the traumatising effects of drone warfare are the Stanford/​NYU ‘Living under Drones’ report (Stanford International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic and Global Justice Clinic at NYU School of Law, 2012) and the research conducted by the London-​based Forensic Architecture (see Stanford International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic et al. 2012; Forensic Architecture 2014). Drone technology epitomises, to some extent, how power and dominance are being exerted in the age of networks and Big Data, of ‘conflict diffusion’ (O’Loughlin, Witmer and Linke 2010) and globalised counterinsurgency. Tropes such as ‘precision targeting’ or ‘signature strikes’ (Wilcox 2011; Goure 2013; Heller 2013; Watts 2013), closely associated with the deployment of drone-​related reconnaissance and killing missions, garnish an imperialist ideology that aims at the exclusion of the ‘human factor’ from equations of warfare while none the less constructing a humanoid target to be ‘engaged’. Outsourcing the exertion of violence to remote-​controlled semi-​robots has become a way, endorsed by politicians, of minimising the death toll among members of military powers with the ability to run drone programmes, hurting and killing only ‘unlawful combatants’ or ‘militants’ (read ‘terrorists’) while supposedly (and, as we know, often erroneously) protecting so called ‘non-​combatant civilians’ (Kay 2004; Danner 2007; Sadat 2009). The deployment and public perception of drones contribute significantly to an imperial mind-​frame in line with an increasingly ‘algorithmical’ and ‘actuarial’ (Wall and Monahan 2011) conceptualisation of life and livelihood as essentially calculable and predictable. Furthermore, the deployment of drones must also be considered in terms of a political economy based on flexibilisation and financialisation. With regard to contemporary warfare doctrines, the endorsement of drones as a key component of counterinsurgency is arguably driven by imperatives of cost-​effectiveness and human resource management, as well as by the competitive logics of budgeting and investing. A diagram from a 2009 lecture on drones given by an US Air Force officer shows the exponential rate of rationalisation and increase in so-​called ‘capabilities’ of airborne weapon systems from World War II to current and future drone wars (Hansen 2009). It demonstrates how impact and target precision have been growing constantly with each war. Here, the US Air Force conceives a future battlefield in which one commander would be able to pilot an entire swarm of drones ready to destroy an unknown quantity of ‘targets’. In another slide from the same 2009 lecture (Hansen 2009), ‘potential manpower savings’ are visualised on a similar time-​scale flowchart, describing the

103

Sensorship

development from a drone or ‘combat air patrol mission’ (CAP), piloted by one crew, to so-​called ‘multi aircraft control’ missions (MAC) that were planned to be operating by 2012 (supposedly saving 56 per cent of manpower), to a future scenario where even fewer personnel will be necessary and 64 per cent of manpower ‘saved’. Questionable as these prospects and numbers might be, they hint at calculations on matters of human resources and future weapon ‘capabilities’ very much in line with business and finance, mirroring speculations on technological development and probabilistic schemes of future market development. Similarly, a struggle for autonomy is ingrained in both financial and weapon systems –​or, in other words, ‘the human qua human is seen to be a flawed technology of war’ (Packer and Reeves 2013, 324) –​and finance. Such an operational and economic mind-​frame entails a biopolitics, or better necropolitics that is based on the ‘reanimation of sovereignty’ where ‘subjects undergo a suspension of their ontological status as subjects’, and ‘the humanity of subjects’ is ‘derealized’ in the course of a permanent and pervasive war (Butler 2004, 66ff.). Moreover, drone technology is instrumental in enacting and extending significant conceptual shifts in geoscience and geopolitics with regard to concepts of spatiality and the closely related field of political notions of territoriality; in other words, drones are actively involved in the makeover of geographical and geospatial knowledge and the application of this knowledge by governments and the military to expand power and dominance using the dimensions of verticality and the volumetric of the territory, pursuing a ‘vertical geopolitics’ (Graham 2004) or ‘geopower’ (Elden 2013). Arguably, the image-​spaces of contemporary warfare are the most sophisticated and saturated of all time, replete with full-​motion video, tracking data, thermal sensing, hyperspectral imaging, adaptive direct sampling, mobile 3D mapping, etc., however difficult it may be to maintain high-​level operability of these technologies in actual situations in the networked theatre of war.3 Yet these image-​spaces are organised and controlled in a way that perception and cognition of the war zone systematically thwart any encounter with the enemy-​other on an equal footing, at eye level. The other is not supposed to have any individuality; she or he is denied personhood and instead becomes categorised and stereotyped in often racialised ways.

A shady visuality Drone wars are basically covert operations, run by the US Air Force and the CIA, as well as other militaries and intelligence services. Nicholas Mirzoeff has suggested that the covertness, the black boxing of contemporary warfare, is in fact the central characteristic of the ‘neo-​visuality’ of global counterinsurgency (Mirzoeff 2011). Counterinsurgency is the umbrella term for the new kind of warfare driven by the United States’ so called Revolution in Military Affairs doctrine (RMA), the post-​Cold War turn towards information and network-​centred

103

104

104

Image operations

war and the arrival of a new adversary, the ‘insurgent’ (one of the technical terms used in military and policy discourse to replace the denomination ‘terrorist’). This new enemy, as envisioned by political and military theorists of ‘asymmetrical warfare’, is deeply embedded in civil culture and society, avoids open battle and often even traditional guerrilla warfare tactics. He or she is made responsible for what is called, in military jargon, ‘a complex and unpredictable set of challenges’ (USAF 2014, iii). However, the power of visuality, the authority to visualise and thus to subjugate the asymmetrically positioned other, ‘has today become “visible” at a point of intensification in which it can no longer fully contain that which it seeks to visualise. That is to say, chaos is now not the alternative to visuality but its condition of necessity’ (Mirzoeff 2011, 283). A rift has opened up between seeing and sensing, between looking and visualising which necessitates a critique of the power relations, discursive frameworks and technological conditions that obfuscate sight for some and entail hyper-​visibility for others. From the position of power (of governments, police and the military), drones hold the promise of navigating and controlling the intensified (and as such hardly visualisable) visibility of the ‘complex and unpredictable’, the same chaos that is produced and maintained by the very exertion of imperial, neo-​colonial power in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan. The unmanned, potentially ‘autonomous’ aircraft loitering patiently, but relentlessly, over the enemy, monitoring his or her movements and behaviour with the persistent, ‘unblinking’ eye of its onboard sensor technology, has become the unlikely and strangely animated icon of superpower force, of endless, omnipresent and invisible war based on superior imaging and sensor technologies. In response to the 9/​11 attacks, the changed environment of war, the defence budget cuts of the Clinton years and the effect of more recent ‘fiscal constraints’ on military spending post-​2008 (Thompson 2013), the Pentagon, the CIA and the White House decided to not only restructure their air force systems, but also to ‘revolutionise’ their entire intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) apparatus. As a consequence, sensor-​equipped, unmanned robots have acquired growing appeal in ISR terms. With renewed interest in RMA in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War and particularly from 2003 onwards, drones have been conceived and imagined largely with regard to their role within the so-​called network-​centric battlefield. To give one example, the infrared look of the odd battlefield tableau that illustrates the announcement of the April 2014 Geospatial Intelligence conference (GEOINT) in Tampa, Florida, shows a Reaper drone in the upper right section hovering over a military convoy (Plate 7). However, in other parts of this greenish-​yellowish collage of allegedly state-​of-​ the-​art warfare, an armoured speedboat and a satellite can be discerned next to the silhouettes and faces of soldiers and ground personnel, looking at monitors displaying what appears to be a diagrammatic visualisation of geodata. Drones are portrayed as part of multidisciplinary and multi-​actor systems of ‘joint operations’, deployed to increase the efficiency of military intelligence being

105

Sensorship

relayed from surveillance and reconnaissance platforms to the missile-​carrying aircrafts. The attempts to visualise the integration of drones in IRS take obviously different routes. I  can only gesture here toward the history and development of visualisations of warfare in the wake of RMA, i.e. of ‘Full Spectrum Information Superiority’, of ‘network-​centric warfare’, of ‘situational awareness’ or of ‘High Level C4 Infrastructure Operational Concepts’. The graphical representations that are applied in these contexts and can be tracked currently via web search insinuate that something highly complex is going on. They imply that novel arms, communication and intelligence systems are required to avoid losing ground in the ongoing full spectrum arms race of asymmetric warfare, be it in the theatre of war or in the realm of information and knowledge, of image acquisition and analysis. The odd gallery of trashy, poor diagrams is disseminated via PDFs of arms industry journals, PowerPoint presentations of army and air force theorists or news and promotional video clips by defence contractors. They constitute a shady visuality, loosely connected to the ideological claim that there is no avoiding continuous investment in new technology and the advancement of the art of war. Despite (or because of) their unsophisticated technical and neutral looks, such pictures serve, more or less effectively, as visual-​textual actants in the political, social and economic realities of war, operating in order to simplify or complicate the matters at hand, to render them pseudo-​comprehensible or completely confusing. A 2012 graphical depiction of an Unmanned Aerial System provided by the US sensor manufacturer and defence contractor L3 Integrated Optical Systems renders a drone as sensing and sending, retrieving and forwarding visual information to a handheld tablet or smartphone carried and operated by a ‘tactical user’ in the combat zone (see L-​3 Integrated Optical Systems 2012). The drone produces a full motion video ‘footprint’ and is linked by arrow-​like rays (which seem to be encased in transparent columns most likely symbolising a different kind of wavelength) to both the objects and the subjects of surveillance, thus providing the intelligence officer with a certain range of image qualities and views of the potential targets. Interestingly, the drone’s connection with the pilot and sensor operator on the ground is missing from this tableau, as is any further information about the geographical location of the monitored terrain. A 2013 advertisement by General Dynamics, one of the largest aerospace and defence companies in the world, places the iconic Predator drone alongside military intelligence symbols of a satellite, a satellite receiver and a ‘tactical user’, each lined up beneath the most common icons of current civil smartphone interfaces, symbols for email, telephone, Google maps and emergency calls, gathered on a backdrop showing the Earth or, more precisely, the Americas. Connected via the General Dynamics cloud, the soldier in the battlefield and the intelligence and image analyst at an air force base somewhere else are to meet on the most common ground of today, the mobile touch screen. The drone has become a member of the intelligence community of devices and agents while increasingly populating communication patterns in an ever more general and familiar environment.

105

106

106

Image operations

Strikingly, the General Dynamics picture of military and intelligence smartphone apps seems to refer directly to the so called ‘transformative apps’ programme initiated, developed and put into operation by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. An illustration accompanying an April 2013 article on the new DARPA ‘webstore’, published on the homepage of Military & Aerospace Electronics, displays a handheld smartphone device with a collection of apps, again featuring one represented by an icon showing the familiar silhouette of a Predator drone (Keller 2013). Touching the drone icon and opening the app –​the graphic rendition of the DARPA programme, the picture of its integration into the most common communication device –​conveys an unsettling ease and smoothness of customised and transformative drone ‘application’.

Rhetorics of power The commercialisation of drone technology as well as its successful and rapid integration into the post-​panoptic systems of warfare, control and surveillance relies on a visual rhetoric of power, supremacy and progressiveness. Take, for instance, the cover of the RPA Vector [Remotely Piloted Aircraft Vector]: Vision and Enabling Concepts 2013–​2038, a 2013 White Paper of the US Air Force’s vision of the drone programme of the US military (USAF 2014). The shiny metallic lettering of the White Paper’s title clearly addresses the chrome and steel fetishist among potential readers familiar with the typographical bombast often deployed by those in charge of the graphic design of military journals, and for its part informed by the design of superhero comics, movies, shooter video games and war toys’ packaging. Above the title lettering, four idealised renderings of actual and future drone models are flying through, or in front of circular black holes –​a Photoshop four-​panel altar of drone glory with softly blurred and smoothed edges. At the bottom, a General Atomics MQ-​9 Reaper drone is waiting in the hangar of a US Air Force base; on the upper left panel, a Northrop Grumman RQ-​4 Global Hawk is flying high in front of a backdrop of streaks of atmospherically clouded sunlight. On the right upper panel, a MQ-​1 Predator drone and what seems to be a small, hand-​started AeroVironment RQ-​11 Raven drone are pictured flying over a romantic blue-​ toned night with mountains on the horizon in a linked mission that, in reality, is quite unlikely to happen, given the difference in size and capabilities of these aircrafts. Yet the centre of the composition is both replete and deplete: replete with the control panels, monitors and joysticks of a drone cockpit on the ground and usually located in the Nevada desert, thousands of miles away from the actual drone’s itinerary, but lacking the presence of the pilot or sensor operator, whose seat is left empty. This absence of the human factor may not have been an intentional omission by the graphic designer or the Air Force itself, though it certainly resonates with the teleology driving all technological developments. This teleology, not necessarily shared by a military and political establishment keen on keeping the

107

Sensorship

human being in the loop of contemporary warfare, consists in the autonomy of machines and their independence from human intervention. Undoubtedly, the staging of drone technology exceeds such modest visual solutions at times. With the development of the Predator and Reaper drones and their implementation in the US Air Force and the British Royal Air Force during the 1990s and 2000s, General Atomics, a daughter firm of General Dynamics, originally founded in 1955 to manufacture nuclear power reactor systems, became one of the major producers of combat unmanned aerial systems. Among the new models GA is promoting, the Avenger, formerly known as Predator C, stands out –​ a developmental model powered not by a propeller engine, like the Reaper and the Predator, but by a turbofan. Its first flight took place in April 2009, though it has not been used by the military in combat or surveillance missions since. The Avenger is thus a machine that exists and does not exist:  a prototype, commissioned by the US Air Force, to be tested and promoted until it is finally ready for operation, or not. The image politics associated with General Atomics and their drone range have always been rather interesting and strange. As James Bridle, Alexis Madrigal and Derek Gregory have pointed out, one of the most familiar images of drone warfare: a picture of a General Atomics Reaper drone firing a hellfire missile above a mountain landscape, presumably in Afghanistan or Pakistan, among the highest-​ ranked Google searches for ‘drone’ and even included in the 2014 US Air Force RPA Vector document, is in fact a complete fiction. Rather than being taken from an aircraft nearby, the picture was created in 2009 by an illustrator using 3D modelling software and Photoshop to render visible something that, oddly, has not been made available to the public eye, not even by the military: a missile-​firing combat drone (Bridle 2013; Madrigal 2013; Gregory 2014a, 2014b; Hankey and Tuszynski, this volume). On its website and in industry journal advertisements, the company goes to some length to glamorise the remote-​controlled platform, taking advantage of its stealthy, perilous-​looking streamlined science-​fiction shapes for atmospheric photographs during reddish desert dawns. The Avenger is thus presented as a highly desirable commodity, a prestigious luxury item to be rendered attractive with all necessary available aesthetic means. General Atomics’ (GA) marketing and advertising department purchases the services of illustrators, animation artists and movie directors for the purpose of visualising and promoting its drone range. Probably the most compelling (or repelling) example of how GA has tried to convince the government pundits in charge of allocating budget shares to the industry of its Avenger model was their collaboration with animation professionals and Hollywood-​ type spectacle engineers, resulting in a six-​minute promotional video first screened in 2009 (though it was still considered a novelty at air shows in 2011)  (Plate 8a–​f ).4 In an obvious attempt to surpass an earlier promotional video for the Global Hawk, a super drone manufactured by the main American competitor Northrop Grumman (Northrop Grumman RQ-​4N BAMS UAV), the GA video

107

108

108

Image operations

opens with a two-​minute sequence that deliberately emulates, in cinemato­ graphy and montage, the first scenes of a war movie production, without any voice-​over explaining the features of the product or its potential utilisation in the battlefield, but straightforwardly introducing the new drone as a spectacular protagonist in what was, at the time of its making, the not-​too-​distant future of 2012. Without even trying to appear realistic, the rather small-​time, glamorous 2009 presentation of the Avenger drone draws on video games and B movie aesthetics, essentially derealising the operations of drone warfare. From the animated views of the drone as a tactical element in networked combat action to the histrionics of the military personnel in the war room and cockpits, GA renders warfare and the business of high-​tech destructive technology as clean, aseptic entertainment, completely unimpressed, it seems, by any criticism launched against the military-​entertainment complex and its frivolous image politics, and of course implicitly denying any responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths in the covert ‘drone wars’.

Payload intimacy Certainly the strategies of rendering drones ‘beneficial’, instead of fatal and destructive, are manifold. For those in the military who are willing to disregard the aspects of more traditional military virtues that continue to represent the brave ‘warfighter’ in combat situations that afford courage, physical fitness, mental stamina, etc., drone technology presents itself as a crucial component of a different, post-​heroic, only partly human, potentially ‘autonomous’ and economically superior kind of warfare. A superior brand of war in which the individual drone, for those who operate it and put it into action, may assume the symbolic status of something more benign than a tool or weapon and instead attain the role of a beloved creature in the act of becoming a peculiar being in its own right. An article in the November 2003 Air Force Magazine describes a single Global Hawk, a drone much bigger than the Predator or the Reaper, the first of which was built in 1998, as ‘one busy, busy bird’ (Grant 2003). In the ‘pack’ of more than 600 fighters, bombers, tankers, airlifters and intelligence-​surveillance-​reconnaissance aircraft dispatched to Operation Iraqi Freedom, the RQ-​4 Global Hawk is rendered as ‘one loner’ that operated for eighteen consecutive days ‘to provide unblinking coverage of the Republican Guard and other key targets’ (38). In animist fashion, the article suggests that the ISR platform that is equipped with a payload of infrared, radar and optical-​electronic sensors flying at comparably high altitude, proves itself to be enduring and equipped with a sense of duty. The drone is said to ‘focus its radar sensor’ and is ‘checking to see’ if Iraqi forces are moving this way or the other (42). Thus presented as a semi-​or quasi-​autonomous object-​subject with agency, the drone becomes uncannily alive in the eyes of those who rely on its services. Caring, tender attitudes towards aircrafts are common among pilots and maintenance crews in general (Pfau 2008). However, particularly with regard to the way

109

Sensorship

drones are rendered as lethal, soulless robots in the drone-​critical literature and even more by an increasing awareness of the traumatising violence and destruction caused by the covert drone wars for people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere, it seems problematic (if not simply obscene) that such affective attachment to drones is displayed by those operating them, whether in the theatre of war or in military public relations work. To ‘love the drone’ (Entous 2010) has become the default psychological framework of this particular human–​ machine interaction, particularly under the Obama administration. Below a picture showing an Unmanned Carrier Launched Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) drone landing on an aircraft carrier that bears the caption ‘It’s kinda cute, right?’, Pierre Hines, a former army intelligence officer, explains why the time has come to stop worrying and love the drones on the terms of their potential deployment in science and, more generally, ‘public interest’ (Hines 2009). Linking the call to ‘love the drones’ to the prospect of using them in the civil realm is perfectly in sync with the multiple legal and administrative efforts to introduce drones, or, more precisely, the drone community and entire Unmanned Aerial Systems, into domestic airspace. In 2013, the US Department of Transportation published a five-​year roadmap for the ‘Integration of Civil Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in the National Airspace System (NAS)’, thus enabling the transition from ‘accommodation’ to the ‘integration’ and ‘evolution’ of Unmanned Aerial Systems (US Department of Transportation 2013). In one of the few illustrations in the NAS roadmap, a highly simplified representation of the basic components of an Unmanned Aerial System is offered: the small aircraft, the pilot or operator on the ground in front of the various control panels and monitors and a flash-​like figure representing the ‘data link’, thus translating the complex socio-​technological infrastructure into a simplistic image of a sender/​receiver relation. Though arguably about to be replaced by automated systems in the future, with all the ethical and technological problems such a development would imply, the figure of the sensor operator is of crucial significance for the public perception of drone warfare and the ways in which this perception is being organised and manipulated. While the drones themselves are rendered as either spectacularly destructive or essentially beneficial ‘cute’ objects of affection and attachment, the human element in the man–​machine loop is identified primarily in the pilots and the sensor operators on the ground. Although they are usually represented sitting in a cramped cockpit environment, facing an array of monitors, keyboards and joysticks, another type of imagery, in the main produced by the US Air Force itself, presents the sensor operators outdoors, on the tarmac, in close contact with the payload of electro-​optical cameras and other sensors.5 In a short 2014 USAF clip published on YouTube (which has since been removed), a young Air Force soldier working at a Predator airfield moves, touches, caresses the sensor payload with ostentatious sensitivity while explaining some of its features (Plate 9). The most sensitive and expensive part of the drones’ equipment, with regard to the intelligence and full-​motion video feeds it is supposed to collect and send around the world via satellite links, is thus

109

110

110

Image operations

treated in a fetishist manner or like a beloved pet. To ‘get the ball over the target’, as the operator says in the video clip, is military speak for placing the sensor system above the monitored other, the allusion to gaming and sport certainly intended. Moreover, the relationship that is established between the sensor payload and the ground crew appears to be one of considerable intimacy and interconnectedness, despite the fact that pilots, sensor operators and image analysts may eventually suffer from traumatic stress disorders caused by the very data made available to them via the sensor payload.6 The subject of intense, multidisciplinary engineering research and development, the sensor payload itself is raised to the status of an icon invested with particular libidinal energies, framed by the super-​icon of arms fetishism which the drone aircraft itself has become. The logo designed for a 2014 conference on payload technology cutifies the drone by using a visual idiom that resembles the visual codes of toy brands (UAV Payloads & Sensors conference 2014). Emphasising the unblinking ‘eye’ of the sensor payload, the drone is to a certain extent subjectified, whereas, in a scene taken from the 2009 promotional video by GA (discussed earlier), the payload-​beaming rays of reconnaissance and visual capture attain the angelic, otherworldly gleam and glamour of an all-​seeing eye: one of the most popular fantasies associated with drones. Probably the most advanced, if still mysterious, sensor systems to serve as drone payloads is the DARPA-​driven ARGUS-​IS programme. The name ARGUS-​ IS, acronym of ‘Autonomous Real-​Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System’, evokes Argus Panoptes (Ἄργος Πανόπτης), the mythological giant whose epithet, ‘Panoptes’ (‘all-​seeing’), refers to his multiple, supposedly one hundred eyes.7 The four-​lens ARGUS-​IS digital camera, mounted in gyroscopically stabilised gimbal mounts, of which only very few sketches can be found via Internet search, is a kind of deluxe payload, a well-​kept and therefore almost mythical secret of the sensor industry. The imagery captured and produced by a ‘wide-​ area surveillance sensor system’ such as ARGUS-​IS resembles a mosaic, patched together from bird’s-​eye views of a terrain with separate windows for zooming into particular locations, enabling sensor operators and image analysts on the ground to discern even small animals. Though this technology is said to be already operating in current drone wars, almost no data captured by sensors of this kind in the zones of combat and targeted killings have been leaked to public platforms yet. Furthermore, it is not clear to what extent the traditional kind of drone vision has actually been replaced with crosshairs –​a feature that became familiar when the war on terror escalated after 9/​11. The point-​of-​view crosshair image, with the tracking square framing the movements of those under surveillance and potentially about to be ‘engaged’, to use the military euphemism for killing or murder, is probably the essential icon of drone warfare: the view from above, supported by and imbued with the specific intimate relations between crew and sensor payload. But it is an icon rarely seen, at least when used in ‘targeted killing’ and ‘signature strike’ missions. Redacted or entirely hidden from view, it escapes the discerning

111

Sensorship

public eye, yet is constantly watched and analysed by those operating drones carrying weapon and reconnaissance payload. Pictorial entities to be used as elements of technical processes and procedures rather than as aesthetic objects (‘operative images’ in Harun Farocki’s terms, see Pantenburg, this volume), the actual visual data processed by human and non-​human military operators entertain a complex relationship to visibility and visuality. Their very look and operability become matters of speculation and imagination.

Sensorship, disturbed In early April 2014, the drone operator’s vision became the target of a project that emerged out of the collaboration of a group of local and international activists, artists and media people in Pakistan. In a field in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region, collaborators in a public relations campaign, disguised as an interventionist art project, unfurled a huge photo of a young girl whose parents were reportedly killed by a drone (Plate 10). Commissioned by Reprieve/​ Foundation for Fundamental Rights and realised by the Pakistan branch of the global advertisement agency BBDO, the project was inspired (and endorsed) by French photographer JR’s long-​term ‘Inside Out’ project, in which large portraits of people are placed in local landscapes and documented from above. The campaign’s name, #NotABugSplat, takes issue with the term ‘bug splats’ that drone operators are said to be using when referring to kills.8 Quoting from a 2012 Rolling Stone article on Obama’s drone wars, the #NotABugSplat initiative intended to raise awareness of the inhuman attitude implicit in remote warfare and oppose the lazy argument that ‘viewing the body through a grainy video image gives the sense of an insect being crushed’ (Hastings 2012). With the ‘anonymous dot on the landscape’ replaced by the giant picture of ‘an innocent child victim’s face’ (#Not A Bug Splat 2014), potential drone operators scanning the area should be forced to think about what they are actually doing with words and weapons. Shahzad Akbar, a lawyer working for Reprieve who investigates the civilian casualties of drone warfare, provided the #NotABugSplat project with the image of the young girl who lost her parents in a 2010 drone strike in the North Waziristan village of Dande Darpa Khel. The original picture from which the portrait was cut out was taken by North Waziristan photo journalist Noor Behram (Saifi 2014). #NotABugSplat commented that the massive portrait was ‘designed to be captured by satellites in order to make it a permanent part of the landscape on online mapping sites’ (#Not A  Bug Splat 2014). Though it was at first unclear whether the portrait would remain in the field, locals were encouraged by the campaigners to ‘use the fabric for roofing and other useful purposes’. The relationship of the girl’s image in the field to the images of drone warfare produced by the military-​industrial complex and circulating in the digital media sphere is a difficult one to assess. For one, it must be noted that the actual audience of #NotABugSplat in early April 2014 were probably not pilots or analysts

111

112

112

Image operations

in more or less distant air bases, for the area where the image was staged has only occasionally been affected by US drone strikes and reconnaissance missions in Pakistan. Far more important than the actual drone operators has been the audience almost instantly generated by a global buzz of tweets, websites, blogs and television news programmes around 8 April 2014 that resulted in the campaign’s considerable impact.9 #NotABugSplat symbolically addressed the person sitting at the monitor conducting a ‘signature strike’ but communicated with the very public sphere that can hardly access the realm of ‘operative images’. The staging of the girl’s image thus attained an operability of a different kind: It pointed to the fact that the visual and situational data on which drone operations are based purposefully exclude any face-​to-​face encounter with the casualties of contemporary warfare. The iconic spectacle of the drone as well as the acquisition and display of sensor data obfuscate the simple truth of the existence of a human other. One might argue that the image of a child looking at you from below is no doubt a highly manipulative way of making such an argument, as it suggests a direct contact with a person where there is actually only a black and white arrangement of dots on plastic sheeting. On the other hand, one may contend that #NotABugSplat took seriously the lesson of current warfare image operations. Using a universal signifier of precariousness and vulnerability, the ‘innocent child’, it provided a necessary counter-​shot to the ‘persistent vision’ of networked aerial dominance. It pointed out the systemic blind spot of any screen-​based, remote-​controlled, computerised warfare: the technological means may be tremendously advanced, but the intimacy with the situation ‘on the ground’ for anyone watching the control panels and analysing the sensor data is limited and framed by the perceptual prosthesis’s fundamental inability to bridge the dichotomy of ‘us’ and ‘them’ that drives all politics of counterinsurgency (see O’Loughlin, this volume). Though the concept of ‘drone vision’ certainly is debatable, since it suggests viewing activity on the part of the remote-​controlled aircraft, the very possibility of acquiring sensorial data by means of such an aircraft’s payload does help to engender practices of vertical perception that are informed by (basically racist) ideologies of might and superiority. Fed into algorithms that subsist on pattern recognition or biometric tracking, such ideologies become quasi-​natural perceptual facts. Although drones are no more than components of multicentred IRS and weapons systems, their very existence and operability have long become an asset of the contemporary ‘frames of war’, where image technologies not only constitute the public sphere but also counterpublics. Judith Butler rightly asks if there is ‘some way to register war in a way that transforms the senses’ and what ‘role do transformed senses have in the demands for the cessation of war?’ (Butler 2010, xii). The case of drone-​based sensor technology is certainly also a case of the transformation of the senses –​in either harmful or critical ways. The image of the drone, as manufactured by the military and the weapons industry and widely distributed, and the information acquired by sensor payloads attached to drone platforms together form a powerful ideo-​technological entity. However, the senses are being transformed on either side, and the challenging of the sensor operator’s gaze testifies to such a transformation.

113

Sensorship

Notes 1 This stunning phrase is used affirmatively in a working paper published by the US think tank Center for a New American Security, which has close relations with the Obama administration (Cronin and Giarra 2010). 2 The following observations are informed by the pioneering work of Nicholas Mirzoeff, Derek Gregory, Ian Shaw, James Bridle, Trevor Paglen, Tom Engelhardt, Nick Turse, Georges Chamayou, Amnesty International, the Forensic Architecture programme and many others. 3 Derek Gregory gave a detailed account of a mission involving drones that took place on 21 February 2010, by US and Afghan troops in Uruzgan, Afghanistan, that got completely out of hand, in a talk he gave in Berlin on 11 December 2014 (Hebbel Theater am Ufer). 4 Arms and aerospace journalist Stephen Trimble reports on his first sighting of the PREDATOR C ‘Avenger’ UAV video at the 2011 Paris Air Show on his YouTube channel (Avenger vs F-​22). 5 To name a few examples, often featuring female operators commenting on their job, currently accessible via YouTube: MQ-​9 Reaper UAV Drone Operator, Predator Sensor, Reaper-​Predator Sensor Operator, Air Force ISR Agency:  All In … All the Time, Top Drone –​The US Air Force’s Elite Drone Training School. 6 Strapped to a drone, the payload enables close relationships of the operating crew not only to the aircraft, but, more importantly, to the ground troops and targets. As Derek Gregory puts it, ‘ “Intimacy” is … cultivated within a culturally divided field … in which crews are interpellated to identify so closely with their comrades-​in-​arms that they are predisposed to interpret every other action –​which is to say every Other action –​as hostile or sinister, sometimes with disastrous consequences for the innocent’ (Gregory 2014a, 10). 7 In 2009, ARGUS-​IS was supposed to complement and augment the Gorgon Stare sensor programme, another video capture technology named after a Greek mythological figure, this time referring to one of three sisters whose hair was made of living, venomous snakes and whose horrifying face turned those who beheld her to stone. 8 It should also be mentioned that ‘bugsplat’ is military jargon for ‘collateral damage’. In 2003, the US Air Force introduced software of the same name that generated blob-​like images ‘resembling squashed insects’ that were said to ‘model potential damage by a particular type and size of bomb dropped by a particular aircraft flying at a given altitude’ (‘Bugsplat …’ 2003; see also Speri 2014). 9 #Not a Bug Splat was subsequently shortlisted in four categories at the 2014 Cannes Lions, the world’s biggest annual awards show and festival for professionals in the creative communications industry.

References Bridle, James. 2013. [Untitled]. ‘One Visible Future’, 8 March. Accessed 4 December 2014. http://​onevisiblefuture.tumblr.com/​post/​44865882761/​i-​have-​something-​of-​an-​obsession​with-​the-​image. ‘Bugsplat Computer Program Aims to Limit Civilian Deaths at Targets.’ Seattle Times, 26 February 2003. Accessed 4 December 2014. http://​community.seattletimes.nwsource. com/​archive/​?date=20030226&slug=collateral26.

113

114

114

Image operations Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso. Butler, Judith. 2010. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? London: Verso. Cronin, Patrick M., and Paul S. Giarra. 2010. ‘Robotic Skies: Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance and the Strategic Defense of Japan.’ Center for a New American Security, Washington, DC, December 2010. [Working Paper]. Accessed 1 December 2014. www.cnas.org/​files/​documents/​publications/​CNAS_​Robotic%20Skies_​Cronin Giarra.pdf. Danner, Allison M. 2007. ‘Defining Unlawful Enemy Combatants:  A  Centripetal Story.’ Texas International Law Journal 43(1): 1–​14. Accessed 4 December 2014. www.tilj.org/​ content/​journal/​43/​num1/​Danner1.pdf. Elden, Stuart. 2013. ‘Secure the Volume:  Vertical Geopolitics and the Depth of Power.’ Political Geography 34: 35–​51. Entous, Adam. 2010. ‘How Obama’s White House Learned to Love the Drone:  Special Report.’ In Drone Warfare in Pakistan: Under President Barack Obama, Drone Program in Pakistan Broadly Expanded, edited by Reuters. Accessed 4 December 2014. http://​static. reuters.com/​resources/​media/​editorial/​20100518/​Drones.pdf. Forensic Architecture, Centre for Research Architecture, Department of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London. 2014. Forensis:  The Architecture of Public Truth. Berlin: Sternberg Press. Goure, Daniel. 2013. ‘U.S. Air Dominance in a Fiscally Constrained Environment: Defining Paths to the Future Global Precision Strike.’ Lexington Institute, Arlington, VA, September 2013. Accessed 4 December 2014. www.lexingtoninstitute.org/​wp-​content/​ uploads/​2013/​09/​GlobalPrecisionStrike.pdf. Graham, Stephen. 2004. ‘Vertical Geopolitics: Baghdad and After.’ Antipode 36(1): 12–​23. Grant, Rebecca. 2003. ‘Eyes Wide Open. The Lone Global Hawk Flying above Iraq Was One Busy, Busy, Bird.’ Air Force Magazine November: 38–​42. Gregory, Derek. 2011. ‘The Everywhere War.’ Geographical Journal 177(3): 238–​50. Gregory, Derek. 2014a. ‘Drone Geographies.’ Radical Philosophy 183 (January/​ February): 7–​19. Gregory, Derek. 2014b. ‘Imag(in)ing Drones.’ Geographical Imaginations, 5 April. Accessed 14 December 2014. http://​geographicalimaginations.com/​2014/​04/​05/​dreaming-​of-​ drones/​. Grondin, David, and Paul Racine-​Sibulka. April 2011. ‘A Virtual Geography of Aerial Unmanned Warfare with the World as Battlefield: The Rise of Killer Robots and Killing Drones, the End of the Warrior Ethos?’ Paper on the panel Conversations in the Conflict Zone III: Being Warrior, presented at the Association of American Geographers annual meeting, Seattle, WA. Hansen, Blair. 2009. ‘Unmanned Aircraft Systems:  Present and Future Capabilities.’ [PowerPoint Presentation]. Defense Intelligence Operations Coordination Center, Washington, DC, 23 October 2009. Accessed 4 December 2014. http://​cryptome.org/​ dodi/​uav-​future.pdf. Hansen, Miriam Bratu. 2012. Cinema and Experience: Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hastings, Michael. 2012. ‘The Rise of the Killer Drones: How America Goes to War in Secret.’ Rolling Stone, 16 April. Accessed 4 December 2014. www.rollingstone.com/​politics/​ news/​the-​rise-​of-​the-​killer-​drones-​how-​america-​goes-​to-​war-​in-​secret-​20120416#ixzz3LVpDiS32.

115

Sensorship Heller, Kevin Jon. 2013. ‘ “One Hell of a Killing Machine”: Signature Strikes and International Law.’ Journal of International Criminal Justice 11(1): 89–​119. Hines, Pierre. 2009. ‘Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Drones.’ Daily Beast, 17 September. Accessed 4 December 2014. www.thedailybeast.com/​articles/​2013/​09/​17/​ learn-​to-​stop-​worrying-​and-​love-​the-​drones.html. Holert, Tom. 2008. Regieren im Bildraum. Berlin: b_​books. Kay, Jonathan. 2004. ‘Redefining the Terrorist.’ National Interest 75(Spring): 87–​93. Keller, John. 2013. ‘DARPA to Create App store of Military Mobile Apps that Run on Rugged Smartphones and Tablets.’ Military & Aerospace, 29 April. Accessed 4 December 2014. www.militaryaerospace.com/​articles/​2013/​04/​DARPA-​Transformative-​Apps. html. L-​3 Integrated Optical Systems. 2012. ‘L-​3 Integrated Optical Systems Selected by Office of Naval Research for Phase II Development of Ultra Wide Field of View Persistent Imaging Surveillance Sensor.’ 26 March. Accessed 4 December 2014. www2.l-​3com.com/​ios/​programs/​r_​ultrawide.htm. Lubell, Noam, and Nathan Derejko. 2013. ‘A Global Battlefield? Drones and the Geographical Scope of Armed Conflict.’ Journal of International Criminal Justice 11(1): 65–​88. Madrigal, Alexis C. 2013. ‘The “Canonical” Image of a Drone Is a Rendering Dressed Up in Photoshop.’ The Atlantic, 20 March. Accessed 4 December 2014. www.theatlantic.com/​ technology/​archive/​2013/​03/​the-​canonical-​image-​of-​a-​drone-​is-​a-​rendering-​dressed-​ up-​in-​photoshop/​274177/​. Mégret, Frédéric. 2012. ‘War and the Vanishing Battlefield.’ Loyola University Chicago International Law Review 9(1):  1–​21. Accessed 4 December 2014. http://​ssrn.com/​ abstract=1986548. Mirzoeff, Nicholas. 2011. The Right to Look:  A  Counterhistory of Visuality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Murphy, Kate. 2014. ‘News Analysis:  Things To Consider before Buying That Drone.’ New York Times, 6 December, sect. SR, 5. #Not A  Bug Splat. 2014. ‘A Giant Art Installation Targets Predator Drone Operators.’ Accessed 4 December 2014. http://​notabugsplat.com/​. O’Loughlin, John, Frank D.  W. Witmer and Andrew M. Linke. 2010. ‘The Afghanistan–​ Pakistan Wars, 2008–​2009:  Micro-​Geographies, Conflict Diffusion, and Clusters of Violence.’ Eurasian Geography and Economics 51(4): 437–​71. Packer, Jeremy, and Joshua Reeves. 2013. ‘Romancing the Drone:  Military Desire and Anthropophobia from SAGE to Swarm.’ Canadian Journal of Communication 38: 309–​31. Pfau, Ann Elizabeth. 2008. Miss Your Lovin: GIs, Gender and Domesticity during World War II. New York: Columbia University Press. Sadat, Leila Nadya. 2009. ‘A Presumption of Guilt: The Unlawful Enemy Combatant and the U.S. War on Terror.’ Denver Journal of International Law and Policy 37(4): 539–​53. Saifi, Sophia. 2014. ‘Not a “Bug Splat”: Artists Give Drone Victims a Face in Pakistan.’ CNN, 9 April. Accessed 4 December 2014. http://​edition.cnn.com/​2014/​04/​09/​world/​asia/​ pakistan-​drones-​not-​a-​bug-​splat/​. Speri, Alice. 2014. ‘Giant Art Installation in Pakistan Tells US Drone Operators People Aren’t “Bug Splat”.’ Vice, 7 April. Accessed 4 December 2014. https://​news.vice.com/​article/​giant-​art-​installation-​in-​pakistan-​tells-​us-​drone-​operators-​people-​arent-​bug-​splat. Stahl, Roger. 2013. ‘What the Drone Saw:  The Cultural Optics of the Unmanned War.’ Australian Journal of International Affairs 67(5): 659–​74.

115

116

116

Image operations Stanford International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic (IHRCRC) and Global Justice Clinic (GJC) at NYU School of Law. 2012. ‘Living under Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians from US Drone Practices in Pakistan.’ Accessed 4 December 2014. www.livingunderdrones.org/​report/​. Thompson, Loren B. 2013. ‘Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance:  U.S. Air Dominance in a Fiscally-​Constrained Environment:  Defining Paths to the Future.’ Lexington Institute, Arlington, VA, March 2013. Accessed 4 December 2014. www.lexingtoninstitute.org/​wp-​content/​uploads/​2013/​09/​AirDominance-​ISR.pdf. UAV Payloads & Sensors Conference, London, 24–​25 June 2014. Accessed 4 December 2014. www.uavpayloads.com/​. Understanding Empire: The State of Our Unmanned Planet. 2014. Accessed 1 December 2014. https://​understandingempire.wordpress.com/​. United States Airforce (USAF). 2014. ‘RPA Vector: Vision and Enabling Concepts 2013–​ 2038.’ Headquarters, United States Airforce, Washington, DC, February 2014. Accessed 7 December 2016. www.defenseinnovationmarketplace.mil/​resources/​USAF-​RPA_​ VectorVisionEnablingConcepts2013-​2038_​ForPublicRelease.pdf. US Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration. 2013. ‘Integration of Civil Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in the National Airspace System (NAS) Roadmap.’ US Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration, Washington, DC, November 2013. Accessed 4 December 2014. http://​alaskaaircarriers. org/​servlet/​download?id=601. Wall, Tyler, and Torin Monahan. 2011. ‘Surveillance and Violence from Afar: The Politics of Drones and Liminal Security-​Scapes.’ Theoretical Criminology 15(3): 239–​54. Watts, Barry D. 2013. ‘The Evolution of Precision Strike.’ The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), Washington, DC. Accessed 4 December 2014. www. csbaonline.org/​publications/​2013/​08/​the-​evolution-​of-​precision-​strike/​. Wikipedia. 2014. ‘Open Source Intelligence.’ Accessed 14 December 2014. http://​ en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Open-​source_​intelligence. Wilcox, Lauren. March 2011. ‘Body Counts:  The Politics of Embodiment in Precision Warfare.’ Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association Annual Conference, Global Governance:  Political Authority in Transition, Le Centre Sheraton Montreal Hotel, Montreal. Accessed 4 December 2014. http://​citation.allacademic.com/​meta/​p501128_​index.html.

Videos Air Force ISR Agency:  All In … All the Time, published by AFBlueTube, 4 April 2010. Accessed 4 December 2014. www.youtube.com/​watch?v=6yaB1zfuUSc. Avenger vs F-​22. Stephen Trimble, YouTube, 23 June 2011. Accessed 4 December 2014. www.youtube.com/​watch?v=3jQUP_​IVZks. MQ-​ 9 Reaper UAV Drone Operator, published by AirSource  –​A  Channel for U.S. Military Enthusiasts, 27 May 2013. Accessed 4 December 2014. www.youtube.com/​ watch?v=dWEohpF-​bOI. Northrop Grumman RQ-​ 4N BAMS UAV, Northrop Grumman promotional video, uploaded to YouTube, 4 April 2008. Accessed 4 December 2014. www.youtube.com/​ watch?v=XRiPaQ5Y9Ng#t=108.

117

Sensorship PREDATOR C ‘Avenger’ UAV, General Atomics promotional video, c. 2009, YouTube, 18 June 2012. Accessed 4 December 2014. www.youtube.com/​watch?v=v0dHKWjXn-​E. Predator Sensor, published by AFBlueTube, 12 October 2009. Accessed 4 December 2014. www.youtube.com/​watch?v=9wQE0DckDKg. Reaper-​Predator Sensor Operator, published by Air Force Special Operations Command, 26 June 2013. Accessed 4 December 2014. www.youtube.com/​watch?v=Nla91YItTwk. Top Drone –​The US Air Force’s Elite Drone Training School, published by Duffel Blog, 13 February 2013. Accessed 4 December 2014. www.youtube.com/​watch?v=iUAuF0_​ qCwE.

117

118

8

Images that last? Iraq videos from YouTube to WikiLeaks Christian Christensen

The 2010 release of the WikiLeaks Collateral Murder video (WikiLeaks 2010) marked a new phase in the use and uploading to sites such as YouTube of videos showing images of warfare and military activity. Soldiers taking part in military campaigns have documented their activities in many ways: sketches, poems, pictures and videos. And states and militaries have meticulously documented their activities in similar mediated forms, either for the purposes of propaganda or for data to be used for later analysis. For the general public, what is ‘new’ in the now not-​so-​new media landscape is the possibility of uploading and accessing clips and videos in a public archive, available there for as long as the platform exists (or has space or resources to maintain that volume of data). In addition to the simplicity of uploading and access, one of the central features of archives such as YouTube is the sheer volume and variety of the material available, and it is this combination of access and variety that I would like to address in this chapter, and to consider the ways in which videos of warfare on platforms such as YouTube offer strikingly different views of conflict from multiple perspectives, and show varying degrees of popularity over time. In order to do this, I will address three previous studies on the use of YouTube by members of the US military (and the military itself) for the purposes of documenting activities in Iraq and Afghanistan (Christensen 2008, 2009, 2011), and then move on to consider these cases in relation to the rather different case of the uploading of the Collateral Murder video (obtained via the leak from Chelsea Manning) by WikiLeaks. Ultimately, in this analysis, I would like to go some way toward considering how certain videos (such as Collateral Murder) enter and re-​enter public debate, and how these videos  –​while containing material that might undercut mainstream representations of war –​gain fame via the use of established mainstream patterns of promotion, as well as their fitting certain generic conventions.

Video sharing and war Academic discourse on the use of social media platforms such as YouTube for the uploading and dissemination of videos shot during military conflict has addressed

119

Images that last?

both the potential of such platforms as well as the thornier issues of the extent to which platform architecture, algorithms and political economy impact on what gets seen and what does not. In their study of soldier-​produced videos during the occupation of Iraq, for example, Smith and McDonald describe these works as case studies ‘for the investigation of vernacular discourse as it circulates and is re-​mediated on the computer screens of multiple publics, including friends and family members, active duty and retired military personnel, journalistic organizations, and engaged citizens’ (2011, 293). These user-​generated videos, the authors continue, ‘are fundamentally altering the public sense making of war’ by ‘challenging hegemonic control of the information and imagery surrounding conflict’ (293). As has been noted by numerous other scholars over an extended period (e.g. Bennett and Paletz 1994; Hallin 1994), the power of the state–​mainstream media relationship during previous conflicts lay in an ability to restrict the flow of information (in all forms) out of theatres of war. This hegemonic control of information led to dominant representations and understandings of warfare itself, while video sites such as YouTube in theory allow users to inject resistant understandings of conflict, but only if understood within a ‘wider context of participatory media and its impact on deliberative practices’ (Smith and McDonald 2011, 305). Of course, it is not only soldiers and activists utilising sharing platforms, but also insurgents and regular civilians across a wide span of ‘geographies and ideologies’ (Fiore-​Silfvast 2012, 1966). Fiore-​Silfvast again makes note of the fact that these platforms allow for the bypassing of traditional (legacy) media gatekeepers, thus allowing ordinary users the ‘capacity to produce and influence wartime information flows’. Importantly, however, and lost in other research on the use of social media for the spread of wartime imagery, the author takes into account issues of the architecture and political economy of these platforms: This expanded capacity to influence information flows is coproduced through the networked architecture and the corporate owner as a ‘patron’ (Burgess and Green 2008) of user participation. The distinctions between conventional notions of production and usage are blurred, resulting in a hybrid form of content production that has been termed elsewhere as ‘produsage’ and ‘co-​creation’ (Bruns 2008). … Consequently, user agency is much more complex than are simple relationships of user or producer, as it must account for the multiplicity of human and nonhuman actors involved and the various roles that ‘produsers’ may assume (Bruns 2008; van Dijck 2009). (Fiore-​Silfvast 2012, 1966)

This assemblage of ‘human and nonhuman’ actors has also led to a convergence between media production and ‘networks of war’ leading to what Der Derian in 2009 (quoted in Fiore-​Silfvast 2012, 1966)  calls the ‘Military-​Industrial-​Media-​ Entertainment-​Network’. Within this network, ‘virtual warfare’ is created via a dense constellation of nodes, networks and feedback loops, with ‘examples of this feedback loop and convergence of domains’ including ‘how simulations used to train pilots are used as special effects in Hollywood movies and the way military combat units are trained with video games played by teenagers’ (Der Derian 2009 quoted in Fiore-​Silfvast 2012, 1970). This nexus is one also reflected in the earlier work of Andersen (Andersen 2006) and her notion of ‘militainment’. Andersen

119

120

120

Image operations

noted that while most civilians made sense of war and warfare based upon mass-​ mediated images of conflict, these images are themselves a collage of fact, myth and half-​truths produced with the express purpose of making war palatable for the general public: The politics of memory is made manifest by the fragments that are retrieved and those that are repressed, for war could not be carried out if its negative, counter-​ narratives of death and brutality were starkly drawn. Because a fundamental aspect of war involves destruction and death, it is at times inevitable that representations of its horrors emerge, such as the photographs from Abu Ghraib. As those uncontrollable, dark images enter the cultural sphere, they will be rhetorically reinterpreted and made culturally acceptable. (Andersen 2006, xvi)

What previous studies on video platforms and warfare indicate is a tension between legacy media, architecture, state power, activism and ordinary users. There is, however, one salient point ignored in the majority of these works on imagery and warfare: a declining interest in watching, listening to or reading about war on the part of mainstream media audiences in certain countries, among them the USA (Carruthers 2008). This is no small matter, given that the ability of mainstream media to steer the representation of war is at the heart of many arguments regarding the (potential) power of social media platforms to influence public discourse on state violence. As Carruthers writes, there was a notable decline in the appetite of the US public to consume news and information from Iraq as compared to coverage of previous military conflicts: It seems that today’s refusal to look has a different character than the averted gaze of past wars. Certainly, it would be hard to argue that American audiences’ reluctance to engage stems from a desire to be distracted from what is everywhere apparent, a surfeit of distressing reminders of war’s destructive toll. To a striking degree, the war in Iraq fails to puncture the surface of everyday life in the USA. (Carruthers 2008, 71)

This last phrase from Carruthers  –​how the war in Iraq failed ‘to puncture the surface of everyday life in the USA’ –​is an important angle for considering the role of YouTube and other online sharing sites for the spread of military images. On the one hand, it could be argued that a lack of interest on the part of viewers (and subsequently media outlets) in coverage of Iraq after the initial invasion in 2003 meant that alternative venues (such as YouTube since 2005) could see a spike in influence. No research to date suggests this to be the case, however, nor has research indicated any direct link between anti-​war videos or showing examples of illegal activity in Iraq and Afghanistan and decreased support for US intervention. The argument about influence on public opinion, however, is separate from the value of these images in relation to a potentially important role in addressing the legality of the conflict and the actions of the participants. As Carruthers continued, US soldiers were filming and photographing everything in Iraq. And while the majority of these images would be lost for ever in a sea of binary code,

121

Images that last?

some would resurface (through official and unofficial channels) and have a deeper impact: From the ancient ruins of Mesopotamia to the quotidian tribulations of counterinsurgency soldiering, nothing is off-​limits. Hence the notorious pictures of prisoner abuse –​without which ‘there’d be no Abu Ghraib’, as one of the court-​ martialed guards subsequently put it. Without the pictures, ‘there would have been no investigation. It would’ve been, whatever, everybody go home.’ (Carruthers 2008, 73)

It is not my contention that images of soldiers on YouTube, or the uploading of the Collateral Murder video by WikiLeaks, led to immediate, significant shifts in public opinion. As I have argued previously, much of the viewing of violent (and sometimes illegal) action of YouTube videos from Iraq is likely based not upon outrage or opposition, but simple curiosity and voyeurism (Christensen 2011, 215). Yet, as was noted in relation to the Abu Ghraib pictures (see also Feldman 2005; Andén-​Papadopoulos 2008), images taken in Iraq did resurface and have an impact. As I will discuss later in this chapter, the same could be said for WikiLeaks’ Collateral Murder video, but before I reach that point, it is worth considering the possible mechanisms through which mediated content enters and re-​enters public discourse and consciousness, as well as the political economic rationale for such re-​emergence. A particularly valuable theoretical framework for considering this phenomenon is that of ‘ephemeral communicative spaces’ posited by Christensen and Christensen (Christensen and Christensen 2008). Using this construct, mediated events are seen as leading to the opening up of short-​lived ‘discursive spaces’ within which intense debates take place before the space closes and another space opens. In the case of Iraq, the now-​iconic images from Abu Ghraib of naked prisoners stacked into pyramids, soldiers leading captives by leashes and interrogations with victims dressed in black and tied to electrodes have surfaced and resurfaced every time questions of US torture have occurred. For example, the recent release of the so-​called Torture Report in late 2014 opened up a brief communicative space for debate on US torture policy, and, during these debates, old images from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib resurfaced to illustrate complicity in illegal interrogation activities.

YouTube and Iraq Between 2008 and 2011 I published three pieces on the uploading of videos by US soldiers and the US military during the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq (Christensen 2008, 2009, 2011). Initially, I had no intention of producing a series of articles and chapters specifically addressing the use of YouTube by the US military: my real interest was to begin with soldiers from one country and expand to look at how the platform was used in similar (or dissimilar) ways by other states. However, once I started to look at the collection of videos available on

121

122

122

Image operations

the site, the extent to which these films demonstrated facets of military life rarely shown in mainstream media representations of war was striking. In the first article in the YouTube-​Iraq trilogy (Christensen 2008) I  examined what proved to be the most ‘popular’ (in terms of total views) genre of clips examined in the three studies:  clips showing military action from the perspective of both soldiers and the US military itself. The videos were divided into two groups: those defined as ‘clean’ (official videos produced and uploaded by the US military) showing an orderly, humane, sanitised version of US activities in Iraq. The clips were clearly intended to act as propaganda for the US war effort: troops interacting with Iraqi civilians, giving gifts to Iraqi children and other positive deeds. When battle and action was foregrounded, the troops were calm, under control and, most importantly, no victims of violence were ever shown. In other words, it was a ‘clean’ war. This was juxtaposed with videos uploaded, unofficially, by soldiers (US and UK) in Iraq and Afghanistan showing troops engaged in violent (and possibly illegal) action, and taking extreme pleasure in that action, which included the shooting of unarmed civilians, making children run after vehicles to get clean water and shooting dogs. At the time of the writing of the article in 2008, the most popular video uploaded by the US military (showing troops involved in a gun battle) had been viewed just over 1 million times. That number has now increased to 5  million. The most popular unofficial video  –​showing US troops driving through the streets of Baghdad crashing into other vehicles –​increased in total number of viewings from 970,000 in 2007 to around 2.1 million in 2015. In the conclusion to the 2008 piece on videos from Iraq, I wrote the following: It is important to note that the majority of clips posted to YouTube do not show soldiers engaged in war crimes, violence or anti-​social behavior, but rather taking part in the mundane, day-​to-​day activities one would associate with military personnel during free time:  sitting around in tents, talking with colleagues, eating, singing songs and sending messages to loved ones back home. (Christensen 2008, 171)

These ‘everyday’ elements  –​music, play, boredom  –​were examined in greater detail in subsequent pieces on the use of YouTube by US soldiers. In the first article (Christensen 2009), the creation of music videos by troops in Iraq was discussed in relation to media literacy, intertextuality and the desire for memorialising their place in war. Troops demonstrated an ability to incorporate popular generic traits (from MTV and Hollywood) into their videos, while at the same time creating highly personalised mementos of their service. As I wrote: The occupation of Iraq will one day end (we assume), and so the YouTube music videos created by soldiers as a form of personal expression can also be seen as a product created within a specific communicative space that, while far from ephemeral, is certainly temporally finite. When the occupation ends, and members of the military go home, the music videos will remain in suspended online animation as cyber-​relics: their novelty value gone, but their personal, subjective testimonies to history intact. (Christensen 2008, 214)

123

Images that last?

In essence, these are clips produced (it would appear) not for the purpose of gaining maximum viewership, but rather as a form of ‘postcard’ or diary entry, as well as for sending messages to friends and family back home. The number of ‘views’ achieved by these amateur videos was miniscule in comparison to the numbers obtained by the ‘action’ clips in the 2008 study. The same is true of the videos analysed for the last study in the trilogy (Christensen 2011), in which soldiers filmed and uploaded some of the boring minutiae of everyday military life: drinking, playing, eating, joking and sleeping. If there were ever videos uploaded to YouTube destined to be watched by no one, these were the videos. Yet, as I noted, the banality of the videos contained a raw power, first by humanising the troops, thus adding to the feeling of senselessness surrounding the occupation; and, second, by serving as a chilling juxtaposition to events happening off-​screen on the streets of Iraq. As these soldiers joked and slept, citizens of Iraq were dying in the thousands.

Enter WikiLeaks and Collateral Murder The videos examined in the studies mentioned above set the stage for what was to be released in 2010: the Collateral Murder video (WikiLeaks 2010) leaked to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning, decrypted and edited in Iceland and subsequently uploaded to YouTube. The video showed the July 2007 killing of a number of civilians in the suburb of New Baghdad by a US Apache attack helicopter. Included amongst the victims were two Reuters photographers, and the video appears to show that a number of the victims were shot and killed as they lay injured on the ground: an act that would be in violation of international law under the Geneva Conventions. This is how WikiLeaks described the clip on its website: WikiLeaks has released a classified U.S. military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad –​including two Reuters news staff. Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-​sight, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded. (WikiLeaks 2010)

In the five years since the clip was uploaded, it has attracted just over 15 million views (although one can assume that many versions of the clip are on the site, adding to the total view numbers). As I have discussed above, clips that remain popular over time will tend to be those showing violent or spectacular acts, and while certain clips uploaded by troops in 2006 and 2007 showing violent (even illegal) acts committed by the military have obtained viewing numbers in the millions, the online popularity of these clips did not translate into the videos impacting mainstream media coverage of the war. An interesting pre-​Collateral Murder exception was a 2008 YouTube clip showing a US marine throwing a live puppy

123

124

124

Image operations

off a cliff (presumably killing the dog). The clip received widespread mainstream media attention, resulting in the marine being identified and subsequently dismissed from service. While in no way equating the killing of an animal with the killing of dozens of humans, the example of the puppy goes some way to help us consider the role of mainstream media political economy in understanding why and how certain images of war on video-​sharing sites have more impact than others. In order to do this, I would like to consider the differences between the videos uploaded in 2006 and 2007 and Collateral Murder by breaking the discussion down into three (sometimes overlapping and sometimes conflicting) areas: (1) ubiquity/​ virality; (2) professional practice; and (3) political economy. An important place to start when considering the spread and impact of images of warfare is to consider the technologies available at the time, as well as the extent to which contemporary analyses of their impact are skewed by underplaying significant technological shifts that take place over very short periods of time. When we return to the clips from Iraq and Afghanistan uploaded in 2006 and 2007, for example, it would be fair to ask: what would happen if the heavy fighting in Iraq were taking place today, and the same clips were uploaded by soldiers to YouTube, Twitter and Vine? Even the short gap between the material analysed in the three YouTube papers (around 2007) and the uploading of the Collateral Murder video (2010) was marked by the development and adoption of the smartphone and mobile Internet use. In addition, the ubiquity of mobile technology in recent years contributes to an increased possibility of videos and images ‘going viral’ in ways unimaginable only five years earlier. The relationship between the ubiquity of technology and virality is often linked to the promotion and spread of the banal or the inconsequential: videos of people falling down, memes of political leaders or similar content. Yet, as we look back at the thousands of videos uploaded during the occupation of Iraq a decade ago, it is worth considering if it would even be possible to run a military campaign in 2015 with that level of soldier production. The clips uploaded showing soldiers committing acts of violence and cruelty would likely have been picked up by a much larger audience, if not the mainstream media. This, in turn, would have impacted public opinion and placed pressure upon political and military leaders. One need only think of the images of police aggression captured by protesters after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, and how the rapid spread of these images via social media stimulated the mainstream media in the US to pick up the story, as evidence of the potential impact of virality. Temporally, we can think of Collateral Murder as located in the transitional zone between the more static Internet technologies available in the mid-​2000s and the current era of powerful smartphones. It was more widely watched and discussed, but less so than contemporary clips from Gaza or Ferguson. Thus, this recognition of the role of ubiquity and virality should force us to at least question the assertion that a great deal of the online material from, for example, Iraq remains unwatched or under-​discussed because of a lack of interest or over-​hyped techno-​ romanticism. In other words, that its limited ‘impact’ was (at least in part) from

125

Images that last?

a lack of exposure that may have been very different given different technological ecologies. In addition to the specific technological period in which Collateral Murder was uploaded, in what other ways was the video distinct? To begin, and in a number of ways, the film was a clear break from earlier material uploaded to YouTube from Iraq. First, the clip was not shot illegally by a US soldier and then uploaded to a private account, nor was it an attempt by the state to produce wartime propaganda. Collateral Murder was video footage obtained via a massive leak of classified government information and was never intended to be seen or used as propaganda. As such, the video had immediate cachet beyond the usual YouTube audience:  this was material shot and collected by the military for military use, containing extremely violent scenes rarely found in clips shot by soldiers themselves (at least, in the videos widely available on YouTube). And, second, unlike the majority of the amateur footage shot by soldiers, the video was presented in a highly stylised, professional format, with WikiLeaks volunteers putting a great deal of time into the editing and presentation. As Birgitta Jónsdóttir put it: [I]‌t was an incredibly long process –​much longer than most people realize –​both trying to figure out exactly what is happening, who are the people behind it, who are the people being killed, and why. Why is this happening? So, we collaborated with the Icelandic state broadcaster, RÚV, to send a journalist to Iraq in order to do some investigative journalism for us. That journalist was Kristinn Hrafnsson. He and Ingi Hrafn Ingason, a cameraman, went to New Baghdad to try and find the relatives of the deceased Reuters staff and the wife of the driver of the van and, of course, the children in the van. So it was very intense. (Christensen and Jónsdóttir 2014, 2559–​60)

With this stylish professional presentation, WikiLeaks was attempting to appeal to the professional preferences of the international media they wished to inform. Yet this decision could also be seen as a double-​edged sword:  while the earlier soldier videos were crude and raw, they also maintained an aura of immediacy and authenticity via that crudeness and rawness, which were elements missing from Collateral Murder. Even though the US military did not deny the veracity of the footage, by stamping their presence on the film through style and editing, WikiLeaks undoubtedly impacted the unwillingness of some journalists to spread the video via mainstream outlets lest those reporters be tarred as supporting a ‘radical’ organisation. Finally, I  would like to take the professionalism of Collateral Murder and bring in the political economy of media as a framework for considering the Iraq/​ Afghanistan videos. During the early years of the organisation, WikiLeaks struggled to get significant global media attention for their leaks. It was only when they teamed up with mainstream media organisations such as The Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times that their leaks (on Iraq and Afghanistan) gained global attention. Collateral Murder is symbolic of their belief that in order to ‘break through’ with material such as videos from Iraq, a stylised, media-​friendly

125

126

126

Image operations

presentation was required. However, while the WikiLeaks material received widespread attention, and the Collateral Murder video has been seen by millions of viewers, there is no evidence that the video had any substantive impact upon public opinion or politics. And, by the same token, there is little evidence that the video had traction in the mainstream US media. This does not diminish the power of the content, but it forces us to realise how dissident voices are constrained by economic and ideological imperatives. This brings us back to points made earlier by Carruthers (Carruthers 2008) and Fiore-​Silfvast (Fiore-​Silfvast 2012), as well as in earlier studies on the nature of US war reporting (Bennett and Paletz 1994; Hallin 1994; Andersen 2006) and the political economy of US media. For all of the images available on YouTube from the mid-​2000s onwards (including Collateral Murder), virtually none have led to substantive debate on the nature of the US/​UK intervention in Iraq. Even the best-​known and most controversial still images –​those taken at Abu Ghraib –​ resulted not in widespread disciplinary action for those in charge of the prison, but rather imprisonment for several lower-​ranked soldiers. There was an unwillingness on the part of the mainstream US media to engage with actions in Iraq, and while it would be impossible to empirically prove that images from Iraq uploaded to YouTube were willingly ‘ignored’ by the mainstream US media, the relatively uncritical coverage of the occupation suggests that it would have been unlikely. Thus, there is a link between all of the videos from Iraq discussed in this chapter: although shot and uploaded under very different circumstances and for very different reasons, their relative anonymity in broader public discussion should be considered in relation to the political-​economic imperatives of US journalism as well as the technological environments in which they were born. This does not mean that they never surface, however. The issue of ubiquity and virality discussed earlier, for example, has occasionally overridden economic imperatives and pushed previously ignored issues onto the front pages. Regardless of their viewing numbers, the videos from Iraq and Afghanistan are valuable artefacts for research and analysis, and should not simply be measured by their ‘impact’. Explanations for how and why images of war originating online generate resonance need to take into account the multi-​faceted nature of their media ecologies.

References Andén-​ Papadopoulos, Kari. 2008. ‘The Abu Ghraib Torture Photographs:  News Frames, Visual Culture, and the Power of Images.’ Journalism 9(1): 5–​30. doi:10.1177/​ 1464884907084337. Andersen, Robin. 2006. A Century of Media, a Century of War. New York: Peter Lang. Bennett, W. Lance, and David L. Paletz, eds. 1994. Taken by Storm:  The Media, Public Opinion, and US Foreign Policy in the Gulf War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Carruthers, Susan L. 2008. ‘No One’s Looking: The Disappearing Audience for War.’ Media, War & Conflict 1(1): 70–​6. doi:10.1177/​1750635207087626.

127

Images that last? Christensen, Christian. 2008. ‘Uploading Dissonance: YouTube and the US Occupation of Iraq.’ Media, War & Conflict 1(2): 155–​75. Christensen, Christian. 2009. ‘ “Hey Man, Nice Shot”:  Setting the Iraq War to Music on YouTube.’ In The YouTube Reader, edited by Pelle Snickars and Patrick Vonderau, 204–​ 17. Stockholm: National Library of Sweden. Christensen, Christian. 2011. ‘The Everyday War:  Iraq, YouTube and the Banal Spectacle.’ In Online Territories:  Globalization, Mediated Practice and Social Space, edited by Miyase Christensen, André Jansson and Christian Christensen, 17–​30. New York: Peter Lang. Christensen, Christian, and Birgitta Jónsdóttir. 2014. ‘WikiLeaks, Transparency and Privacy: A Discussion with Birgitta Jónsdóttir.’ International Journal of Communication 8: 2558–​66. Christensen, Miyase, and Christian Christensen. 2008. ‘The After-​ Life of Eurovision 2003: Turkish and European Social Imaginaries and Ephemeral Communicative Space.’ Popular Communication 6(3): 155–​72. doi:10.1080/​15405700802197834. Der Derian, James. 2009. Virtuous War:  Mapping the Military-​ Industrial-​ Media-​ Entertainment-​Network. New York: Routledge. Feldman, Allen. 2005. ‘On the Actuarial Gaze: From 9/​11 to Abu Ghraib.’ Cultural Studies 19(2): 203–​26. doi:10.1080/​09502380500077763. Fiore-​Silfvast, Brittany. 2012. ‘User-​Generated Warfare:  A  Case of Converging Wartime Information Networks and Coproductive Regulation on YouTube.’ International Journal of Communication 6: 1965–​88. Hallin, Daniel C. 1994. We Keep America on Top of the World: Television Journalism and the Public Sphere. London: Routledge. Smith, Christina M., and Kelly M. McDonald. 2011. ‘The Mundane to the Memorial:  Circulating and Deliberating the War in Iraq through Vernacular Soldier-​ Produced Videos.’ Critical Studies in Media Communication 28(4): 292–​313. doi: 10.1080/​ 15295036.2011.589031. WikiLeaks. 2010. Collateral Murder. WikiLeaks, 5 April. Accessed December 4.  https://​ wikileaks.org/​wiki/​Collateral_​Murder,_​5_​Apr_​2010.

127

128

9

Images of terror Charlotte Klonk

Amidst the flood of images that appeared in the hours and days after the terror attack on New  York’s World Trade Center on 11 September 2001, one picture caused an outcry among the American public: Richard Drew’s The Falling Man. It shows a man in free fall in front of the towers. He was one of many hundreds who threw themselves out of the windows of the burning buildings, perhaps still hoping to escape their desperate fate. An estimated 8 per cent of those who perished in New York City on 11 September 2001 died by jumping out of the building (Barnett and Reynolds 2009, 81). In spite of this number, there was surprisingly little news coverage of this tragedy. Richard Drew’s image appeared only briefly  –​in the New York Times and other publications –​before disappearing. Those newspapers that had printed the picture ‘were forced to defend charges that they exploited a man’s death and stripped him of his dignity in the last moments of life by publishing this photo’ (81). To this day, images of the falling bodies cannot easily be shown and seen in the United States. In Germany and elsewhere, however, Richard Drew’s image of a falling man was readily published, for example in the Süddeutsche Zeitung of 13 September 2001, and is widely known. The figure appears so centrally, framed between the architectural features of the towers, that an uncanny balance emerges –​a visual analogy for the precarious state between life and death. We see him at the lower edge of the top third of the picture, just where the golden section of the image lies. His arms still cling to his body, his left leg is angled as if he were a dancer. Only the horizontal window bands indicate the free fall, optically forming a line that dives down to the bottom right of the picture frame. No end is in sight. Divided into a black and a white side with the figure just in between, the image presents a graphic visualisation of desperation. What appeared offensive in the United States at the moment of the attack has, in retrospect, become an iconic representation of the existential fear experienced by thousands of people in Lower Manhattan on 11 September 2001. In that sense, there is no difference between this image and Théodore Géricault’s famous Raft of the Medusa of 1819. Géricault’s painting preserves for eternity an equally anguished moment between hope and despair, caused by a shipwreck off

129

Images of terror

the coast of Africa –​the result of equally reckless political hubris nearly 200 years before 9/​11. As this comparison shows, it is not the aesthetic constitution of the image as such that caused the strong reaction, even outcry, against Richard Drew’s photo. Today Géricault’s painting is one of the highlights of the Louvre, while Richard Drew’s picture still cannot easily be shown and seen in the United States. Particularly in the context of images of terror, it is the ‘when’, ‘where’ and ‘how’ of its appearance that makes one picture more affectively charged than another. The impact of an act of terror depends, of course, largely on its spectacular communication in the press (Waldmann 1998, 48–​9; Münkler 2005, 99–​116; Hoffman 2006, 10). However, within the tight economy of photographs that circulate after an attack, the greatest reaction is often aroused by those pictures that do not conform to established patterns of visual reporting. In the case of Richard Drew’s photograph, that breach was the violation of the ‘falling people’ picture taboo in New York in the aftermath of 9/​11. From a distance, both historical and geographical, images like this may be able to open up a critical space of reflection and become part of wider set of image operations that goes beyond their initial impact. In the first part of this chapter I will analyse the pictorial norms that govern the reporting of terror attacks. They constitute a frame that shapes expectations and has been in place since the emergence of the phenomenon of modern terror at the end of the nineteenth century. I take my cue here from Judith Butler, who has used the term ‘frame’ to denote the norms that are enacted through visual images. Framing, she writes, ‘presupposes decisions or practices that leave substantial losses outside the frame’ (Butler 2010, 75). It is only when a frame is shifted from one context to another that the mandatory framing becomes part of the story and that images like the ones emerging from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2005 and 2006 could suddenly be regarded as offensive, setting in motion a whole set of image operations that eventually led to a government policy change. For Butler, the affective quality of an image is a factor of the frame within which it operates. Only by shifting the frame can something that in one context was pleasurable now appear to be offensive. As I argue here, however, it may sometimes be within the same frame that visual events have the power to redirect our affective response. Richard Drew’s photograph of the falling man is a case in point. Because it disrupted the frame within which it operated, it had, and still has, the capacity to raise our awareness of, in Butler’s words, ‘the forces of neutralization or erasure that separate us from knowing and responding to the suffering that is caused, sometimes [as in the case of the Abu Ghraib photographs] in our names’ (77). I will return to the question of ethics in the final part of this chapter. Butler, who explicitly addresses the issue in her essay, referencing Susan Sontag, leaves it strangely unresolved. She herself does not show any of the Abu Ghraib images that she discusses, asserting that to view them is to expose the victims further and reiterate the crime, yet she cannot but applaud the undisputedly positive political effects generated by their publication and display in newspapers, museum exhibitions and on the Internet. Agreeing with her that acts of torture and violence need

129

130

130

Image operations

full documentation, but in a form that avoids intensifying the ‘exposure’ of the victim, I will argue that there are instances where we need to actively resist image operations by not participating in their production, circulation and consumption. It is important, I finally suggest, that in the context of terror we distinguish between affective images that have the power to remind us of the pain of others and those that numb us and should be resisted. Although Richard Drew’s photograph belongs in the first category, I do not reproduce it here, as it has already been widely documented and for the time being a description is sufficient to evoke it without exposing the victim beyond necessity.

Image patterns On 19 March 1881, the Illustrated London News contained a shocking report: Czar Alexander II of Russia had been murdered six days before, on 13 March, upon his return to the Winter Palace at St Petersburg from an inspection of the Marine Corps. Details were still to be established, but the writers of the report already knew who was responsible for the horrible deed. There had been previous attempts on the life of the Czar by a group called the Nihilists, and it seemed likely that they had now finally succeeded. The Nihilists, also known as Anarchists, were the first (and last) group to refer to themselves as ‘terrorists’ (Wardlaw 1990, 23). They belonged to Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will), an organisation that had formed in 1878 to challenge the Czar’s repressive and authoritarian regime. In the 1870s, significant members of the anarchist movement, including the Russians Peter Kropotkin and Mikhail Bakunin, who were living in exile in Switzerland at the time, became convinced that violence was the only means by which to effect change. ‘Ideas result from deeds, not the latter from the former’, the Italian radical Carlo Pisacane had argued two decades earlier, ‘and the people will not be free when they are educated, but educated when they are free’ (quoted in Woodcock 1977, 43). Narodnaya Volya was the first group to heed Pisacane’s call for ‘propaganda by deed’ and put it into practice with the aid of Alfred Nobel’s recent invention, dynamite. The assassination of the Czar in 1881 was at once the group’s greatest triumph and the beginning of its downfall. As the Illustrated London News noted, Alexander II headed an intolerably repressive regime, but he had recently shown himself to be open to reforms. ‘The lamentable death of Alexander II’, the newspaper stated, ‘will not probably conduce to the alteration of this bureaucratic régime. It has been the profound mistake of the Nihilists to suppose that it would do so’ (Illustrated London News, 19 March 1881, 266). And so it was. The Czar’s son, Alexander III, who succeeded him on the throne, immediately revoked some of the liberal measures introduced by his father. Without delay he installed Europe’s most dreaded secret police, and within a month all the executive members of Narodnaya Volya were executed and their sympathisers exiled to hard-​labour camps in Siberia (Hardy 1987).

131

Images of terror

Yet the Czar’s assassination had far-​reaching repercussions well beyond the immediate context of Russia and the individuals involved. It was widely reported in the international press, and was the first event of its kind to be intensely visualised. The Illustrated London News, for example, itself a pioneer of pictorial news reporting, ran the story over many weeks. Shortly after the news reached its London office, it sent out an artist who provided not only a reconstruction of the assassination, but also images of loyal people running to the spot where the Czar had been murdered, the burnt carriage, the late Czar lying in state, his funeral, the coronation of his successor Alexander III and finally a rendering of the execution of the prisoners on the scaffold on 15 April, at 9 o’clock in the morning, in front of hundreds of thousands of people. This sequence, beginning with the scene of crime and culminating in the trial and execution of the criminals, quickly became standard in the illustrated press of the time. From now on, most newspapers initially reacted to the shock of acts of terror and the anxieties that it provoked with a barrage of detailed information and graphic illustration intended to put the threat into perspective. This meant that documentary images of the attack were rapidly followed by representations showing the reinstatement of order and social coherence by focusing on rescue operations and collective rituals of mourning. The chapter only came to a close with the capture of the enemy and the reassertion of the state’s monopoly on the use of force, graphically demonstrated in the execution of the perpetrators. Although the assassination of the Czar failed as a political act in Russia, it was none the less a spectacular media success. That it attracted such substantial international attention was perhaps not surprising, but the intense visualisation of the attack itself at home and abroad was unprecedented. It was not long before a new generation of activists emerged, prepared to make such attention their primary aim. Whereas the Russian group had intended to eliminate a particular corrupt and tyrannical ruler, the media coverage generated by their attack inspired subsequent activists to go from propaganda by deed to deeds strong enough to provoke a propaganda by image. From now on, targets were more often than not chosen for their symbolic value as opposed to their actual value to the group’s revolutionary aims. Within a few years, the prime target of political violence had become the dense and vulnerable civilian infrastructures of modern cities, and the primary means of warfare the circulation of dramatic images in the media. ‘In retrospect’, writes the American terror expert Bruce Hoffman, ‘we can see that it was at this time that patterns and modi operandi first appeared that would become standard terrorist operating procedures decades later’ (Hoffman 2006, 10). The same is also true, I would add, for the visual reportage of these events. By the end of the nineteenth century, central features of insurgent and counterinsurgent imagery had emerged that are still in place today. The events of 9/​11 are no exception. The images most widely published after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center were photographs of the burning towers high up in the air, without any sight of the suffering caused by the explosions. They were followed by images at street level that focused on the heroic

131

132

132

Image operations

Figure 5  Mohammed Atta, New York Post, 13 September 2001

rescue operation and the surviving victims. As has been widely noted, death itself was by and large absent from the representations of the event (Paul 2004, 433–​85). Visual reportage soon, however, began to include images that attempted to give a face and contour to the experience of horror. Only hours after the collapse of the World Trade Center, the FBI made available images of the perpetrators, showing them passing security at the airports. The most famous picture became a portrait photo of the group’s leader, Mohammed Atta, seen on the front page of the New York Post of 13 September (Figure 5). Taken from Atta’s US driving licence, it now became ‘the face of utter hatred’, thus the New York Post headline, or of the ‘terror beast’, according to the Bild tabloid in Germany. Images of this kind are intended to reassure the public in the wake of a threat that came out of the blue and might happen again. They forcefully demonstrate that the state has not lost control of the situation. Its security services, the pictures of perpetrators assert, are already in the possession of vital information that will soon lead to the arrest and punishment of all involved in the dreadful deed. Moreover, in the eyes of the public, images of this kind have an almost apotropaic effect –​it is as if their appearance is able to prevent further evil and suffering. This belief was particularly striking in July 2005 in London, when a group of suicide bombers failed to carry out a second bombing attack on the city’s public transport system. They were fugitives for a week after their attempt. The police were quick to issue pictures of the four men, taken by CCTV cameras at London Underground stations shortly before or after the failed explosions (Plate 11). Although today we might fail to see villains in these images, at the time they

133

Images of terror

succeeded in giving evil a face during the uncertain and hysterical days before the group’s capture. Whereas in the nineteenth century, the sequence of visual reporting could only come to a close when pictures were obtained that documented the execution of the assassins, today’s governments are at pains not to release photographs of surviving would-​be assassins during the process of punishment, in court rooms and later prisons. None exist of the would-​be London Underground suicide bombers. This is not for moral reasons, however. At stake, rather, is the fear that such images could become heroised and induce widespread admiration instead of contempt. This is why picture-​taking was largely forbidden during the trial of the politically motivated Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik at the Oslo Courthouse in 2012. In 1968, the future Red Army Faction members Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Thorwald Proll and Horst Söhnlein had successfully used the pictures taken at their arson trial in Frankfurt to create an image of themselves as anarchist heroes. Precisely in order to prevent this, the media is now generally excluded from these parts of the process. However, the circulation of images in the context of terror attacks is notoriously hard to control, and there is never a guarantee that any image released will not be appropriated by the enemy for its own purposes. Widespread news coverage with images of large-​scale destruction is the aim and purpose of terror attacks and constitutes the perpetrators’ greatest triumph. While the publication of their faces in the aftermath of an attack might on the one hand serve an apotropaic function, it can, on the other, also be used as an image of martyrdom. Mohammed Atta’s driving licence portrait, for example, appeared as the face of evil on the front pages of newspapers around the world, but was soon also incorporated into al-​ Qaida’s visual corpus of martyr imagery circulating on the Internet. It has often been claimed that the emergence of radical Islamist violence around the turn of the twenty-​first century has changed the nature of terrorism. Different religious sensibilities and cultural uses of imagery are sometimes mentioned and different attitudes to violence cited as evidence for this assertion. I would argue, however, that with regard to the imagery concerned, this is not the case. Al-​Qaida’s calculated image politics is located squarely within the patterns of Western media coverage, and the same applies to the images currently being distributed by the terrorist group Islamic State (Günther 2014). Even in the case of what is arguably a religiously motivated martyr cult, the organisations have not invented new traditions, but followed in the footsteps of earlier, secular examples. At the end of the nineteenth century, the image of the French anarchist arsonist Ravachol, made by the police on his capture, was appropriated for hero worship by sympathisers after his violent death by execution (Plate 12). We see him proud and manly below the guillotine. The sun is rising behind him, reassuringly presaging a new beginning. All these images fall clearly within the established patterns of image and counter-​image that have marked the visual reporting of terror attacks since the late nineteenth century. In each case, the effort is to limit the fear of a shapeless and uncanny threat that is at the heart of such events. In this context, an image only becomes particularly emotive, even offensive, when it ruptures the frame of

133

134

134

Image operations

neutralisation, a frame that prevents us from knowing suffering and from responding to the ‘pain of others’ (Sontag 2003). However, just as the intentions and meaning of officially released imagery cannot be fully controlled in circumstances like these, so the emergence of the Internet and digital photographic technology has now made it impossible to regulate the flow of images in the wake of an attack. Images that do not conform to the established patterns of news reporting can reach the public more easily than ever before. And some of these images indeed have the capacity to be offensive. Certain kinds offend in a salutary sense, while others merely disgust by showing physical violence in what Jean-​Luc Nancy has called its ‘profoundly stupid’ sense –​profoundly stupid because, in them, ‘truth is reduced to the mode of violence and exhausted in that mode’ (Nancy 2005, 16, 18). They thus allow no space of reflection and contemplation, and fail to help us mourn lives lost. But how are we to distinguish between these two types of pictures?

Images that rupture the frame A comparison of two events and pictures may help to trace out that difference. An example of the first kind, an image that acts on us in a salutary manner, is a picture presumably taken by a resident of a housing estate in West London on the day that two of the fugitive suicide bombers from the failed second Underground attack were captured. It is a still from a video that appeared briefly on the evening news of 29 July 2005 and then disappeared again. Instead of two assassins blindly determined to bring death and suffering to a large group of innocent people, we see two young and frightened-​looking men stripped naked and with raised hands on the balcony of the apartment where they were hiding (Plate 13). The hunt for the would-​be bombers had led to this location only hours earlier. The area had been silently evacuated and huge numbers of special forces were in place and snipers lay ready on the roofs. It was feared that the two suspects would commit suicide at the moment of their capture, killing not only themselves but also residents and police. Instead, however, they surprisingly willingly obeyed orders, stripped and stepped out onto the balcony. Muktar Said Ibrahim and Ramzi Mohammed appeared to have no clue about their situation. Far from being well prepared for the moment of their capture, they stood stunned and frightened on the balcony. The younger man, Ramzi Mohammed, can be heard shouting, ‘I have rights, I have rights’, thus claiming the protection of the state that he attempted to sabotage only a week earlier. This image serves neither as a picture of the ‘face of utter hatred’ (the New York Post’s caption for Mohammed Atta’s driving licence portrait) nor as material for hero worship and martyrdom constructs. It does not conform to established and expected patterns of terror images and thus, offending expectations, disappeared quickly from commemorations of the events. Yet it had, and still has, the power to do something else:  it alerts us to the fragile human nature of those who are

135

Images of terror

determined to kill in the name of God. Precisely because it ruptures the frame of good and evil prevalent in images of terror, it is able to generate what the psychologist Else Frenkel-​Brunswik has called ‘ambiguity tolerance’ (Frenkel-​Brunswik 1949). In doing so, it can contribute to a mature response to terror threats, preventing us from regression into simple moral categories of good and evil. Or, to follow Adorno and Horkheimer, it can help to prevent us from justifying our own violence (for example the US government’s ‘war against terror’ in the wake of 9/​11) by not assuming the barbaric subhumanity of the other (Adorno and Horkheimer 1972). A very different case is presented by an image that a passer-​by took on 22 May 2013, when one of the radical Islamist assassins of a British soldier on a street in London asked to be filmed after his deed. The killer, bloodstained and still holding his brutal murder weapon, a cleaver, while the victim lay unaided behind him in the street, used this moment to claim responsibility for the killing and to declare himself a Jihadist acting in the name of God. The video, taken neither under threat of death nor in response to the suffering of the victim, fulfilled only one aim: the self-​aggrandisement of the perpetrator that is a powerful part of the logic of terror. At the same time it also confirmed the stereotype of a wild fanatic acting brutishly. The video appeared later in an ITV news broadcast as an exclusive, so that we can assume money changed hands. In the face of these developments and the recent proliferation of amateur images in the news and on the Internet, it seems to me paramount that we return with renewed vigour to a consideration of the ethical implications of photographs. We are no longer in a situation of being solely consumers of news images: we produce them, circulate and interconnect them. In short, we are fully active participants in image operations where life and death is at stake, and we thereby potentially collaborate in, reiterate and continue the pain of others. Susan Sontag demanded that photographs of atrocities should haunt us. What she does not address is the question of which images should or should not affect us. Which are those to which we should ‘pay attention, reflect and examine the rationalizations for mass suffering offered by established powers’, and which merely cause or prolong the humiliation and suffering of the lives that they document (Sontag 2003, 115)? It is a question that has become pressing. As the London street killing shows, it must be answered in advance of an event. Photography, writes Butler, ‘is linked through its “tense” to the grievability of a life, anticipating and performing that grievability. In this way, we can be haunted in advance by the suffering or deaths of others’  –​as the passer-​by should have been when he or she was asked to film the killer of the British soldier on the streets of London  –​and refuse to collaborate in the image operation. Or ‘we can be haunted afterwards, when the check against grief becomes undone’ –​as in the case of Richard Drew’s image of the falling man –​and ‘conceive of grievability as the precondition of life, one that is discovered retrospectively through the temporality instituted by the photograph itself ’ (Butler 2010, 98). In either case, however, it will not suffice to react affectively. We are required to understand rationally the frames in which images

135

136

136

Image operations

operate, recognise ourselves as participants and consider the ethical implications that our actions might have for the lives of others.

References Adorno, Theodor, and Max Horkheimer. 1972. Dialectics of Enlightenment. Translated by John Cumming. New York: Continuum. Barnett, Brooke, and Amy Reynolds. 2009. Terrorism and the Press: An Uneasy Relationship. New York: Peter Lang. Butler, Judith. 2010. ‘Torture and the Ethics of Photography:  Thinking with Sontag.’ In Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?, 63–​100. London: Verso. Frenkel-​Brunswik, Else. 1949. ‘Intolerance of Ambiguity as an Emotional and Perceptual Personality Variable.’ Journal of Personality 18: 108–​43. Günther, Christoph. 2014. Ein zweiter Staat im Zweistromland? Genese und Ideologie des ‘Islamischen Staates Irak’. Würzburg: Ergon-​Verlag. Hardy, Deborah. 1987. Land and Freedom:  The Origins of Russian Terrorism. New York: Greenwood Press. Hoffman, Bruce. 2006. Inside Terrorism. New York: Columbia University Press. Münkler, Herfried. 2005. The New Wars. Translated by Patrick Camiller. Cambridge: Polity Press. Nancy, Jean-​Luc. 2005. The Ground of the Image. Translated by Jeff Fort. New York: Fordham University Press. Paul, Gerhard. 2004. Bilder des Krieges: Krieg der Bilder. Munich: Fink. Sontag, Susan. 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Waldmann, Peter. 1998.Terrorismus:  Provokation der Macht. Munich:  Gerling Academy Verlag. Wardlaw, Grant. 1990. Political Terrorism: Theories, Tactics, and Counter-​Measures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Woodcock, George. 1977. ‘Anarchism: A Historical Introduction.’ In The Anarchist Reader, edited by George Woodcock, 11–​56. Glasgow: Fontana.

137

The making and gendering of a martyr: images of female suicide bombers in the Middle East Verena Straub

The suicide bomber as video artist? ‘I am the martyr Sana Yusif Muhaydli. I am 17 years old, from the South, from the occupied and oppressed Lebanese South, from the resisting, resurgent South. I am not dead, but alive among you. Sing, dance, realise my dreams. Don’t cry; don’t be sad for me, but exult and laugh for a world in which there are heroes.’ (quoted in Khalili 2007, 13–​4)

These are the first words a female Lebanese suicide bomber says in her video message, which was broadcast on Lebanese television on 9 April 1985.1 On the morning of the same day, Sana Yusif Muhaydli crashed a car filled with explosives into an Israeli military convoy, killing herself and two Israeli officers. This video is the earliest known testimony left behind by a suicide bomber. On the evening of the attack, it confronted television audiences with an uncanny situation: a self-​appointed ‘martyr’, one of the ‘living dead’ addressed them directly just a few hours after her suicide attack. Like a television news announcer, Muhaydli is seen seated at a table, while she reads out her testimony. She wears a red beret and military uniform, presumably with the aim of justifying her attack as a legitimate military operation. Visible on the wall behind her is the logo of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) in whose name she will commit her attack, as well as the portrait of the party’s founder Antoun Saadeh (Plate 14). According to a Lebanese source, Sana Muhaydli worked as a clerk in a video store in West Beirut, allegedly the location where she also recorded her testimony using a VHS camcorder (Toufic 2012, 173). Muhaydli’s locution ‘I am the martyr’ as well as the visual scheme in which she is seated at a desk with the party’s emblem in the background would serve as a model for future suicide bombers. Her video would not only be restaged by members of her own party but would also be adopted by members of the Lebanese Communist Party (LCP). In each

10

138

138

Image operations

video that follows the example of Muhaydli’s testimony, the so-​called martyr is seen in front of a wall covered with recognisable images of previous martyr videos, thereby establishing a genealogy of martyrdom. This creates a mise-​en-​abyme effect of a seemingly endless repetition of martyr images within martyr images (Maasri 2009, 96). Not only were these videotapes sent to Lebanese and Syrian television stations for official broadcast on the evening news, VHS cassettes of SSNP martyrs’ video statements were also widely available at kiosks in west Beirut (Pipes 1988, 320; Maasri 2009, 123). This trend of recording personal testimonies, initiated by secular Lebanese parties (the SSNP and LCP) in 1985, would be appropriated by Islamic militant groups such as Hezbollah in the late 1980s, and from the early 1990s by Hamas, al-​Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and Islamic Jihad in Palestine. The proliferation of these videos in the Middle East reflects the emergence of a new type of image and developed into a genre, which continues to haunt not only Arab media but also international news and internet websites like YouTube today. Given the continued relevance of such videos, this chapter poses several critical questions:  what motivates the perpetrators and their organisations to produce such media artefacts? What kinds of operations do these videos and photographs trigger? And how are they involved in the making of a martyr? Lebanese filmmaker and author Jalal Toufic writes: ‘I consider Sana’ Muhaydli, who introduced the new genre of videotaped testimonies of soon-​to-​be martyrs and a new kind of utterance, “I am the martyr (name of speaker),” as the first Lebanese video artist’ (Toufic 2012, 173). Along similar lines, philosopher and art critic Boris Groys says: ‘The terrorists and warriors themselves begin to act as artists nowadays. … In all these cases [videos representing beheadings, confessions of the terrorists] we have to do [sic] with the consciously and artistically staged events that have their own easily recognizable aesthetics’ (Groys 2009, 54). When militant protagonists produce their own images, the question of how to categorise, of how to deal with such artefacts becomes especially pressing. Situating these images in the realm of art production, as suggested by Toufic and Groys, however, not only runs the risk of legitimising the video testimonies as purely aesthetic artefacts but also fails to explain their complex function and power. Taking Muhaydli’s media innovation as a point of departure, this chapter is concerned with the active stake suicide bombers’ videos have in the making of a martyr. A closer look at the use and social practices of video testimonies will reveal that so-​called ‘martyrdom operations’ are first and foremost image operations. Opening this chapter with the image of a secular and female suicide bomber turns many of our Western assumptions on their head. In addition to underlining that suicide bombing and terrorism in the Middle East were originally not linked with Islam, it forces us to confront the deep intertwining of the image of the martyr and gender. In the Middle East, martyr images are an omnipresent feature in everyday culture, while in the West their meaning, origin and iconography are far too often simplified. This is especially the case with images of female suicide bombers, which are predominantly discussed within the frameworks of preconceptions and clichés about militant women. In order to avoid prejudgement on this issue,

139

The making and gendering of a martyr

I believe it is crucial to closely analyse and contextualise the aesthetic and iconographical features of the women’s video testimonies, particularly in relation to gender differences. Examining the videos and photographs of Palestinian female suicide bombers since 2002, I will underline the gap between the one-​dimensional Western reception and the much more heterogeneous image of the female martyr. In this chapter, I do not lay claim to speak for the protagonists of these videos; my work on this topic aims at better understanding the meanings of these images as they reach us through Western news reports and the Internet.

The making of a martyr Labelling suicide bombers visual artists, as suggested by Toufic and Groys, does not adequately explain the role images play in the context of terror and war. Equally inapt to grasp entirely the function of ‘living martyr’ videos is their interpretation as weapons aimed at the enemy. Building on prevalent media and terrorism studies in which terrorist acts are defined as strategies of communication ‘in which armed combat is the driving force behind the actual combat with images’ (Münkler 2003, 197),2 video testimonies have been readily interpreted as ‘image munitions’ (Roger 2013). Here, it is important, however, to differentiate between images of terror such as those discussed by Charlotte Klonk in this volume and the video testimonies of suicide bombers. Unlike news coverage of the actual attack, the video testimonies do not depict violence in order to spread shock and terror but are primarily directed towards supporters within their own community.3 Defining them solely as ‘image munitions’ targeted at Israeli and Western audiences fails to capture their actual impact. As Joseph Croitoru has shown, a much more important driving force behind the production and dissemination of so-​called martyr images is the rivalry between competing militant groups (Croitoru 2003). Ten years before the appearance of Muhaydli’s video testimony in 1985, Palestinian militants taking part in high-​risk operations against Israel had already established the convention of photographing themselves as heroic fighters (Croitoru 2003). Following their operation, the portraits of these fighters were integrated into the design of propaganda posters that venerated them as shaheeds, as martyrs. The concept of istishhad (martyrdom) has been widely exploited by both secular and religious militant groups in the Middle East to justify their suicide attacks and has functioned as an umbrella term for national resistance and ‘holy war’ (Pannewick 2006, 95). Since the term ‘martyr’ is used in order to legitimise these attacks, my own use of the term in this chapter solely references the point of view of the perpetrators and their organisers. The so-​called martyr posters themselves turned into a battleground on which the rival militant parties (such as the PFLP, DFLP and Fatah in Palestine, as well as the various competing factions during the Lebanese Civil War) tried to demonstrate their respective superiority in presenting an ever-​growing gallery of martyrs, who were willing to sacrifice their lives. These images sometimes prove to be more powerful than the direct military result as the ‘success’ of a suicide attack

139

140

140

Image operations

is primarily measured in terms of the media reaction, whilst reverence for suicide bombers is demonstrated by the popularity of their image, not by the number of casualties they cause.4 Thus, the posters function both as public obituaries as well as propaganda tools and ‘symbolic sites of struggle over meaning and political discourse’ (Maasri 2009, 7). For Palestinians, the posters of bombers on public walls have long since replaced movie stars and created a ‘culture of self-​sacrifice … with the martyrs as culture-​heroes’ (Yadlin 2006, 53). The use of videotapes could then be regarded as just another step in the increasingly orchestrated cult of the suicide bomber. However, the true innovation of Muhaydli’s video was the staging of an entirely new persona: the ‘living martyr’. Contrary to obituary posters in which the suicide bomber’s identity as a martyr is constructed after the attack, Muhaydli declares her martyrdom before the operation. But how can a living woman pronounce herself a martyr in front of the camera? Aren’t the words ‘I am the martyr’ equivalent to the words ‘I am dead’? Against this background, the video testimony can only be interpreted as a glimpse into the future. By enacting her future role as a martyr, Muhaydli anticipates her own death in front of the eyes of the television viewer. At the same time, she assures the viewer: ‘I am not dead, but alive among you.’ This declaration is reminiscent of the Qur’anic sura that confirms that all martyrs have an afterlife: ‘And call not those who are slain in the way of Allāh “dead.” Nay, they are living, only ye perceive not’ (Qur’an, 3: 169). Even though the SSNP propagated a secular militant resistance and Muhaydli avoids all reference to God or Paradise, her understanding of martyrdom seems to be predicated on a belief in some kind of life after death, though it is debatable whether she actually alludes to an Islamic idea of resurrection or hints at a rather metaphorical understanding of life after death. Once the record button has been pressed and the individual has declared herself or himself a martyr, the would-​be suicide bomber is caught in a liminal space between the symbolic death on video and the physical death of the body, between life on earth and life after death. The videotape itself becomes a fatal record. As Israeli artist and author Joshua Simon points out, ‘when filmed, the Shaheeds do sentence themselves to death, simply because the existence of tapes in which they are seen swearing to die as martyrs in Israeli cities makes them what military intelligence calls “ticking bombs”, meaning they will be tracked down and targeted’ (Simon 2009, 43). Given the fatal risk in producing these videos, the question arises why individuals and organisations create such incriminating material before carrying out their attacks. Besides fulfilling propagandistic ends as all martyr images do, the video testimonies are seen by former organisers of suicide operations interviewed by Israeli psychologist Ariel Merari to serve additional purposes: ‘The videotaping is actually a contract between the candidate and the organizer’, said a member of Hamas. A Fatah organiser stated: ‘The videotaped reading of the testament creates a situation of commitment to complete [the mission]. There is no way back!’ (quoted in Merari et al. 2009, 113).

141

The making and gendering of a martyr

These self-​declarations resonate with Mark Harrison’s interpretation of the martyr video as a ‘contract’ between the organisation and the individual. From the viewpoint of an economist, Harrison argues for a reading of suicide bombing as ‘a voluntary agreement between the faction and the young person to trade life for identity’ (Harrison 2006, 1). Calling into question the widespread explanation of suicide bombing as religiously motivated, Harrison claims that, rather than religious belief, the promise of gaining a new and glorious identity as a martyr is the driving factor for mobilisation. The individual agrees to die in order ‘to promote the faction’s terrorist objectives. In return the faction endorses the volunteer’s identity as a warrior martyr’ (10). Here, Harrison underlines how this sought-​ after identity is constructed through the postmortem dissemination of images and testimonies, as a result of which the organisation’s part of the ‘contract’ is performed at a time when the individual is already dead. Videotaping the would-​be bomber as a martyr while the bomber is still alive is therefore a means to assure him/​her of the actual fulfilment of his/​her new martyr identity. Simultaneously, the video confirms the individual’s agreement to carry out the attack and thus guarantees that both sides fulfil their duty under the contract (11). Seeing the phenomenon of suicide bombing as a contract to ‘trade life for identity’ is a helpful point of orientation to begin thinking about the increasingly visual cult of the martyr and offers one possible avenue to understand the role of these images. If gaining a new identity as a martyr is regarded as one of the main incentives to commit suicide attacks (above and beyond political, religious and personal reasons) and if such a construction of identity revolves around the production of videos and photographs, images become incredibly powerful actors and have an important stake in the making of a martyr. To understand the active agency of these images, Horst Bredekamp’s concept of the ‘image act’ provides a useful framework. According to Bredekamp, images not only have the potential to evoke emotions but can also have the power to provoke action and shape realities. On the al-​Qaida videos of beheadings, Bredekamp writes: ‘Currently, we are confronted with images that do not illustrate history, but generate it’ (Bredekamp 2004).5 Unlike videos of beheadings, in which it becomes hard to decide whether the image is created because of the murder or the murder takes place in order to create the image, video testimonies are not directly involved with the violent act, as noted above. Nevertheless, if the ‘living martyr’ video is interpreted as a contract and point of no return, the videotaping is assigned a defined position in the sequence leading up to the bombing. Once the martyr identity is constructed by the act of the recording, one side of the contract has been completed, and the fulfilment of the other part must inevitably follow. Building on Bredekamp’s comments on the Al-​Qaida videos of beheadings, I want to argue in a similar fashion that the video testimonies are by no means passive nor simply commemorative documents but function as inherently active agents. The ‘living martyr’ image is not a depiction, but a fabrication of a martyr.

141

142

142

Image operations

Gendering the martyr: images of Palestinian female suicide bombers since 2002 Even though it was a woman who produced the first video testimony in 1985, radical Islamic groups such as Hamas or Islamic Jihad, who adopted the practice of videotaping since they began their campaign of suicide attacks in 1993, subsequently prevented women from participating in such operations. Criticising the attack by Wafa Idris, who on 27 January 2002 became the first female suicide bomber following the start of the Second Intifada, Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin asserted this position by claiming a different role for women in jihad: ‘The woman is the second defence line in the resistance to the occupation. She shelters the fugitive, loses the son, husband and brother, bears the consequences of this, and faces starvation and blockage’ (quoted in Hasso 2005, 31). With the increasing Islamisation of the Palestinian resistance, most militant groups had by this time adopted an idea of martyrdom rooted in early Islam and apparently tailored to male heroism and male fantasies, most prominently illustrated by the often-​cited promise of seventy-​two virgins awaiting the martyred men in Paradise. In this context, one cannot talk about the making of a martyr without talking about the gendering of a martyr. Unlike the video testimonies of Lebanese secular suicide bombers in which women like Sana Muhaydli appeared side by side with men, the propagated image of the Islamic martyr was exclusively male, staged as a macho-​style fighter with the machine gun being his most important attribute. By the time of the Second Intifada, Palestinian organisations had established a fixed template for their male ‘living martyrs’. The videos are usually set inside a room where all private elements that could locate the scene have been eliminated. The background is draped with the official banners, flags and logos of the respective militant party, following the model introduced by the SSNP. The different draperies allowed each Palestinian group to establish its own ‘corporate identity’ and distinguish itself from rival factions. Black, velvet-​like cloth adorned with golden letters would become characteristic for Islamic Jihad, whereas green drapes and banners  –​the symbolic colour of Islam  –​feature prominently in Hamas videos. The more secular al-​Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the militant arm of Fatah, usually adorn their martyr videos with national symbols such as flags, maps of historic Palestine or the Palestinian keffiyeh, the scarf that became the symbol of the Palestinian resistance. Despite these attempts by the various groups to establish an easily recognisable template for their ‘own’ martyrs, the actions each martyr performs in his video follow the same meticulously planned choreography, regardless of his faction: he reads his testimony, kneels down for prayer, he ostentatiously displays a Qur’an in front of the camera and, above all, strikes different poses with his machine gun. When women started committing suicide attacks again in 2002, they used the video frame not only as a stage to construct their martyr identities but also

143

The making and gendering of a martyr

to debate gender issues. This is especially apparent in the written statements the women read in front of the camera (Hasso 2005; Ziolkowski 2012). The first video testimony of an Islamic female suicide bomber was that of Dareen Abu Aisheh, a twenty-​one-​year-​old student of English literature, who blew herself up at a military checkpoint near Jerusalem on 27 February 2002.6 In her video, which was released by al-​Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and broadcast on Arabic satellite channel ANN only a few hours after the attack, she claims an equal role for women in the militant struggle: ‘Because the role of the Muslim Palestinian woman is no less important than the role of our fighting brothers, I have decided to be the second female martyr to continue in the path that was forged by the female martyr Wafa al-​Idris.’ She questions Hamas’s conservative stance by saying: ‘The role of the Palestinian woman will no longer be limited to grieving over the death of their husbands, brothers, and fathers; we will transform our bodies into human bombs that spread here and there to demolish the illusion of security for the Israeli people’ (quoted in Graitl 2012, 199). Given Abu Aisheh’s high level of education and the strong initiative that she reportedly showed in carrying out her suicide attack, Joseph Graitl suggests that she was responsible for writing her own testimony, in contrast to most male testimonies, which appear to be templates prepared by their respective organisation (198). Following Abu Aisheh’s example, successive female suicide bombers made similar claims in their video testimonies and triggered the public celebration of a new female pride, as Frances Hasso has noted (Hasso 2005, 36). Judging from the spoken testimonies, this re-​emergence of the female martyr identity seems to be constructed to counter male dominance, introducing an explicitly female discourse. Contrary to the textual elements of the video testimonies, however, scholar of Islamic studies Britt Ziolkowski comes to the conclusion that the visual staging of the female martyrs exactly follows the model of male martyrdom videos where ‘the faces of the women … seem to be interchangeable with those of the men’ (Ziolkowski 2012, 122).7 Taking the martyr images of three female suicide bombers from 2002 to 2004 as an example, I want to challenge this claim and argue that the women of the Second Intifada introduced gender-​specific aspects to the genre on a visual level as well. Dareen Abu Aisheh’s official video testimony does indeed seem to be a replica of the by then well-​known choreography of male ‘living martyrs’ sent on their mission by al-​Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Standing in front of a conglomeration of national symbols like the keffiyeh and a map of historic Palestine, which is flanked by a machine gun on the right and a hand grenade below, she reads her testimony, prays and poses with a Qur’an and handgun in front of the camera.8 However, in addition to this official video testimony, a second martyr photograph surfaced (Plate 15). This photograph shows Abu Aisheh not with the emblems of al-​Aqsa Martyrs Brigades but in front of green Hamas banners. Abu Aisheh worked as an activist for Hamas and, according to several sources, approached them with her desire to carry out a suicide attack, a request that was rejected as a result of Hamas’s strict gender politics at the time. This makes the existence of this image perplexing: why would Abu Aisheh pose as a martyr in the name of the very party who

143

144

144

Image operations

had denied her request? In this self-​authorised picture, she presumably wanted to demonstrate her true political affiliation (Hasso 2005, 31–​2). Read together with the critique expressed in her video, this photograph can be interpreted as a protest against the official gender politics of Hamas. In this way, her image operates as a powerful tool whereby Abu Aisheh stages herself as a Hamas martyr regardless of her gender. In addition to the fabricated party affiliation, another conspicuous element can be seen in the photograph: a knife held in her left hand. Whereas most male martyrs are shown as aggressive agents, aiming at an imagined enemy with a machine gun, Abu Aisheh strikes an unexpected pose, directing the weapon towards herself. With her right index finger pointing symbolically towards heaven, she demonstrates her willingness to die for the one God. The act of suicide bombing is constituted by the simultaneous existence of suicide and murder. In Abu Aisheh’s photograph, however, this dichotomy seems to be divided in a gender-​specific way:  whereas the male martyrs emphasise the attack, the murder, Abu Aisheh foregrounds her self-​sacrifice, her own death. In contrast to the official video, where she follows the familiar choreography of male martyrs, including the militaristic elements, this photograph shifts the focus and allocates the female martyr a different role in combat –​whether this was intended or not. The headscarf is an element that distinguishes the suicide bombers of the Second Intifada from the earlier secular videos by women like Muhaydli. Even though all the women seem to adhere to the veil, a closer look reveals that the veiling does not strictly follow Islamic rule. In another video testimony by al-​Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, eighteen-​year-​old Ayat al-​Akhras wears the keffiyeh not like the hijab for women, which would frame her face entirely, but tightly wrapped around the upper part of her head with the ends falling loosely over her shoulders, leaving her chin unframed.9 This traditional way of wearing the keffiyeh used to be reserved for men alone. By consciously breaking gender-​specific dress codes, the veiling conveys a critical statement that resonates with the spoken message in her video when she explicitly criticises the male leaders of Arab states: ‘Shame on the Arab armies who are sitting and watching the girls of Palestine fighting while they are asleep’ (quoted in Hasso 2005, 29). Al-​Akhras emphasises that women are capable of fighting like men –​while at the same time accusing Arab leaders of weakness and inaction. Adopting the male style of wearing the keffiyeh can be interpreted as a symbol of these reversed gender roles. Her subtle play with the symbolism of the veil is apparent in another photograph, which was released in addition to her video testimony (Plate 16). Here, she wrapped the cloth like a female hijab around her head and shoulders, while at the same time holding a pistol in her hand. In contrast to the video testimony, her shy yet alluring pose seems to follow stereotypical depictions of femininity. In fact, her photograph echoes the famous portrait of Leila Khaled, who participated in two aircraft hijackings in 1969 and 1970, was celebrated as the female icon of Palestinian resistance and subsequently became known as the ‘pin-​up of armed struggle’ (Viner 2001). Images of gun-​toting women, often depicted with

145

The making and gendering of a martyr

the keffiyeh, were popularised in the 1970s and 1980s in political and sometimes feminist posters in Palestine (Guthrie 2012). Ayat al-​Akhras’s image clearly does not conform to the visual scheme of Islamic male martyrs but evokes a rather secular imagery of female fighters. In the eyes of Western audiences, probably the most shocking element introduced by a female suicide bomber into the martyr imagery is that of the militant mother. Reem Riyashi was not only the first female bomber sent by Hamas to carry out an attack; she was also the first woman to leave two infant children behind. Similar to the gender critiques of her predecessors, her testimony accuses Muslim men of being merely ‘half-​men’ who had led the Palestinian community into submissiveness (quoted in Ziolkowski 2012, 57).10 While the visual scheme of her video testimony is more or less a replica of the conventional staging of male Hamas martyrs, including an abundance of weapons, Hamas also released a number of photographs that show Riyashi together with her three-​year-​old daughter. Armed with a rifle and dressed in a military outfit, she confronts the viewer with her gentle smile (Plate 17). Meanwhile, the child, who sits on her left arm, clutches a hand grenade as if playing with an innocent toy. The intimacy and serenity of the scene are in stark contrast to the surrounding lethal weapons and the viewer’s knowledge of the forthcoming murderous attack. The Arabic script seen on the backdrop perfectly frames this double portrait, and the circular emblem that contains the words ‘Allāhu Akbar’ (‘God is great’) resembles a slightly off-​centred halo above Riyashi’s head. The way she poses with her infant in front of the camera seems to re-​enact the Christian image motif of Madonna and Child, though it remains unclear whether such a reading was in fact intended by Riyashi or other Hamas members. Even though this photograph might come as a shocking new development for Western viewers, the militant mother is a common visual motif in Palestine. Political posters in the 1970s and 1980s often depicted armed mothers and thereby symbolically linked childrearing and warfare. Propaganda flyers in the First Intifada described women as ‘men-​producing factories’ with ‘military wombs’, thus defining women’s bodies as national weapons (Tzoreff 2006, 13). With her attack, however, Reem Riyashi transforms this figurative combination of militancy and motherhood into its literal meaning and introduces what appears to be a new motif into the pattern of martyr images. Reclaiming the visual staging of the ‘living martyr’, the female suicide bombers of the Second Intifada fabricated a highly heterogeneous self-​image/​identity, fluctuating between secular fighter and pious Muslim, between ‘masculine’ aggression and conventional ‘feminine’ representations of beauty, sacrifice and motherhood. Far from being mere imitations of Islamic male martyr videos, the images blend Islamic symbolism with the visual tradition of the secular female fighter. Despite the ambiguity of the women’s images and regardless of their attempts to break with traditional gender roles, coverage in both Arab and Western media remained focused on traditionally ‘female’ and heteronormative narratives, thereby consolidating the gender status quo (Hasso 2005; Nacos 2005; Naaman

145

146

146

Image operations

2007). Most Western reports adhered to familiar clichés of the militant woman (as they appeared previously in, for example, discussions about the female members of the German Red Army Faction). Aside from obsessively describing their attractiveness in great detail, several journalistic and academic texts framed Palestinian female suicide bombers as victims in the hands of men, refusing to see their potential agency (Naaman 2007). Journalist Barbara Victor discusses the female bombers of the Second Intifada in her book as an ‘example of the exploitation of women taken to a cynical and lethal extreme’ (Victor 2003, 8). Further stereotypes of female terrorists surfaced and portrayed them as hypersexualised femmes fatales or as monstrous deviations from the supposedly peaceful and caring ‘nature’ of women.11 Such reports ignore the women’s disparate (self)-​representations and fail to understand the gender discourses at stake in their martyr images as discussed above. Arab media, in turn, constructed the female martyr on the one hand as feminine ‘bride’ (Hasso 2005) and on the other hand as an example of a specifically Arab (and anti-​Western) form of gender equality.12 As Yoram Schweitzer has argued, this discourse was rapidly instrumentalised by militant parties as a propaganda tool to appeal to women within Palestinian society (Schweitzer 2006, 11). Despite these calls for gender equality, it is important to emphasise that the actual political position of women within the organisations remained the same, with men still wielding power and ‘equality’ only occurring with death and in the image.

Unmaking the martyr? If images have the power to actively contribute to the making of a martyr, we are left with the ethical question of whether we are supporting the visual cult of suicide bombing by reproducing and publicly displaying them. As Charlotte Klonk states in her contribution to this volume, there is no universal rule to answer this question, as images can change their purposes depending on the context, time and frame of perception. In this chapter, I  have demonstrated that a contextualised view and close analysis of female martyr images ultimately unmasks and counters the gender clichés of mainstream Western discourse. My discussion of martyr images reveals their powerful role and contributes to an understanding of the image operation at stake; as a result, I believe that their publication in this volume does not support the cult of the martyr but helps deconstruct it. In conclusion, I want to return to the question of ‘art’ once again. Instead of elevating suicide bombers themselves into the realm of art production as other critics have done, I  think it is more important to call attention to how artistic appropriations can open up a space for critical reflection on this topic. How can the use of counter-​images contribute to the ‘unmaking’ of the martyr? In 2000, Lebanese writer Elias Khoury and artist Rabih Mroué brought a martyr onto a Beirut theatre stage. In their performance Three Posters, the audience

147

The making and gendering of a martyr

witnesses the video testimony of the artist himself: ‘I am the martyr Rabih Mroué.’ During the video playback, a door on stage opens and reveals the video as a live performance. ‘At that instant’, Mroué writes, ‘the fabrication of the false moment was made apparent; it was as if the martyr had come to life before them’ (Mroué and Khoury 2006, 184). Mroué re-​enacts the process of becoming a martyr. At the same time, the performance reveals the paradox of the ‘living martyr’ whose video image turns into a ‘true’ document of evidence only after his death. After Mroué enacts this scene, the performers show three different takes of an actual video testimony –​that of Jamal Satti, who committed a suicide attack for the Lebanese Communist Party shortly after Muhaydli’s operation in August 1985. The accidental discovery of these videotapes by a friend of the artists was the starting point for the entire performance. Until then, only the final cuts of video testimonies were public knowledge and broadcast on television. Here, for the first time, we see three different takes of Jamal Satti’s testimony, rehearsals that show inconsistencies and moments of insecurity. Mroué remembers:  ‘The instant we saw the “stuttering” of the martyr, we realized something simple, so simple that it was obvious –​the martyr is not a hero but a human being’ (183). Khoury and Mroué’s performance unmasks the martyr Jamal Satti as an actor. Through its artistic appropriation, the self-​evident authenticity and the documentary status of Satti’s video are thrown into question. However, Mroué’s performance does not simply claim that the event captured on video is purely fictional. He suggests something more complicated: that in front of the camera, clear-​cut categories of true or false are suspended and that the martyr is the product of an image operation defying the distinctions between fiction and reality, between present and future, and between life and death. Despite the ubiquity of martyr images in Lebanese public life, they have not been a topic of much debate: ‘They are both commonplace and taboo’, as Elias Chad has noted (Chad 2014, 2). Thus, Mroué’s performance is one of very few artistic attempts to understand and deconstruct the power of those images, an attempt to unmake the martyr.

Notes 1 The testimony is available as part of a video montage in remembrance of Muhaydli: www. ssnp.com/​new/​multimedia.htm. Accessed 24 October 2014. 2 ‘In diesem Sinne stellt der Terrorismus eine Form der Kriegführung dar, in welcher der Kampf mit Waffen als Antriebsrad für den eigentlichen Kampf mit Bildern fungiert.’ 3 This point is evidenced through the use of Arabic (and not Hebrew or English) in most video testimonies. Exceptions to this rule are video testimonies by al-​Qaida, who globalised the tactic of suicide bombing and addressed a much broader audience beyond the Arab world. This chapter, however, focuses on the suicide bombings in a Lebanese and Palestinian context. 4 Martin Kramer emphasises that even though ‘the attacks against the United States and French contingents of the Multinational Force in Beirut [on 23 October 1983] were far more deadly’, the bombings by Hezbollah’s Ahmad Qasir in 1982 and by Amal’s martyr

147

148

148

Image operations Bilal Fahs in 1984 gained far more celebrity as a result of their widely disseminated poster visages, which ‘are readily recognised throughout Shi’ite Lebanon’, whereas the anonymity of the 1983 Beirut barracks bombers ‘established a distance between the community and the acts’ (Kramer 1996, 231–​43). 5 ‘Wir sehen gegenwärtig Bilder, die Geschichte nicht abbilden, sondern sie erzeugen.’ 6 Wafa Idris was the first woman of the Second Intifada to blow herself up, in a Jerusalem shoe store on 27 January 2002, but did not leave a video testimony behind. 7 ‘Anders als die Testamente scheint es für die Videos und die Fotos keine geschlechter­ spezifischen Aspekte zu geben. Die Gesichter der Frauen scheinen so austauschbar mit denen der Männer.’ 8 Extracts from the video testimony were broadcast as part of an Iranian documentary on female suicide bombers. I thank Britt Ziolkowski for a copy: Committee for the Martyrs of the Islamic Movement, Dāhtarān-​e Zaitūn, CD-​ROM, Teheran, undated. 9 Different extracts of the video are available at: www.youtube.com/​watch?v=a1KakNC Un4A, accessed 24 October 2014; www.youtube.com/​watch?v=sm5S0RRd3uM, accessed 24 October 2014. 10 Extracts of the video are available at:  www.youtube.com/​watch?v=uRDuKzC23GI, accessed 24 October 2014. 11 The latter narrative dominated the discussion of Reem Riyashi’s attack, exemplified by a New York Daily News article on 15 January 2004 headlined ‘Bomb-​Ma Madness’, suggesting that the combination of motherhood and militancy is a particularly unnatural act. 12 The Islamic newspaper al-​Sha’ab wrote some days after Wafa Idris’s suicide bombing on 1 February 2002: ‘It’s a woman who is showing you today, Muslim women, the meaning of true freedom, with which women’s rights activists have tempted you …. It’s a woman who has now proved that the meaning of women’s liberation is to free their body from this world’s trials, and to accept death with a powerful brave embrace’ (quoted in Yadlin 2006, 54).

References Bredekamp, Horst. 2004. ‘Wir sind befremdete Komplizen.’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 28 May. Chad, Elias. 2014. ‘Martyrdom and Mediation.’ In In Focus:  ‘On Three Posters’ 2004 by Rabih Mroué, edited by Elias Chad. London:  Tate. Accessed 24 October 2014. www. tate.org.uk/​art/​research-​publications/​rabih-​mroue-​on-​threeposters/​martyrdom-​andmediation-​r1144502. Croitoru, Joseph. 2003. Der Märtyrer als Waffe:  Die historischen Wurzeln des Selbstmordattentats. Munich: Hanser. Graitl, Lorenz. 2012. Sterben als Spektakel:  Zur kommunikativen Dimension des politisch motivierten Suizids. Wiesbaden: Springer. Groys, Boris. 2009. ‘The Fate of Art in the Age of Terror.’ In The Aesthetics of Terror, edited by Manon Slome and Simon Joshua, 54–​9. Milan: Charta. Guthrie, Basma. 2012. ‘Embodying a Stateless Nation: A Closer Look at Representations of Palestinian Women in Nationalist Posters –​1960’s–​1980’s.’ The Palestine Poster Project. Accessed 24 October 2014. www.palestineposterproject.org/​poster/​embodying-​a-​ stateless-​nation-​a-​closer-​look-​at-​representations-​of-​palestinian-​women-​in.

149

The making and gendering of a martyr Harrison, Mark. 2006. ‘An Economist Looks at Suicide Terrorism.’ World Economics 7(3). Accessed 14 October 2014. www.researchgate.net/​publication/​23725055_​An_​ Economist_​Looks_​at_​ Suicide_​Terrorism/​file/​60b7d52a9d3ce3152a.pdf. Hasso, Frances S. 2005. ‘Discursive and Political Deployments by/​of the 2002 Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers/​Martyrs.’ Feminist Review 81: 23–​51. Khalili, Laleh. 2007. Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration. Cambridge Middle East Studies 27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kramer, Martin. 1996. Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival:  The Politics of Ideas in the Middle East. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Maasri, Zeina. 2009. Off the Wall: Political Posters of the Lebanese Civil War. London: I.B. Tauris. Merari, Ariel, Jonathan Fighel, Boaz Ganor, Ephraim Lavie, Yohanan Tzoreff and Arie Livne. 2009. ‘Making Palestinian “Martyrdom Operations”/​ “Suicide Attacks”:  Interviews with Would-​B e Perpetrators and Organizers.’ Terrorism and Political Violence 22(1): 102–​19. Mroué, Rabih, and Elias Khoury. 2006. ‘Three Posters: Reflections on a Video/​Performance.’ Drama Review 50(3): 182–​91. Münkler, Herfried. 2003. Die neuen Kriege. Hamburg: Rowohlt. Naaman, Dorit. 2007. ‘Brides of Palestine/​ Angels of Death:  Media, Gender, and Performance in the Case of the Palestinian Female Suicide Bombers.’ Signs 32(4): 933–​55. Nacos, B. 2005. ‘The Portrayal of Female Terrorists in the Media: Similar Framing Patterns in the News Coverage of Women in Politics and Terrorism.’ Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 28: 413–​19. Pannewick, Friederike. 2006. ‘Tödliche Selbstaufopferung in der arabischen Literatur. Eine Frage von Macht und Ehre?’ In ‘Holy War’ and Gender/​’Gotteskrieg’ und Geschlecht, edited by Christina von Braun, Ulrike Brunotte, Gabriele Dietze, Daniela Hrzán, Gabriele Jähnert and Dagmar Pruin, 93–​119. Münster: Lit Verlag. Pipes, Daniel. 1988. ‘Radical Politics and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party.’ International Journal of Middle East Studies 20(03): 303–​24. Qur’an. 2005. Translated by M. A. S. Abdel Haleem. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Roger, Nathan. 2013. Image Warfare in the War on Terror. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Schweitzer, Yoram, ed. 2006. Female Suicide Bombers. Dying for Equality? Tel Aviv: Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University. Simon, Joshua. 2009. ‘Thoughts on the Aesthetics of Terror in General and Suicide Bombers’ Videos in Particular.’ In The Aesthetics of Terror, edited by Joshua Simon and Manon Slome, 28–​47. Milan: Charta. Toufic, Jalal. 2012. ‘I Am the Martyr Sanâ’ Yûsif Muhaydlî.’ In Rabih Mroué: A BAK Critical Reader in Artists’ Practice, edited by Maria Hlavajova, Jill Winder and Cosmin Costinas, 126–​43. Utrecht: BAK; Post Editions. Tzoreff, Mira. 2006. ‘The Palestinian Shahida: National Patriotism, Islamic Feminism, or Social Crisis.’ In Female Suicide Bombers. Dying for Equality?, edited by Yoram Schweitzer, 12–​23. Tel Aviv: Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University. Victor, Barbara. 2003. Army of Roses:  Inside the World of Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers. Emmaus, PA: Rodale. Viner, Katherine. 2001. ‘I Made the Ring from a Bullet and the Pin of a Hand Grenade.’ The Guardian, 26 January. Accessed 24 October 2014. www.guardian.co.uk/​world/​2001/​jan/​ 26/​israel.

149

150

150

Image operations Yadlin, Rivka. 2006. ‘Female Martyrdom: The Ultimate Embodiment of Islamic Existence?’ In Female Suicide Bombers. Dying for Equality?, edited by Yoram Schweitzer, 51–​61. Tel Aviv: Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University. Ziolkowski, Britt. 2012. Palästinensische Märtyrerinnen. Selbstdarstellung und innerislamische Wahrnehmung weiblicher Selbstmordattentäter. Islamkundliche Untersuchungen 309. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz.

151

Photographic archives and archival entities

11

Ariella Azoulay

We often hear people qualifying photographs as ‘vernacular’, ‘subversive’, ‘official’, ‘propagandistic’ or ‘political’. The use of such adjectives to classify photographs is based on the institutionalisation of one particular mode of photography. Within this framework, photography is approached as a productive practice led by individuals who act as authors. The products these authors generate are conceived as signed and sealed, and can be classified independently of the event in which they were issued or later encountered. In other words, when speaking about vernacular photographs for example, it is implied that a photograph is the product of its authors, that its aesthetics are authentic (i.e. not processed through too-​sophisticated filters and highly skilled manoeuvres) and that it reflects the sociocultural status of its producers as ordinary people, non-​professionals and amateurs. The use of qualifications (such as vernacular, for example) that imply an either–​or distinction, as if a photograph can only be described under one of two opposing terms, often singles out a common feature of photography (‘political’, for example) and turns it into a qualification of one particular type of photographs. Elsewhere, I have discussed the migration of the category ‘political’ from functioning as an ontological account of being with others, into an adjective describing particular photographs (Azoulay 2012a). Here I dwell on the category of the ‘vernacular’, since its association with language and its differentiation from another language –​‘lingua franca’ –​can be of help to illuminate a genuine problematic in the approach to photography. In the second part of this chapter, I propose three different types of adjectives whose application to photographs can enrich our approach to photographic archives. When the vernacular is associated with the aesthetics or the visual aspect of photographs, attention is drawn away from the vernacular as an inevitable feature of the practice of photography. As a practice, photography is most often vernacular, involving many actors –​not solely the author of the photograph, i.e. the persona of the professional photographer. It makes sense to call it a ‘vernacular practice’ only because a particular mode of photography has been established as photography’s lingua franca. In this mode of photographic practice, the many who participate in the event(s) of photography were not historically and theoretically accounted for, even though they use photography and speak its idioms.

152

152

Image operations

The vernacular then becomes the mode of practising photography in which those many non-​professionals who take part in the event of photography are accounted for. The lingua franca of photography, according to this distinction, takes place when photography is approached through its products –​photographs –​and those are reduced to their authors and referred to thematically (e.g. suffering or love) or indexically (‘this X was there’). When they are thematised and indexed in this way, photographs can travel across time and space like a vehicular language used to bridge different local languages. More often than not, photography is vernacular in that sense because if we only care to notice, many participate in it –​as photographed persons, or as mediators between the photographed and the photographer or between the event of taking a photo and that of viewing it –​and all these actors cannot be totally removed. Their presence and participation vernacularise photography by definition. This presence renders the lingua franca of photography as not solely the language of power that seeks to subsume all other idioms under its logic, but rather a living language that people use to continue to talk with others. Once we become aware of this inevitable presence of the many, it becomes clear that the lingua franca is one type of photographic language among others, and that like any other language, it is also shaped by the many who use it. And none of the languages that are spoken with and through photography can monopolise photography’s utterances and impose a sovereign logic on it. Hence, engaging in photography is always engaging in a conversation which we have not started and will not bring to an end. Let me exemplify this through the milestone 1955 MoMA photography exhibition curated by Edward Steichen –​The Family of Man. Here, photography was used as a lingua franca:  hundreds of images that were taken by more than 200 photographers in 200 places were assembled in one space where they could ‘talk’ to each other, and engage spectators in this conversation. Spectators were encouraged to see beyond the specific conditions to the general manifestations of activities and situations that were familiar to them from their homeland, in their idiom. The images, which originated from around the world, were juxtaposed, articulating common moments in the life of ‘the family of man’ such as work, labour, violence, joy, famine, war, strife, education, play, dance and music. Steichen assisted the photographs to become statements in this lingua franca. He cropped many of the images to eliminate certain photographic utterances which could be perceived as too vernacular, i.e. too specific and local, in order to foreground the similarity between human activities and to make them tangible and legible.1 He removed the particular historical and geographical traits in which the images were taken and by doing so, intentionally or not, opened the way for the photographed persons to be perceived as present in the conversation. While cropping photographs and enhancing what was recorded in them and through the tool of juxtaposition, he worked with the potential of photography to be spoken as a lingua franca. He did it on an unprecedentedly large scale. Millions came to see the exhibition in its different venues throughout the world and were engaged with its images. The blown-​up images taken in various locations, and the audience response in different places,

153

Photographic archives and archival entities

make it clear that when the many are engaged with a photography exhibition, the photographed persons are not transparent and the photographers, the expert in the lingua franca of photography, are not the sole speakers. Roland Barthes, having attended the exhibition a year later in Paris, wrote one of the earliest of a series of critiques which ensued over several decades about The Family of Man. Among them, Barthes’s critique was the sharpest and set the tone. He attributed to Steichen the power of an irredentist, transforming any local dialects spoken in and through the 500 particular photographs included in the exhibition into this lingua franca. That removal of particular traits, which Steichen presented as the explicit purpose of this exhibition, was presented by Barthes as something that can be grasped only once extracted from the exhibition through a critical gaze and analysis, for it belongs to the hidden ideological or mythological layer of which the exhibition is captive. Here are Steichen’s own words from the Preface to the exhibition catalogue: ‘It was conceived as a mirror of the universal elements and emotions in the everydayness of life –​as a mirror of the essential oneness of mankind throughout the world’ (Steichen 2010, 3). Paradoxically, instead of entering the conversation and interacting with the different idioms spoken by hundreds of photographers, thousands of photographed persons and millions of spectators, Barthes assimilates Steichen’s aim and relates to the photographs as if they are now spoken, upon Steichen’s command, solely as a lingua franca, a kind of vehicular language that enables communication when people do not speak the same language. Let us follow Barthes as he visited the exhibition, viewing hundreds of pictures and then reporting on what he saw in the essay published in 1956 and collected in Mythologies (Barthes 1972). According to this account, Barthes ‘saw’ nothing but abstract ideas: nature, universality, unity. ‘Birth, death?’ he asks, and replies, ‘Yes, these are facts of nature, universal facts. But if one removes History from them, there is nothing more to be said about them’ (100). When Barthes addressed photography, he often forgot the enlightening insights he had offered regarding the impossibility of reducing writing to a single source, which he formulated in his seminal text, The Death of the Author, published in 1967 (Barthes 1967). Even when he did notice multiplicity in the photographs, it was only one of forms or morphologies. It was this multiplicity, Barthes argued, that the spectators were unable to see because Steichen had the power to impose on it a single idea –​his own. Steichen, the curator, emerges in Barthes’s text as an omnipotent author, while the photographed persons are ignored and spectators become impotent readers and viewers. Dominant as he may have been, Steichen’s voice is just one more possible voice among many others resounding in the exhibition and through it. And even this voice itself, let  alone the voices emerging from the photographs themselves, is multiple, split and rife with contradictions. Barthes’s critique, which held the exhibition responsible for the unification of the many dialects into one, but actually consolidated Steichen’s explicit aspiration, was so influential that several decades had to pass before scholars dared to revisit the exhibition and study it beyond

153

154

154

Image operations

Barthes’s diktat. I started working on this exhibition as part of my effort to reconceptualise photography and photographic archives. Against Steichen and Barthes alike, I  have bracketed the exhibition’s lingua franca in order to foreground its diverse utterances and multiple dialects. We may call this an effort of vernacularisation. This effort does not consist in identifying vernacular aesthetics or translating the lingua franca into particular languages, but rather in acknowledging and accounting for the presence inherent in what I call the event of photography of other protagonists in the space created by photography, as well as insisting on the modalities of their participation with us, here and now, in the event of photography. My first step in this work was to conceive The Family of Man not solely as a signed work by a single curator, but as an archive that necessarily exceeds the mastery of the one who assembled its items. This requires a brief discussion of the modality of the archive. The archive, I argue, is a modality of access to the common and not a shrine of past documents. The photographic archive, I  insist, is the exponentiation of this modality, since photography in itself is such a modality. What is recorded in it is always more than what was intended, even though this ‘more’ can be kept ‘visibly invisible’ (Chun 2011, 1). This is not to say that the more common definition of the archive, given by John Tagg and others, as ‘an apparatus of rationalization and social management’ is entirely false (Tagg 2012, 26).2 Many archives function the way Tagg defines them, but this is a particular mode of functioning of the archive and it cannot serve as an abstract model out of which we can recognise and conceptualise the archive. Even state and bureaucratic archives, with which such a mode of operation is commonly identified, can be reduced to this description only if the archives and the citizens who use them are depicted as occupying the symbolic place allocated to us in the sovereign imaginary and its political vocabulary which we are encouraged to use, and not from our concrete, material, emotional, visceral and political presence and interactions with archives. Tagg is not oblivious to the archive’s potential to ‘begin to speak again’, i.e. differently, after exercising gestures of extraction and concealment, as happened in some examples he mentions (e.g. after the collapse of the German Democratic Republic, Ceausescu’s Romania, Argentina after the Dirty War or Cambodia after the fall of the Khmer Rouge), nor is he oblivious to the fact that ‘at least potentially, the drive to close the semantic circuit of the archive is always open at every point to resistance and contestation … the circuit is never finally able to secure itself ’ (32). Yet, he ends with an endorsement of Agamben’s argument on the apparatus, contending that ‘there is no question of redeeming this process by civic vigilance aimed at using the apparatus correctly. Those who advocate this are merely speaking for the apparatus that captured them.’ Tagg concludes by stating that since the archive ‘cannot be taken over’ it ‘has to be smashed’ (35). The desire to smash the archive, however, is as old as the archive itself. Throughout history, people have sought to destroy documents stored in the archive, tear down its building (when there was one), hack its index that enables/​disables access to data, use or abuse its accessories and intervene in its procedures of alienation, and so forth. However,

155

Photographic archives and archival entities

when people acted this way, they did not conceive of themselves as strangers to the archive, nor did they conceive of the archive in its totality, as a totalising machine that they sought to smash altogether. Their actions targeted particular archives, procedures and devices. They sought to destroy a particular archive and they dared to do so because they had a particular interest in it and specific claims regarding its functioning and how it had abused its authority. By doing this, they implied that the archive was also theirs. At the moment they acted, their actions seemed to them to be the most efficient and adequate way to relate to and interact with this or that particular archive. Tagg is not concerned with any particular archive, but with the archive in general, and from this generalised archive, he derives the reason for smashing it. Why should the archive be smashed? To answer this question, I propose to reconstruct two assumptions implied in such an approach to the archive that conceive our actions as secondary, external and inessential to its logic and functioning. First, the temporal –​when we enter the archive, it is always already established and accomplished, and hence protected and immune to our actions. Second, the spatial –​the archive is over there, distinct, in secluded places that we citizens can access only from the outside. For this reason, destruction appears to be the only way to resist the archive’s impact. When the archive is conceptualised as this omnipotent and already accomplished institution, our interactions with it turn into actions upon it and as such, they are doomed to fail. But why should we conceive the archive like that? When one recalls that the array of people’s modes of interaction with the archive is the point of departure for conceptualising it and writing its history and the fact that our bodies and actions, our ideas, achievements and failures, are recorded in the archive, it is clear that the archive as a modality of access to the common cannot be ignored. It is then also clear that a call to smash it risks being a call to abolish the accumulation of people’s actions out of which the archive is made. Conceptualising our entry to the archive as a way of interacting with people’s actions deposited in and mediated through the archive allows us to reactivate and make present those actions that particular modes of the functionality of archives seek to make ‘inconsequential’, to use Leela Ghandi’s term (Ghandi 2014). The most common of these modes is to make us believe and act as though the archive is document-​orientated, and that what is archived in these documents are accomplished actions. In other words, it is assumed that in general, the archive is about the past and what we do when we view these documents is to account for what has already passed, from the point of view of the present, of this ‘pastness’ that we are relegated to being confined to. Although this is the most common mode of thinking about the archive, it does not reflect the way people interact with archives. As good citizens, we are expected to conceptualise the archive abstractly as if working by itself without the contingency of people’s intervention in its functioning, i.e. from a sovereign point of view, we are engaged in identifying with the archive as what the archive is –​a shrine of the past, a depository in which cherished documents are safe and sound. Thus, under this illusion, we actually become

155

156

156

Image operations

advocates of this particular type of archive by alienating ourselves and our modes of acting and interacting from the archive’s neutral mode of functioning. Something similar happened with the conception of what photography is. Even though photography was always experienced as a practice of many –​spectators, photographed people and photographers  –​it was depicted as a linear productive practice, beginning with a photographer and ending with a photograph authored by the photographer. When I proposed a reconceptualisation of photography (Azoulay 2008, 2011), I based it on people’s modes of interactions with photography. In this reconceptualisation, the photographed persons are not conceived as the raw material of photography, but as active agents involved in its production: the spectators are not those who come after the fact, and the photograph is not the capture of a moment that is no longer. Photography, I argued, is an event that may take place through the mediation of the camera or through that of the photograph, and each of these events can take place regardless of the other, in a way that exemplifies how much a causal and unilinear order between them is foreign to their nature. Sometimes the camera is confiscated, idle or merely appears to be operating without actually taking any image; sometimes the photograph, assuming there is one, is censored, concealed, failed or made inaccessible. When photography is reduced to its product and the impact of the camera to its actual operation, such deficiency in the functionality of the camera or in the availability of photographs minimises (down to non-​existence) the scope of the event of photography, its unpredictability and disables the possibility of others to participate in it. Photographs and cameras are endowed with the power to determine the mode of our participation in the common, i.e. the shared spaced of photography. We are interpellated to use photography and archives as a lingua franca, a language through which absence is absence and presence is presence, and both are determined by the order of the archive and the productivity of photography, and none of them is affected by us, the archive’s users. The archive, according to this conception, contains only traces of events of photography from the past; no event of photography in which we too participate can take place in the archive itself when we open its drawers and cabinets. Needless to say, the photographed persons are for ever left behind, their presence in the photographs remains enclosed in the past, disabling any political interaction with them. The archive based on the ‘sovereign’ conception of photography, the one that reduces that photographic event to the sovereign act of the photographic author, is based on binary, exhaustive distinctions between the spatial and the temporal, a closed past and a post-​factum present, the accomplished and the negotiable, the authorised gate keeper and the visitor, facts and fictions, accredited use and violation. Understanding the event of photography as multiple, as something that may take place even before or without the operation of the camera, and even without photographs to be seen, opens the way for a different conceptualisation of the archive. When this understanding of the event(s) of photography is introduced,

157

Photographic archives and archival entities

new photographic entities emerge. It is in this context that ‘missing’ or non-​ existent photographs, formerly understood as ‘holes’ in or silence of the archive, can assume a real presence that initiates deliberative processes. The following section addresses some of these entities.3

Untaken, inaccessible and unshowable photographs Untaken photograph ‘Untaken photograph’ was the first entity that came out of the mapping of a photographic event attributed to a man in the torture chamber. Following oral testimonies indicating that cameras were in use, I insisted that an event of photography did take place even if the camera was idle. However, no trace of that event was recorded with a photographic device, or at least not to my knowledge. The term ‘untaken photographs’ stands for this absence in the photographic archive and designates other archival entities that should be recognised as existing side by side with the more familiar one –​‘photographs’. This category of untaken photograph became productive in my actual search related to the massive rape of German women by Red Army soldiers at the end of World War II. The untaken photograph of the massive phenomenon of rape, in a city where cameras were numerous, is my point of departure to question the limits of our phenomenal field and to make other elements in the archive be seen differently. Each and every camera present in Berlin during the weeks when these rapes occurred stands for the untaken photographs of this crime (Figure 6). By occupying a spot in the archive, other items in given archives are necessarily reconfigured. This spot of untaken archive can be occupied by a verbal description, a testimony, a drawing or a photograph produced following the visual description of one of the participants in the event of photography. My assumption is that the presumed presence of a camera –​real or imagined (sometimes as a threat –​‘we are photographing you!’)  –​suffices to create a photographic event. The lack of photographs cannot cancel out the photographic event that was unleashed by the presence of the camera, or prevent the participants from interacting with what it had generated.4

Inaccessible photograph Here, the existence of the photograph is known as well as the photographic event it generated when people were compelled to view it, but, for many reasons, the photograph itself has been made inaccessible (Figure 7).

157

158

158

Image operations

Figure 6  Untaken photograph, Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, May 1945. Three cameras: one in the hand of the Red Army photographer Yevgeny Khaldei (centre), the second in the hands of an unknown photographer (right) and the third held by another unknown photographer who took the image we are viewing

Figure 7  Inaccessible photograph, Israeli prison, Hani Muzheir’s testimony, recorded by B’Tselem report on torture, 1994

If a photograph’s inaccessibility matters to a certain community, the violence of extracting it from public access cannot be acknowledged as legitimate power and certainly cannot deny our participation in the event of photography generated by the present/​absent photograph. Making a photograph accessible, even without having access to the photograph itself, can be achieved in different ways, depending on the nature of other relics that testify to its existence. Summoning it again allows one to share its presence/​absence with others (Azoulay 2012a).

159

Photographic archives and archival entities

Unshowable photograph The accessibility of a photograph is often controlled and monitored by the archive. The photographs in this category are accessible photographs, whose public display and manifestations are controlled. These are photographs that an individual or a group cannot occupy in the position of an addressor of these photographs, i.e. as the one who calls others’ attention to their presence and shares his or her experience. These photographs can be shown in public only if they are accompanied with the thin caption given to them by the archive that made of them representations of a delineated photographed event and without any other word or element. In concluding this chapter, I track how this category emerged out of my visit to the CICR archive. A group of photographs taken in Palestine between 1947 and 1950 that I viewed at the CICR (Comité international de la Croix-​Rouge, or International Committee of the Red Cross) archive in Geneva in 2009 are accessible to the public. But in order to show them, one needs the permission of the CICR. Permission depends on the CICR’s approval of any text that an archive user might write to accompany the photographs.5 By controlling the way photographs are described in public, the archive sentries appear authorised to deny citizens the right to freely read their history, show it to others, reinterpret it, share it and imagine another future out of it. With this abuse of power, the archive betrays its vocation as a public institution and as a depository of documents that belong to the public, if only because they concern the lives and histories of many. Because I insisted on my right to describe the photographs in a civil way that suspends the national paradigm of ‘two sides’ –​namely, Israeli and Palestinian –​I was not authorised to show them publicly. Since the photographs were unshowable but not inaccessible, I could draw them and show their substitutes, enabling them to exist beyond my own memory of them. I have therefore titled these drawings ‘unshowable photographs’, insisting on their photographic nature and itinerary (Figure 8). I usually spend a lot of time with photographs until the recorded scene comes to life and the specific point of view from which they were taken ceases to dominate the event of photography that I participate in. When I began to draw these photographs, I was surprised to discover that in spite of my careful observation, many details had escaped my attention. I was much too taken with the girl resolutely marching at the head of the line in the photo of ‘repatriation’. Having always followed the procession in her footsteps, I had forgotten the other girls. The act of drawing exposed to me the girl who was having difficulty walking, the one whose legs were buckling under her, who had not the strength to do what was now required of her and march erect. She needs the comforting hand not only of her mother but of another woman as well. The hands of the two women walking beside her are full. One holds a baby, the other carries a heavy sack on her head. Neither of them is having an easy time, but their hardship pales in view of this girl’s need of two hands to hold her, to reassure her, pressing her little palm to let

159

160

160

Image operations

Figure 8  Unshowable photograph, Tul Karem region, women and children who are part of a transfer of 1,100 people leaving the Jewish zone toward the Arab zone, under the auspices of the International Red Cross on 18 June 1948

her know she is safe, that two hands would hold her for ever, even while ordered to walk many miles in the sand, thirsty, tired, sad, lost. The official captions given to the photographs by the CICR are part of the constituent violence that I describe in the texts I have written to accompany the photographs and that the archive forbade me to display publicly. This is what Walter Benjamin refers to as constituent violence; the violence that constitutes a new state of affairs as law (Benjamin 1978). This violence established Israel as a Jewish state by uprooting 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and homeland between 1948 and 1950 and transformed that uprooting into an administrative matter of preserving the ethnically cleansed zones as such. The CICR archive sentries who did not approve my reading of the photographs were not authorised to censure my text, but they sought to obstruct my approach to the photographs by denying me the right to show the photographic documents in public as the material on which I based my research. The gesture of showing images –​dormant in archives –​in public is a way of interacting with them as interlocutors in a deliberative conversation in which we encourage others to engage. As citizens, we can approach these photographs that are made ‘inaccessible’, ‘unshowable’ and ‘untaken’ by archive sentries as being only one specific product of the photographic event in which they were produced.6 Some photographic events can be reconstructed from oral testimonies, referring to or assuming the existence of either cameras or photographs, as has been done in the case of images of torture.7

161

Photographic archives and archival entities

From written documents that I had read prior to my visit to the CICR, I knew that representatives from the organisation had been present at places in Palestine where massacre, expulsion and destruction had taken place between 1947 and 1950. I was hoping, then, to find photographs in that archive which I was or was not able to view in Israeli Zionist archives. To my great surprise, I was shown only about 600 photographs taken during these four formative years of the transformation of Palestine into Israel. Most of them were apparently taken in places and at times other than those in which the actual catastrophic events had taken place in Palestine at that time. When I asked how the CICR could possibly possess so few relevant photographs considering the number of places the Red Cross had frequented at the time, the archive workers told me that these were all the photographs they had and emphasised that the Red Cross is a ‘neutral’ organisation. I did not understand whether that meant that they do not take a stand regarding the photographs and, therefore, I must not suspect that they hide any material from the public, or that this neutrality refers to the photographs themselves and that which is seen in them –​and that, therefore, I would not find photographs in their collection that are not neutral. (I did not talk with the staff about the meaning of the concept ‘neutrality’ and its specific character in the Red Cross.) After my initial disappointment, I  viewed the photographs again and selected several dozen. I then sorted out twenty-​five photographs, which I divided into three groups. The first group of photographs I  addressed contained photographs that, according to the archive’s captions, had been taken in Kfar Yona, a Jewish agricultural settlement founded in the 1920s. This group of photographs attracted me immediately since I recognised the faces of many of the people photographed –​ not personally, but rather as ‘archival acquaintances’ from my encounter with photographs I  had found in the Israeli State Archives and collected for the archive I created and named Constituent Violence 1947–​1950 (Azoulay 2012a). The angles represented were different in the CICR photographs, but the place, the event and people were the same. My curiosity was especially aroused by the language of the CICR captions, which described a reality different from the one I knew from the historiographic literature of the time and from what I had reconstructed from the photographs I knew, as well as from captions that accompanied the photographs of this event kept in the Israeli State Archives. The first dissonance in the CICR captions of the photographs from Kfar Yona was in their use of the concept of ‘repatriation’ regarding the women, children and elderly expelled from Fureidis (in Palestine) to Transjordan after being expelled from Tantura (in Palestine) to Fureidis several months earlier. I was disturbed as well by certain somewhat less outrageous concepts describing the images, such as naming the Palestinian city of al-​Ramle a ‘Jewish zone’, and the ease with which accessible concepts of ethnic separation served to create and ground a reality that had been violently imposed upon the inhabitants. The military terminology used in the CICR captions, which through phrases such as ‘a zone monitored by Arab forces’, articulated a division of the region into

161

162

162

Image operations

two sides, swiftly erased a mixed and complex geo-​cultural space; one that until shortly before 1947 had comprised neighbourly and trade relations between Jews and Palestinians, orchards, fruit groves, commercial areas, cultural establishments and markets. The language was official, even familiar, but still alien and violent in relation to what happened in Palestine during the late 1940s. It took me a while to realise that the categories that had served the representatives of the Red Cross –​such as ‘repatriation’ to describe the transfer of Palestinian women to Transjordan –​was part of a European political jargon that had come into being during two world wars and in the extended, systematic relocation of populations in Europe after the end of World War II.8 The neutrality that this jargon used by international organisations claims to express actually acknowledges and sanctifies only the sovereign power of nation-​states in which these organisations allegedly do not interfere.9 The problem with this language is not the actual shift of categories from one political reality to another, but rather its violent application to a reality in which these categories, splitting the common along national lines, were themselves one of the main bones of contention. The Arab majority living in Palestine in the 1940s opposed partition. Many of those international actors who took part in the partition plan and supported it eventually backed off –​including, for instance, the British and the American governments –​realising that, if implemented, it would result in bloodshed (Azoulay 2011). It is commonly argued that Jews fully embraced the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. However, even in the absence of data (which has never been collected) documenting the extent of support of the partition plan among Jews, there is sufficient data to claim that not all Jews living in Palestine who supported the idea of a national home for Jews were in favour of partition or of the separation and ethnic cleansing that would inevitably follow (Magnes 1983). No less important is the multitude of Jewish–​Palestinian collaborative efforts in that period to sign civil pacts and exchange mutual promises to avoid violence.10 One day after the declaration of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in November 1947, the military and political powers of the Jewish community in Palestine began a massive military mobilisation for a war that was presented as vital for survival, but was de facto designed to change the borders set by the partition plan as well as the composition of the population. Soon enough, the Jewish power that conducted itself as sovereign was recognised as such by the international representatives who visited Palestine in numerous areas and by representatives of the British Mandate, who, in refraining from interfering, shirked their responsibility toward the local population. The military interference of various states in support of the Arab population that was expelled en masse from their land exacerbated even further the conception of the new reality: that what was going on in Palestine was a conflict between states that had to be settled. The violence of ethnic cleansing –​the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians –​perpetrated in order to create a Jewish majority in Palestine in support of the declaration of the State of Israel was achieved with the support of the violence of a ‘neutrality’ derived from the pact among nations who recognised only the official

163

Photographic archives and archival entities

representatives of acknowledged parties as possible partners for treaties. Thus, within several months, the local Palestinian population gradually slipped away from political space, and reality was organised as a bi-​partisan conflict of which the Palestinians were not a side but, rather, a disruption to be removed in order to settle the conflict. A photograph from the Red Cross archive taken at Al Qubab in November 1948 illustrates this political reality. The houses in the background had been vacant for a while by then –​the village was conquered in June 1948, its inhabitants displaced and most of the houses demolished at Ben Gurion’s behest in September 1948. The negotiation carried out by ‘Jewish and Arab soldiers’, as recorded in these photographs, is not performed by indigenous people, Jews and Palestinians. Rather, it takes place between soldiers who represent the new Jewish sovereignty of the country and soldiers of the Jordanian Legion. In this reality, where sovereignty was achieved through sheer violence of deportation, terms such as transbordement –​passage between borders –​or ‘repatriation’ are not neutral. They are the language of sovereign power imposing its violence as law and receiving international recognition. Such reconstruction of the events of photography and interaction with photographs is carried out from a civil perspective seeking to suspend and counter the effects of the regime in the archive  –​in this particular case, the preservation and reproduction of practices whose aim is the cleansing of the body politic or the governed population. In the photographs I  found in the CICR archive, there was nothing particularly different from what I  saw elsewhere. None were sensational compared to what we have already seen of that time. Determining these photographs to be ‘unshowable’ is not an act of censure against scandalous material. It resists an event of photography initiated by civil discourse that contests fundamental categories of the sovereign power and that refuses to incarnate the spectator position set by the archives of relating to these images as documents of past events. The operations recorded by these photographs, as well as the political language used by the CICR to caption them, partake in a national bond implemented at the time through the support of the international community. What we are attending to is not a past sovereign decision to abandon the life of Palestinians manifested as a historical document at the archive, but rather a present, continuing event that implicates us as citizens-​spectators. It threatens to make us accomplices, collaborators bonded with the sovereign power to administer populations against their will along national lines and to participate in the naturalisation of the transformation of Palestinians into outsiders to their homeland. Captions in sovereign archives –​national and international –​ are manifestations of constituent violence. Captions too, one must remind herself, do not speak for themselves. They need us, readers and spectators. If we do not uphold our responsibility as citizens  –​not as citizens of a state, but as citizens who share a world with others –​when we participate in the event of photography, we risk preserving the law achieved by constituent violence. By retracing the violence that transformed history into a fait accompli, thereby

163

164

164

Image operations

cleansing the ethnic cleansing itself, reconstructing the photographs contrary to the pact signed through them in the archive restores the potentialities of the archive. It generates what Walter Benjamin called the ‘incompleteness of history’, the potential of a mixed population to limit the power of national sovereignty (Benjamin 2003, 389–​411). It questions the international initiative in, support for and recognition of national partition.

Notes 1 A famous and much discussed example is Yosuke Yamahata’s photograph of a child in Nagasaki who, in the full frame, is seen with his mother; less discussed examples are the photograph by Ralph Morse of a couple that was taken in 1944 in Hyde Park, a place where American soldiers met with British women, or the Richard Harrington photograph of an Inuit woman giving birth –​her older daughter being left out of the cropped frame. 2 ‘For Sekula’, Tagg writes, ‘and for some others at the end of the 1970s, amongst whom I would be included, the archival mode was a political apparatus inseparable from the rationalization of information, the control of the bodies and the relegation of the photographic operator to “the status of a detail worker” ’ (Tagg 2012, 25). 3 Parts of the following section have previously been published (Azoulay 2012b). 4 See the exhibition I  curated titled Untaken Photographs, winner of the Igor Zabel Competition, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, April–​May 2010. 5 Edward Said reports of a similar experience he had while consulting images from these archives and wanting to show them with texts in the UN (Said 1993). 6 When I searched for photographs of rape from the years 1947–​50, it seemed as if none were taken. Only after a while was I able to reconstruct some ‘untaken photographs’ from within existing photographs where rape became invisible (Azoulay 2012a). 7 See, for example, the photographic reconstruction of modes of torture at B’Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories), ‘Detainees and prisoners’, www.btselem.org/​photos/​4, photographs 3555, 2627, 2635. 8 On the forced migration of large populations of millions of people in Europe in the aftermath of World War II, as the preferred policy promoted by the Allies and sanctioned by the UN, to preserve world peace, see Mazower 2013. 9 See Hannah Arendt’s discussion of the millions of refugees who flooded Europe in the first half of the twentieth century as a result of nations taking over states –​in part because of treaties between sovereign states that rid themselves of alien ‘minorities’ (Arendt 1975). 10 In my ‘folded exhibition’ Potential History, I  present one of many examples of such encounters. Potential History was first shown in 10×10:  Nineteen forty-​eight, BWA Wroclaw–​Galleries of Contemporary Art, Poland, and later at the Israeli Center for Digital Art, Holon, Israel, in May 2012.

References Arendt, Hannah. 1975. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace. Azoulay, Ariella. 2008. The Civil Contract of Photography. New York: Zone Books.

165

Photographic archives and archival entities Azoulay, Ariella. 2011. ‘Declaring the State of Israel:  Declaring a State of War.’ Critical Inquiry 37(2): 265–​85. Azoulay, Ariella. 2012a. Civil Imagination:  Political Ontology of Photography. New  York: Verso. Azoulay, Ariella. 2012b. Different Ways Not to Say Deportation: Unshowable Photographs. Translated by Tal Haran. Vancouver: Fillip Editions. Barthes, Roland. 1967. ‘The Death of the Author.’ Aspen 5/​6. Accessed 4 December 2015. www.ubu.com/​aspen/​aspen5and6/​threeEssays.html#barthes. Barthes, Roland. 1972 [1957]. Mythologies. Translated by Annette Lavers. London: Paladin. Benjamin, Walter. 1978. ‘Critique of Violence.’ In Reflections:  Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, edited by Peter Demetz, translated by Edmund Jephcott, 277–​ 300. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Benjamin, Walter. 2003. ‘On the Concept of History.’ In Walter Benjamin:  Selected Writings, vol. 4, 1938–​1940, edited by Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, translated by Harry Zohn, 389–​411. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Chun, Wendy. 2011. Programmed Visions:  Software and Memory. Cambridge, MA: Manchester University Press. Ghandi, Leela. 2014. The Common Cause: Postcolonial Ethics and the Practice of Democracy 1900–​1955. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Magnes, Judas Leon. 1983 [1947]. Palestine: Divided or United? Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Mazower, Mark. 2013. No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Said, Edward. 1993. After the Last Sky. New York: Vintage Books. Steichen, Edward. 2010 [1955]. The Family of Man. Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Tagg, John. 2012. ‘The Archiving Machine: Or, the Camera and the Filing Cabinet.’ Grey Room 47: 24–​37.

165

166

167

Part III

Image activism and political movements

168

169

Exposing the invisible: visual investigation and conflict

12

Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski

For the last, almost two hundred years, journalists and illustrators and then photographers would be present on battlefields. The landscapes of conflict were part of the reporting of those conflicts, and they deeply influenced our understanding of them. We talk about the media activities around the Gulf War, the first genuinely televised war, but before that there was photography in Vietnam, and water-​colourists on the battlefields of Crimea. We have an understanding of warfare that is formed by our view of the battlefield. This isn’t the case with the drone war. We may occasionally hear the names of places where strikes have occurred, but there’s no formal reporting and so that’s very unclear. I don’t know what these places look like. (Bridle 2013)

There are multiple perspectives from which one can look at a conflict, yet the problem is often presented in terms of a trench: you are on one side or the other. There are, however, glimpses from the middle, those entrapped in the conflict, collateral actors or even bystanders who present other ways of seeing. Visual representations are a feature of any conflict, they are one of the ways in which positions are negotiated, communities are brought together or broken apart and memories are formed. With the rise of digital technologies for creating and publishing media  –​camcorders, digital cameras, smartphones, as well as easy-​ to-​use internet platforms –​visual cultures of conflict have slowly expanded and become the domain of those directly involved in a conflict, not only professionals paid to be there. We have seen the role of documentation taken up by civilians and protesters as in the Arab Spring; the role of incidental witnesses absorbed by accidental documentarians, as in the case of the Egyptian collective Mosireen (Mosireen n.d.); and the role of reporter taken up by the perpetrator, as in the case of ISIS (The Guardian 2014). Digital technologies and publishing platforms have changed how events are visually documented and how these representations can be used by others, at the time or in retrospect. The accessibility of additional images, such as satellite imagery, has added to the quality of visual representations of conflict available to the public. Such images, at scale, were previously scarce and hard to obtain but are now in the public domain and accessible by the curious and the motivated (see Gregory, this volume).

170

170

Image operations

Regardless of these advances, elements of conflicts are left invisible, or perhaps only truly visible to the same traditional actors of control. We struggle with new problems of making sense of these images, of verification and of analysis. We struggle to find answers to essential questions because they are still intentionally obscured from view. We now have many views, but we still have many blank spots. Syria, for example, is now the most visually documented conflict in human history, with thousands of hours of video available online. The hard part is making sense of it. Making anything meaningful out of such vast quantities of information still seems like a privilege to many of us. Although it would be too much to talk about ‘big images’, in the same way we talk about big data, it does raise interesting opportunities for those who have the skills and determination to use these new resources, for investigation. Exposing the Invisible1 is a project by Tactical Tech,2 highlighting the work of individuals and groups who use digital technologies, publicly available data and visual representation to investigate conflicts. These investigations ask difficult questions and work to visualise conflict and its aftermath in order to better understand it. Most importantly, they expose parts of conflicts we cannot even see. The project raises questions about power and counter-​power. It is about small acts of defiance using public information that openly question what is otherwise hidden. It explores how individuals and small groups working together, use technology, visual evidence and investigation to better understand conflict. As the name suggests, this necessarily touches on notions of visibility and invisibility. It does not do this from a conceptual point of view, but rather looks at the processes of hiding and revealing in the context of conflict. Recognising invisibility as a construct, as an act of obfuscation that requires real world mechanisms, invisibility is artificially produced. There is a lot of legal and technological artifice required in order to produce a zone of invisibility. When you speak about rural Pakistan in the case of drones for example, as a zone of invisibility, that has nothing to do with the fact that you would not be able to report from the region in and of itself. It’s not a natural property of that physical space that it is invisible. We should never forget that it is through very active legal, institutional, and technological intervention that particular regions are militarised or are turned into zones of invisibility, and as a consequence military action becomes possible there. (Marres 2013)

Challenging these constructs of invisibility is not only difficult, but at times risky. The project focuses on actors who do not want to directly confront power or be involved in standard change-​based practices, for example policy or NGO work, but rather are interested in using visual techniques to understand a particular problem and in doing so find larger systemic questions. Through examples, we explore how new types of actors –​artists, data journalists, programmers, researchers, activists, lawyers –​are able to identify new strands of evidence available in the public sphere. We investigate how they are able to propose new methods for shaping existing narratives by re-​evaluating evidence and changing the context

171

Exposing the invisible

of that evidence. Each of the individuals we interviewed –​Eliot Higgins, Rajwa, Hagit Keysear and James Bridle –​were non-​typical actors that ended up undertaking these visual investigations because they were exploring their personal limits of understanding complex or hidden issues. What follows are excerpts from these interviews carried out during the process of making the Exposing the Invisible (2014) film series. The interviews span work looking at different kinds of conflict: the ongoing militarised conflict in Syria; the aftermath of conflict and ongoing unrest in Lebanon; the long entrenched Israeli–​ Palestinian conflict; and drone warfare. Whilst these are very different situations and the actors present four very different processes and techniques of using visual investigation, there are some common threads between them. They all use visual evidence as a central source of investigation, not just as a form for presenting their work. They all use new forms of digital archives and publishing platforms in their work –​mainstream tools designed for other purposes, such as Google Earth, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. They all have built-​in practices for dealing with questions of validation and verification when working with digital visual evidence and the inherent challenges this raises. Lastly, in each of the examples, the way in which visual evidence is created, curated and analysed shifts our existing perceptions, making the virtual become a filter for accessing the real.

Looking at the periphery: breaking down the Syrian conflict. Interview with Eliot Higgins I am all about using what is freely available on the internet, but no one is really looking at it properly …. Curiosity for me is looking at something, picking away at it and finding out what is actually behind it. It is looking at the news, but the news is in most cases just at the surface of something. There is always something behind it. I want to understand how the media works, not just consuming it at face value but understanding the process of how it is put together. (Higgins 2013a)

Eliot Higgins, previously more widely known as Brown Moses, scans large amounts of raw video from hundreds of YouTube channels and other social media on a daily basis (Plate 18). His work is built on the process of looking at what is there, yet finding what no one else sees. Elliot is a blogger, a self-​trained video forensic expert and self-​trained arms and weapon specialist based in the UK. His work began in 2012 when, as a former finance and administrative assistant, he began working from home, systematically watching and deconstructing thousands of videos being posted on YouTube from Syria. Despite the fact that Eliot has never been to Syria and does not speak Arabic, he was able to turn his curiosity and determination into a valuable asset. A big part of the work I do is influencing how the conflict in Syria has been reported, because there has been quite a lot of simplistic reporting, or reporting that is very focussed on the part of the country that journalists can reach. Even though there

171

172

172

Image operations are hundreds of videos being produced, other areas were being dismissed because no one could verify the videos. (Higgins 2013b)

Elliot classifies YouTube channels into primary and secondary sources, filters them by location, time and what is visible in term of types of arms, ammunition, explosions, military debris, vehicles –​anything that is possible to classify and track. Part of this process is for cross-​referencing videos and verifying events, locations and actions, part is to find new patterns and create archives that can be utilised. His only means is raw video material, later enriched by specialist knowledge, research and data. By looking with such an eye for detail he is able to overcome his major disadvantage: being far away. Elliot works with a long-​term plan and a tagging system, enabling him to make unusual comparisons and contextualisations –​these lead to new discoveries as to the movement and source of arms and the warfare techniques being used. The material he gathers provides unlimited viewpoints with multiple angles of seeing. When viewing the videos, Eliot is not focusing on the primary objective of those who were filming –​but rather seeing what can be extracted from the peripheries of that vision –​locations, types of arms, elements of arms and what story can be stitched from aggregating peripheral elements in other videos. When aggregated from many points of view, this marginal content becomes a substantial body of knowledge that can be linked and explored. The key is the quantity of content and the expertise he has been able to build up across looking at such vast amounts of content for a sustained period of time. The distance between him and the conflict only emphasises the power of the marginal imagery inside the videos. He finds his content where the image producers are not looking. They may be documenting or even staging the main narrative of their story, but are unaware of the seemingly unimportant parts; the background, the weather, the soundscape, the objects in the story (Plate 19). Even the people on the ground, they don’t always realise what they are filming is significant. A good recent example is a video I saw of an opposition activist picking up an unexploded rocket. What was interesting about the rocket, and what he didn’t seem to realise, was that the markings showed that it was manufactured in 2012 and it was an Iranian model. This meant the Iranians had been providing weapons to the Syrian government during the conflict, in violation of the UN sanctions against Iran. That wasn’t the point of the video; he was just showing off this rocket that they had fired. So that’s the kind of situation where you’ve got to keep an eye out for some of the small details that suddenly pop up. (Higgins 2013b)

The analysis of the videos at-​scale enables Eliot not only to look for evidence of larger stories with implications beyond the original purpose or framing, but also to bring reflection and insights to the less documented and understood parts of such a conflict –​the sometimes mundane, yet unseen processes of warfare. Details that afford insights into the inner workings of conflict that can be messy and experimental.

173

Exposing the invisible

The nature of Eliot’s work and the type of sources he relies upon mean that validation and verification is central. Eliot has developed different methodologies for cross-​referencing, leveraging public data and fact-​checking with other networks. Could I use weather websites to find what the weather was like on a certain day? If it is raining on a video from the 14th August, I might look at the weather on that day in a certain location and find it was a week of red-​hot, sunny days. You have to look at different elements in the video, and think what you have to do to prove that’s accurate. … It’s about understanding the different elements and using the massive amount of resources online to get the information you need. (Higgins 2013b)

This points not only to the general problem of working with digital visual representations published by others, which may misrepresent or even falsify events, but also to the fragile nature of the medium he is working with, especially in the context of investigation. This may be one of the main flipsides of the availability of visuals in relation to contemporary conflicts; we –​as reporters, investigators, researchers, historians and passive consumers –​have to find new ways of understanding what we are looking at.3 Eliot’s insights come from the scale of the sources he looks at, the consistency with which he has done this over time and the skill with which he has learned to deconstruct what is represented.

Looking at what is in plain sight: The sea is mine. Interview with Rajwa I think it’s important to be aware of what’s happening around you. The thing I like most –​and that’s how I started working in this field –​is talking to ordinary people, to local people, the ones who are really on the ground. They’re very good observers. I think that generally people are very aware of what’s happening around them. They feel as if they don’t have enough power to do anything about their situation, or they wonder whether there’s any point in doing anything. But they are willing to talk …. I think it has helped a lot of people around us, even indirectly, to see that there was something else behind this facade. (Rajwa 2013a)

Rajwa works in a very different visual environment from Eliot, one where visual evidence does not exist but needs to be created and stitched together post factum (Plate 20). The work examines what is in plain sight, not accepting how things seem, but instead understanding how they really are by reconstructing the details to make an alternative narrative. By sifting through publicly available images, crowd-​sourcing answers to questions and cross-​referencing this with other public information, the Lebanese collective Mashaa explores ownership of the coastal areas in Lebanon, highlighting broader questions of power, corruption and politics. In Beirut for example, there is now only one public beach.

173

174

174

Image operations I wanted to free the beaches because I really enjoy the beach. It’s a bit naive! But it’s not a joke. Beyond that, I think that as our investigations into public spaces carried on, we realised that the coastline is a space where there’s a lot of power at stake, a lot of manipulation and the potential to change cities and other places radically. (Rajwa 2013a)

Not knowing what they may find, their work started out with simple questions: why is the beach no longer a public space? When and how did it happen? What they found was a direct link to prior conflict in the country and the loopholes this created. We came to understand that this phenomenon of closing formerly open spaces has been happening for a very, very long time. During the Lebanese Civil War there were literally no laws and just chaos, as in any war. There were a lot of people trying to build, or actually building, on the sea coast: resorts, houses, factories etc. These things have carried on, and in a way this has become the new normal –​‘This is how it is –​what are you going to do about it? Knock the buildings down? Blow them up? They’re concrete buildings and they’re already there. We have to face this status quo.’ (Rajwa 2013b)

Through further work, they discovered that while there was a legal construct for dealing with this problem, it is not enforced. The existing laws go completely in the opposite direction. They do protect the seashore. For example there was a decree published in 1983 during the Civil War, which states that any kind of illegal building on the seashore, whether it’s occupied or vacant, has to be knocked down by its owner, who will also pay what it costs to knock it down …. The owner is also liable for a prison sentence of three months up to three years, as is anybody who was involved in the illegal construction …. On paper the laws are really strict on these points, but somehow in Lebanon the rules are not applied. We started to understand that the laws are already on our side and that we don’t want to advocate for a new law but simply to have the existing law, which is already very good, applied. (Rajwa 2013b)

After this initial research, Mashaa’s take was very straightforward –​let’s look at all the developments, pick the biggest and most lavish and see who owns them (Plate 21). The first picture I  took from Google Earth was of a small house with a very big circular stone wall built in the sea, like a defence wall with a small tiny entrance. I posted it on Facebook and asked, ‘Who does it belong to, or what is it?’ A lot of people replied –​some said that it belonged to some ex-​pat from Africa, who had a lot of money and built this house for himself in his town. Then another guy replied –​ ‘no, no, no, this is not the same guy, I know his place, it’s just next to this one’, pointing on the map another house. It went on like this for a little while, and eventually we realised that actually this property belonged to the Head of Parliament, Nabih Berri. So we posted this information with a picture of his face, and said, ‘Okay, now we know whose house it is’. Then we got bombarded by so many posts from false accounts, all saying things like –​‘Who do you think you are? What are you doing?

175

Exposing the invisible The head of the parliament is the best and such an honest guy … anyway so what, good for him!’. I got a bit … I wouldn’t say scared, exactly, but I was shocked because I was not expecting that sort of response. (Rajwa 2013b)

Taking any stance on such issues is a political decision and political declaration, especially if the investigation is local. It does not matter if the initial impetus is personal or does not intend to explore political issues. Lebanon is a post-​conflict society, one which is still relatively unstable and affected by conflicts and where corruption is present. In this environment, asking any questions rapidly becomes political. The collective worked within the frame of official processes and also with publicly available information. A study carried out by the government in order to find those who according to the law should not have built on the coast was used to contextualise and verify the information they already had through more informal crowd-​sourcing and anecdotal information. We waited for them [the Ministry of Infrastructure] to finalise the reports …. In this way, we found out the real names of the occupiers, and found the proof that we were looking for. After that, when we found images of building work that encroached on the coast, we tried to identify the name of the person responsible, the area covered, the size of the land, what it is used for and so on …. [W]‌e are discovering a lot of things on the way that we weren’t expecting. You can find weird connections behind the companies that have access to these public spaces, and when you follow the connections, you can start getting an idea of who is behind all of this. Who’s making the money? If you want to build something illegal on the seashore, you have to have a connection somewhere in the government to get permission. Most of these cases that we followed, for example, had a recurrent connection behind them, which was the Ministry of Infrastructure. (Rajwa 2013b)

The images they started with led to the collecting of data about them, the people, roles, amounts, timelines, positions and in turn to deeper analysis of publicly available information. Following existing routine processes they began to look at permissions, licences, contracts and relationships. Looking at individual cases, in aggregate, led to new questions: what do these individual cases tell us about the scale of the problem and about the actors participating in it? Are we seeing a series of disconnected acts, or we are looking at something much more systemic? The group [Mashaa] started becoming more data and research orientated, because we felt that we needed to understand much better how the system functions …. More and more we understood that there is no state, and that the entire country is at the mercy of people who have power, money and interests. In Lebanon when you tell people this, everybody says –​‘yeah but of course, this is Lebanon!’ For them, I’m not saying anything ground-​breaking. But when you look into the data, you start understanding how this system functions on the ground. Does the political system really work in a bipolar way, for example? Or do powerful people actually work hand in hand –​working together, sharing the money, and only pretending to be enemies as a political front? This is what we were trying to understand. Do

175

176

176

Image operations they actually work together, do they own companies together, do they share things together? And the answer is: yes, they do. (Rajwa 2013c)

Starting with visual evidence and then augmenting this with details, the collective moved from a simple question, to a much broader systemic problem. Whilst their path was not pre-​planned, it led them to an alternative narrative of broader societal problems in the wake of conflict. The narrative explains an entrenched problem in which a small group of actors gains and distributes privileges, whilst others are kept in the dark. It raises new questions about political alliances and differences behind closed doors as opposed to in the public sphere.

Looking anew: seeing Jerusalem with new eyes. Interview with Hagit Keysar I think one of the biggest challenges is that information and documentation is never neutral. So how do you work with its politics? I think the greatest challenge is entering into a process not only a process of learning, but also of unlearning. (Keysar 2013a)

Hagit Keysar works with and creates visual representations of places where conflict persists in invisible forms (Plate 22). Hagit looks at images and the question of ownership in a unique conflict environment, from within the Israel–​Palestine conflict. For her, the ability to take an image of something puts that individual or institution in a powerful position, creating manifestations of control and self-​control. Hagit looks at the actor who is creating and publishing the visual representation and how this changes its content, its meaning and the political weight it carries. Working with visual investigation as an Israeli questioning Israeli state practices and cooperating with Palestinian communities is fraught with problems. The starting point of the investigator, in Hagit’s case, is to question herself, before questioning power narratives and the actors representing it. Hagit has to not only work around issues related to how data and evidence can be found and contextualised, but first of all to understand what the broader set of assumptions are, including self-​assumptions. This brings a new yet necessary set of questions: what is the role of visual investigations carried out from within a live and polarised conflict? What happens when you ask questions of your ‘own side’ of the story, is it possible to find answers that can only be explored from within? Or even to work together, outside of established power structures, to bring things to light and create new narratives? In the case of Israel, the control by the state of visual representations is wide-​ ranging, it involves education, mass media and the manipulation of publicly available data. It is an established system of information control, one that reaches far and deep. This creates different views of the way things are, ones that construct narratives in such a way that dismantling the official layers takes not only investigation, but also persistence and risk taking.

177

Exposing the invisible The fact that Google is showing only low-​resolution images of Israel is something that I realised by learning the process of creating high resolution photography …. [I]‌t’s not only what we can’t see, but also the fact that we can’t see what we can’t see. It’s not just something that is missing. You know, we think we see it all, but actually we don’t. The military censorship in Israel aims to censor all aerial photography made by Israeli companies. They just delete things, pixelate or clone areas using Photoshop, so it might look like you see a physical reality, but it’s actually a doubly fake representation. First it is a representation so it must hide something, second it hides the fact that it hides. (Keysar 2013a)

Hagit started as a researcher, analysing the archives of the municipality of East Jerusalem in urban planning. What she found was a system of political, social and economic control of occupied Palestinian territories that is seen only at its fringes as house demolition. In researching urban planning, she discovered a visually well-​documented archive and large quantities of photographs taken by official offices of the state that revealed the underlying system behind them. It was fascinating for me. Obviously I was entering a terrain in which more things are unsaid than said, and it’s a bureaucratic mechanism. It’s supposed to be very hard to get the things you need to get, the interviews you need to get, especially if you’re touching on such a politically sensitive issue. But through that process I realised that bureaucracy is porous, full of holes. You just need to be there if you want to have the opportunity to enter. But obviously this is an archive. The way people treat the materials, the mistakes they make, the way they use them to build a certain story, and the way they use photographs to frame this story to seem like an unequivocal truth, that was really fascinating for me. … But I told a different story. I told a story based on the fact that in the photographs you could see women and children in the house, that the inspectors came in the morning when the men were not there, so the inspectors had the liberty to enter without any warrants. They knocked on the doors and people didn’t have the power to say no. (Keysar 2013b)

Hagit used these photographs as the starting point in her work, looking deeper at the system they represent, reflecting on how visual representations were being used, created and at times manipulated by those in power. This led Hagit to find ways of giving the power of creating and owning the image to those most affected by the conflict and as a way to regain control. Inspired by the work of Public Lab (see Publiclab.org), a community of technologists and researchers using different technologies for alternative mapping, she experimented with using kites and adapted cheap digital cameras to create high-​resolution aerial photography, working together with Palestinian communities (Plate 23). The first time we did it, it was obvious to me why it was both political and personally exciting. It was first a great experience of building something, creating an instrument, a tool with your own hands, with very simple objects we had found and recycling and things like that. And then succeeding to create these photographs from the sky and stitching them together, distorting them and manipulating the image in such a way that would create what is considered to be an objective image …. You suddenly realise how it works, and how aerial images are manipulated. The

177

178

178

Image operations hands-​on experience of it, and the fact that you’re actually doing it manually, is something I think is very powerful. (Keysar 2013a)

Even though this was a very low-​tech, low-​cost project, using just a kite and a cheap digital camera, doing aerial photography is an act of bravery in such a heavily controlled environment. It is directly high risk because it is literally visible to anyone overseeing the area, it is indirectly high risk as it challenges by whom and how reality is documented and what that reality is, as well as who is allowed to do it. [I]‌n places like that (Silwan), that are very much controlled, where there is poverty, no public or educational infrastructures, and kids are on the streets all the time, you always see kites in the sky. So it was funny because we were really afraid of the kites or the balloon attracting attention, but actually when we went there we saw lots of them in the sky. It was a big relief. And it was a lot of fun –​ the minute we took out the kite, and our kite was so big and red, other kids from the neighbourhood joined the kids that we were working with. And these kids have been flying kites since they were three, or something like that, so flying a kite is in their body. It’s like riding a bicycle. I didn’t do it when I was a kid so I’m not very good at it, not very good at all, although I am getting better …. But they were just amazing –​there was hardly any wind and that was the highest aerial photography that I have done with residents anywhere until today because they were just going crazy about it. (Keysar 2013a)

These aerial photographs and the way they were made challenge existing power dynamics. Her work has led her to have a much more critical take on photography taken from above  –​from the elevation that usually only powerful have access to. We don’t have the skills and experience to develop critical thinking –​with photography we do, because we’re all photographers, we’re all being photographed and we’re using photography in every aspect of our lives. So the question is how can these new tools for independently creating aerial photography change our perception? I think it is bound to create some kind of change in our ability to develop critical thinking when we look at these authoritative representations that are shown to us and that are so convincing. … The sky is basically an unobstructed state power, and the ability of residents to inspect, monitor and use this resource also changes the well-​established metaphor of ‘bottom up, top down’. The state hovers above us while we are here in the bottom –​we are questioning these established separations and power relations. (Keysar 2013a)

Hagit uses community-​based, free and open-​source tools and low-​cost tactics to bypass the governmental and corporate control over geo-​spatial information, one that shapes views of urban space and ultimately of the conflict. For her this is a way of exploring how to move actors from being aware of the situation to acting on their concerns and exploring what role images play in influencing political engagement.

179

Exposing the invisible

Looking beyond: uncovering hidden landscapes. Interview with James Bridle It’s long been my belief that simply by putting ‘physicalisations’ of digital, virtual objects and processes into the world, it’s possible to have a greater debate about them. … But it’s not just about making something visible, it is also about drawing attention to it. There has to be a strategy around these things, not just for producing them, but for shaping them in such a way that they draw attention to themselves. That they explain themselves to a greater degree. (Bridle 2013)

James Bridle is a British artist whose primary interest is in finding visuals that represent and help us understand otherwise hidden systems  –​political, military, digital (Plate 24). James works to make the unseeable visible and the abstract tangible and then to ask what these visual representations tell us about contemporary structures and conflicts. In particular, he is interested in how the most sophisticated systems hide behind simple metaphors and a lack of visuals. This leads him to ask some seemingly obvious questions; ones, however, that very few people know the answer to. What does an actual data centre look like? What is the size of a drone and how does it feel to stand next to one? James’s work on drones seeks to visually manifest a conflict which cannot be seen. It opens up the process of visually representing something that has no direct image because of the way in which it has been constructed –​remote people, flying invisible planes, above unknown places, resulting in unrecorded damage and deaths. In the case of drones, the holder of all the evidence, starting from choosing targets to investigating, verifying and executing them, renders them top secret. A majority of the killings are undertaken in environments where on-​the-​ground documentation is almost impossible. James undertakes investigations where there is practically nothing firsthand, particularly visual evidence. He uses public information and mainstream technologies to make issues visible (see Holert, this volume). Drones are a slightly mysterious thing, which is very strange in an age of pervasive surveillance, technological network communication, and constant visual imagery. They are something that is so visible in the media at the moment, but can remain deeply invisible in many ways. Drones particularly are designed to be invisible because they operate at altitude, they operate above our heads. … In military terms, they are capable of operating so high above that we can’t see them, and they are equipped with cameras that can look far further than we can. But they are also politically invisible, because we don’t fully understand how they operate and the systems that surround them, and that form them. They are invisible by virtue of the fact that we can’t fully comprehend what they are capable of doing. (Bridle 2013)

James asks straightforward questions; finding ways to move drones from an invisible zone into a visible one, into something tangible.

179

180

180

Image operations Most people have some kind of mental image of military drones, and that is usually drawn from images they have seen in the media, which can be quite deceptive. But there is one particular image that is more deceptive than most …. [Plate 25] If you Google ‘drone’, the first image result is a picture of what appears to be a Reaper drone firing a missile, and because it is a first result on Google it has been endlessly transmitted through the media, endlessly reproduced. You see this image everywhere, from the front page of newspapers to activist reports, and political white papers. I consider it to be the canonical image of a drone. I call it the ‘canon drone’ or the ‘render drone’. Because it’s a render, it’s not real. The origins of that image are in a 3D hobbyist forum online; some guy a few years ago created it, modelled it in 3D, painted it in Photoshop, and put it on a background of some mountains. But that drone doesn’t exist. There are all kinds of fundamental problems with the image if you look at it closely enough, but it seems that doesn’t happen very often, and so the most widely distributed image of this incredibly liminal, strange technology is itself a dream. It is a piece of imagination. It doesn’t aid our understanding of the technology at all. … For a while I was grappling with how to represent some of these ideas and how to talk about the invisibility of invisible objects. … I became slightly obsessive and started making models of them. I had plastic models of drones that you can buy for children. But turning this thing over in my hands, I realised it was such an imperfect representation of it because of its scale. Something was totally lacking in my understanding of this thing. I wanted to actually stand in front of one of them and look at it eye to eye, but I couldn’t do that. So the best thing we thought we could do in order to simply understand the scale was to draw a 1:1 representation. So we went out into the car park of my studio and, using a schematic downloaded from the Internet, we literally outlined the shadow of one of these things on the ground [Plate 26]. As soon we did that, we realised we’d hit upon something quite serious and something quite powerful, because it immediately communicated the scale of these things, which is the size of a small plane. That is what most people don’t really understand or grasp about military drones. The first reaction from everyone is –​‘wow, I had no idea how big it was’. That is pretty telling already, that you could have no sense of the size of this thing. Just by drawing the outline it also emphasises its invisibility, the fact that it is this void at the heart of the discussion … the void at the heart of the war around which all these arguments circulate, but they struggle to coalesce because the central piece is missing. So we try to put that central piece into the world in order that the discussion can happen around it. (Bridle 2013)

One set of visual images occupies our imagination about the weapon used, but another occupies our imagination about where this weapon is operating. James began researching this question through the Dronestagram project, looking for ways of physicalising the real world manifestations of these abstract and obscured conflicts. For the Dronestagram project, I started researching the sites of drone strikes using data gathered by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which gathers eyewitness and local media accounts of drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan. I started finding as best I could the locations of those strikes on online digital maps, recent satellite

181

Exposing the invisible photos of these locations, and then taking screenshots of those landscapes, photographed as the drone would see them from the air, and posting them back to social networks. I posted primarily to Instagram, which is a place where people go every day to get a daily glimpse of their friends’ realities –​it seemed like an appropriate place to post another distant reality, a different connection that’s made possible through the same tools. It seemed to me that if the drones are in a lot of cases surveillance tools, then we can use some civilian surveillance tools to turn that gaze back on to them again. (Bridle 2013)

For James, the act of visual investigation using mainstream tools and services is a statement about power structures, control and access to information in itself and about the need for us, as consumers, researchers, activists or artists to take what is there and ask new questions. [W]‌e spent the last twenty years building civilian online systems that are designed to allow us to see things more clearly. We have mapping tools  –​Google Maps, Microsoft Bing –​which are these incredible catalogues of satellite imagery of the earth, updated regularly and accessible to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. That’s an extraordinarily powerful thing. We’ve also built social tools –​ the social networks which are supposed to bring us all together and connect us and make communication easier –​except there remain these huge blind spots in that world view … it’s a huge amount of information that any of us can access. But it still requires very human research, it still requires us to think about where to look and spend genuine time exploring it. (Bridle 2013)

James’s approach is to confront the viewer with the underlying machinery behind the system rather than focusing on its impact or consequences. His thesis is that if something exists, then it must have been made with a specific idea, design and function and from looking at that we can learn how it works and what the implications are. James specialises in using images to represent the scale, depth and complexity of seemingly straightforward issues.

Conclusions The work of Elliot, Rajwa, Hagit and James represents a wider spectrum of actors combining visual and social media investigations to understand inaccessible issues, and these individuals were selected to represent different approaches and techniques in the context of conflict. They are not only using different techniques, but also come from a different perspective; Eliot working remotely using widely available videos to investigate the trade of arms in Syria; Rajwa piecing together disparate information on the aftermath of conflict in Lebanon and its impact on her own community; Hagit working across divides in a conflict to create new visual landscapes; and finally, James using second-​ hand information and images of military drones to explore a conflict not yet defined.

181

182

182

Image operations

These examples show what is possible through individual activism and investigation and how to find ways of creating ‘parallel’ evidence despite inequities in access to information and resources. They show what is possible if we are able to overcome the initial disadvantages of using publicly available information and how visual and social media investigation has the potential to shortcut conventional barriers. Each of them uses these techniques to question existing narratives and present new and challenging storylines.

Notes 1 The Exposing the Invisible project consists of three documentary films: Our Currency is Information, From My Point of View and Unseen War, as well as a series of seven short video interviews, thirty-​two in-​depth written interviews and a database of over a hundred recommended practical resources highlighting different techniques and methodologies. They can be seen in full at www.exposingtheinvisible.org. 2 The Tactical Technology Collective (Tactical Tech) is a non-​profit organisation co-​ founded by the authors of this chapter in 2003. The organisation works with activists, artists, designers, filmmakers and technologists worldwide on the effective use of information. These questions are explored in the film series Exposing the Invisible and the book Visualising Information for Advocacy (Tactical Technology Collective 2013). 3 A set of best practices related to these questions have risen up from the media. See the Verification Handbook published in 2014 (Silverman 2014).

References Bridle, James. 2013. ‘Uncovering Hidden Landscapes:  Interview with James Bridle.’ By Marek Tuszynski. Exposing the Invisible. Accessed 7 December 2014. https://exposingtheinvisible.org/stories/unseen-war/james-uncovering-hidden-landscapes. Exposing the Invisible. 2014. Exposingtheinvisible.org. Project by Tactical Technology Collective. Accessed 4 December 2015. https://​exposingtheinvisible.org/​. The Guardian. 2014. ‘ “Kobani Suicide Attacks” Filmed from Isis Drone  –​Video.’ The Guardian Online, 11 December. Accessed 4 December 2015. www.theguardian.com/​ world/​video/​2014/​dec/​11/​kobani-​suicide-​attacks-​isis-​drone-​video. Higgins, Eliot. 2013a. ‘Global Arms Flows Uncovered:  Interview with Eliot Higgins.’ By Marek Tuszynski. Exposing the Invisible. Accessed 7 December 2014. https://exposingtheinvisible.org/stories/from-my-point-of-view/eliot-global-arms-flows-uncovered​. Higgins, Eliot. 2013b. ‘Finding the Story among the Details: Interview with Eliot Higgins.’ By Marek Tuszynski. Exposing the Invisible. Accessed 7 December 2014. https://exposingtheinvisible.org/stories/from-my-point-of-view/eliot-finding-the-story-among​. Keysar, Hagit. 2013a. ‘DIY Mapping and Reclaiming the Territory Above Our Heads:  Interview with Hagit Keysar.’ By Marek Tuszynski. Exposing the Invisible. Accessed 7 December 2014. https://exposingtheinvisible.org/stories/from-my-point-ofview/hagit-diy-mapping-and-reclaiming​.

183

Exposing the invisible Keysar, Hagit. 2013b. ‘Photography, Mapping and Power: Interview with Hagit Keysar.’ By Marek Tuszynski. Exposing the Invisible. Accessed 7 December 2014. https://exposingtheinvisible.org/stories/from-my-point-of-view/hagit-photography-mapping-and-power​. Marres, Noortje. 2013. ‘The Myth of Information: Interview with Noortje Marres.’ By Marek Tuszynski. Exposing the Invisible. Accessed 4 December 2015. https://​exposingtheinvisible.org/​stories/​unseen-​war/​noortje/​. Mosireen. n.d. Mosireen.org. Accessed 4 December 2015. http://​mosireen.org. Public Lab. n.d. Publiclab.org. Accessed 4 December 2015. http://​publiclab.org/​. Rajwa. 2013a. ‘Building a Discourse with Data: Interview with Rajwa.’ By Marek Tuszynski. Exposing the Invisible. Accessed 7 December 2014. https://exposingtheinvisible.org/stories/from-my-point-of-view/rajwa-building-a-discourse-with-data​. Rajwa. 2013b. ‘The Sea Is Mine: Interview with Rajwa.’ By Marek Tuszynski. Exposing the Invisible. Accessed 7 December 2014. https://exposingtheinvisible.org/stories/from-mypoint-of-view/rajwa-the-sea-is-mine​. Rajwa. 2013c. ‘Exposing the System: Interview with Rajwa.’ By Marek Tuszynski. Exposing the Invisible. Accessed 7 December 2014. https://exposingtheinvisible.org/stories/frommy-point-of-view/rajwa-exposing-a-system​. Silverman, Craig, ed. 2014. Verification Handbook: A Definitive Guide to Verifying Digital Content for Emergency Coverage. Maastricht: European Journalism Centre. Accessed 4 December 2015. http://​verificationhandbook.com/​. Tactical Technology Collective. 2013. Visualising Information for Advocacy. Accessed 4 December 2015. https://​tacticaltech.org/​.

183

184

13

Human rights in an age of distant witnesses: remixed lives, reincarnated images and live-​streamed co-​presence Sam Gregory

What is the role of the ‘distant witness’ to human rights, participating in witnessing at a distance (either within a country, or internationally) via recorded, remixed, ‘reincarnated’ and live video? Within the context of broader democratisation and participation in human rights image-​making, new participants in active ‘distant witnessing’ shape and reshape narratives in ways that highlight long-​standing questions of how audiences experience distant conflict, and of definitions of witnessing as intentional seeing (and then telling) of perceived truths from the scene of suffering to a perceived audience. Remixers and curators act to bear rapid witness, to amplify the particular dimensions of a distant struggle, to contextualise it in new frames, and to exercise their own agency in a distant struggle. Reincarnators take existing imagery and reframe it, frequently incorrectly, in order to insert inflammatory images into current discourses. These images are then subsequently consumed by audiences as if they were contemporaneous witnessed images. Live-​streaming witnesses participate in real-​time via live feeds from crisis situations. Increasingly, they move from the space of participatory image interventions of remix and recirculation to actual interventions in ongoing events in locations of crisis. All engage with questions of personal action and agency: how image operations self-​actualise them as individuals or enable them to act in effective solidarity with others; how to consider the impact of active distant witnessing on distant situations; and the ethics (often bounded by existing, but failing professional norms of journalism and human rights) of whose role it is to witness, what should be seen, what should be shared and of what bounds or enables the actions of intervening distant witnesses. Using a set of situated observations from Egypt, Burma, Africa, Brazil and elsewhere, I take three incidents as points of observation and speculation. How do these ‘distant witness’ participants in a human rights media and activism ecosystem deploy images? What are the emergent ethical, existential and practical

185

Human rights in an age of distant witnesses

disruptions they create, what constraints do they face and what opportunities do they mobilise? As in my practice as an activist (engaged with image-​making at the human rights organisation WITNESS), I approach the issue of human rights imagery and media from an inter-​disciplinary, pragmatic perspective. I am particularly interested in how particular forms of agency and action are enabled or disabled by image usage (following Guerin and Hallas 2007, 4). I  am concerned with how mechanisms of creation, distribution, circulation and re-​creation as well as the underlying platforms and their affordances of action  –​particularly at the tense intersection of fluid, uncertain circulation and purposeful distribution –​enable this agency and action, or challenge it (McLagan and McKee 2012, 16). These tensions are especially enhanced when content is shared within online social networks characterised, as the social media researcher danah boyd describes them (boyd 2008), by persistence, searchability, replicability and by invisible audiences and –​I would add –​by simultaneity; where emergence combined with ubiquitous documentation means that there is an ‘archive of unpredictability that unsettles past, present and future’ (Hoskins and O’Loughlin 2010, 9) and that consequently human rights footage may recur and re-​emerge in previously unanticipated or incongruous contexts. I also consider acts of distant witnessing as reinterpretations or vectors of the classic definition of witnessing as articulated by Ellis (Ellis 2000), Peters (Peters 2001) and Chouliaraki (Chouliaraki 2009) as well as others, one that emphasises elements of witnessing which include the direct act of seeing and purposeful sharing with intentionality, the linking of witnessing to embodied presence at the time and place of the violation and the possibility of risk and trauma to the witness.

Distant witnesses and remix image interventions First, I  will focus on two distant witnesses separated geographically (but not chronologically) from the crises they witness and consider their motivations, purpose and function in creating acts of remix as part of their participation in activist distant witnessing. The remix advocacy created by these individuals, in the context of the Arab Spring and Venezuela, functions not only as a tool to mobilise and present a framing of events to external audiences, but also as a participatory act of self-​expressive solidarity available to the contemporary media-​literate person. Both these external and internal functionalities are present in one of the most viewed videos about Egypt’s 25 January revolution:  an online mash-​up of news footage produced by an Egyptian student, Tamer Shaaban, living in the US state of Georgia.1 When he was interviewed on CBC, he described how he was video-​ chatting with his mother and sister, started to come across the video emerging from Tahrir Square, reacted to it and wanted the world to share his experience. Over the next five hours he created the video Egyptian Revolution Jan 25th 2011 –​ Take What’s Yours, also known in other uploads online as The Most AMAZING

185

186

186

Image operations

Video on the Internet #Egypt #jan25, combining strong testimony, images of protests, and images with iconic resonance, such as a single man standing up to a water cannon that evokes earlier images such as the Tiananmen Square ‘tank-​man’ (Plate 27). With its heady rush and incorporation of footage from the frontlines, the video evokes the community of shared bodily experience in so-​called ‘riot porn’ activist videos (Rasza 2013) and the classic mobilisation videos of activist movements that ‘bring together discursive resources and historical genres to stage injustice as a spectacle that requires action and set up a given space of action for the viewer’ (Askanius 2013, 6) to ensure ‘production of outrage’ and galvanise ‘body works’ (Gaines 2007, referenced in Askanius 2013). The video is not a classic political remix video in the terms analysed by McIntosh (McIntosh 2012) and others in that it is not politically subversive in its usage of dominant media sources, or in its commentary on its sources. Tamer had an audience and community of circulation in mind as he created the video: people in Europe and the USA who would not know, in these first days of the revolution in Egypt, what was going on and who could be mobilised into the incipient ‘solidarity of revolution’ (Chouliaraki 2014, 63) within which the narrative is framed. In considering these audiences he explicitly sought out found images and interviews that, to his mind, challenged audience perceptions about the Arab world –​including a central clip of a bearded young man declaring that everyone –​Christian, Muslim, atheist –​should stand up, demand their rights and not be silenced. Alongside this decision-​making around audience and circulation to inspire solidarity sits a more personal motivation: using his expressive capacities to take action. In his own words from an interview with the author in 2012, one of the main reasons I made this video was because I felt useless sitting in Atlanta not being able to help the people that were suffering there, and who were working really hard to get their freedom. So I thought, if I wasn’t going to be able to be over there, and help them protest … I was going to continue helping the revolution from the United States, and through YouTube and through the Internet.

We can view this both through a lens of Henry Jenkins and participatory culture (Jenkins 2006; Jenkins, Ford and Green 2013) but also through the additional framework articulated by the visual anthropologist Livia Hinegardner’s (Hinegardner 2009) descriptions of forms of remix and other forms of film-​making in solidarity movements in Mexico. Here, filmmaking is a form of direct action for individuals and a ‘way of transforming their personal role from bystander to participant’ (172) to provide someone with an opportunity to militar (‘to be politically active’). We can also view this through the approach of more traditional participatory video where actuation occurs via the process of self-​reflexive creation (Lunch and Lunch 2006). Although Tamer Shaaban’s was one of the videos that spread and captured a Zeitgeist moment both for Egyptians and others, its initial genesis occurred in that

187

Human rights in an age of distant witnesses

moment of acting in solidarity; an act in itself, not just a decision to create a communications conduit to a defined outside audience. This combined motivation in the act of finding footage, remixing it and circulating it provides an interesting footnote to Tamer Shaaban’s activism. Although he subsequently produced additional videos on Egypt and was in contact with viewers who responded to his initial video (and the existing movements on the ground such as the ‘We are All Khaled Said’ movement), when he was later contacted by people working in other revolutionary movements, for example about creating a similar video for Libya, he said those impetuses of communication ‘felt forced’. The personal motivation and engagement that enabled his act of solidarity and distant witnessing in the Egyptian instance was absent. Active distant witnessing was contingent on personal history and engagement. Contemporary online videos exist within the corporate structures of the platforms on which they are shared primarily –​these are the hidden protagonists and arbiters of how transgressive a video can be in terms of its usage of found footage or its presentation of brutality. New actors entering a social justice ecosystem as distant witnesses may be more familiar with the constraints of the surrounding corporate system than they are with the traditions of social justice organising that they are participating in. Tamer himself did not identify any genre cues for his own video or any existing models, nor was he initially aware of the existing Egyptian video activist organising online and in social media such as ‘We are all Khaled Said’ and the ‘April 6 Youth Movement’. However, he did consider how his video would operate in the YouTube ecosystem, and how the public technical affordances and unstated policy affordances of YouTube as a platform would enable, impede or enhance circulation and his ability to be an effective distant witness motivating others to action. In this instance, he did not include graphic images, in order to give no reason for YouTube to block it, age-​gate it or make it sign-​in only, which would have prevented viewers without YouTube accounts from seeing it. He also did not resist when others scraped and re-​posted the video (the most popular version is, in fact, the scrape and re-​post by a user named Hadi Fauor) and tagged it and hyperbolised it for effective distribution in both the YouTube and Twitter ecosystems. Similar videos to Tamer Shaaban’s work can be found as catalysing videos in recent events in Venezuela and the Ukraine. For example, Andreina Nash, a twenty-​one year old student (originally from Venezuela but living in Florida from the age of nine) made the film What’s Going On in Venezuela in a Nutshell (Nash 2014), which features her voice-​over above a series of images and rapidly secured almost 3 million views. Much like Tamer, she is a student in marketing and telecommunications who previously had used (as she told the Guardian newspaper in February 2014) YouTube ‘just to view random music videos’, and was learning Adobe Premier Pro in class. She went on to skip a day’s class and worked from dawn to dusk to complete the video: ‘I learned it in a day’ she says. Then the next day, ‘I woke up, and from 10am to 10pm I made the video. I skipped class and everything. Usually I am not good at technology. I don’t know how to check my

187

188

188

Image operations

computer for a virus. When I made the film, it was like God was moving my hands’ (Cocozza 2014). An analogue to the role of the distant witness as contemporaneous remixer of firsthand witnessing lies in the roles of distant witnesses as curators, another role positioning that is increasingly prevalent in a media-​literate online population. This has been one of the prominent roles for self-​empowered ‘amplified individuals’ (Gorbis 2013) in diaspora populations who engage with conflicts and rights violations in their original homelands. For example, the best source for verified videos from the 2009–​10 ‘Green Revolution’ in Iran was one such amplified individual, a young man, online handle ‘OnlyMehdi’, who lived in New Jersey, worked as a graphic designer and gathered thousands of videos on his YouTube page. Similarly, the source that Google engineers, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Human Rights Watch have turned to for analysis of citizen videos from Syria has been Eliot Higgins, an amplified individual and self-​taught analyst from the UK who goes by the online moniker of Brown Moses (see Hankey and Tuszynski, this volume). Frequently, these curators also take responsibility for repurposing and reframing as human rights violations the wide range of perpetrator-​shot material in the image economy of human rights –​from the notorious videos of police brutality in Egypt, captured and circulated by the police themselves as entertainment until anti-​torture activists repurposed them as evidence of abuse, through to the proliferating economy of war crimes imagery from Syria and Iraq. This footage is the dark analogue of witnessing as it is discussed in the literature –​there is an intention to turn from seeing to saying, but not in the service of justice. However, the curators at one remove take this material and recontextualise the act of seeing and saying in a human rights witnessing frame, calling for accountability and action on the part of their audiences. In a broader public context, the action of distant witnesses is frequently not to participate in active acts of remix and framing, but to ‘speak back’ dialogically to images circulating that force them to bear witness to atrocity. One of the most interesting places this has been happening has been in Burma, where since 2013–​ 14 a nascent movement has emerged, focusing on the power of positive speech and imagery to counter violence, violent imagery and hate speech. Participants in the Panzagar (or ‘flower speech’) movement, in Burma, counter the vicious anti-​Muslim vitriol and images on Facebook and in public discourse in that country with positive words and images shared in response to hate speech that they encounter in their online environment. In this instance, the interplay between acts of witnessing in an online space and the constraints of that online space are visible in a more direct way –​Facebook has provided an animated ‘flower speech’ emoticon for users to use in their acts of speaking back. In a less coordinated way, a similar phenomenon is evident in the 2014 Twitter discussions around ISIS/​ISIL killings of hostages that note the choice-​point for distant witnesses in choosing whether to counter perpetrator-​circulated images of violence with circulation of positive images (for example, an image of a hostage

189

Human rights in an age of distant witnesses

with their baby) of these people, whose lives have been lost in human rights violations (see Gregory 2014a).

Reincarnated images: circulation and reappropriation My second reflection draws on my own activism around human rights in Burma, which included working to support Burma Issues, a human rights organisation from the refugee camps on the Thai–​Burma border that created a minor YouTube hit, Shoot on Sight: a video that has secured over 2 million views over the last five years (Burma Issues in association with WITNESS 2007). It explores the situation facing ethnic Karen in eastern Burma, and is a consciously created advocacy video focused on humanitarian aid and regional pressure on the then military regime in Burma. In the video, Naw Paw Paw, a pseudonymous villager in Karen State, Burma, spoke out against the Burma military junta’s abuses. The video is consciously a video advocacy intervention into an advocacy system (see Gregory 2012a on video advocacy as a human rights strategy). WITNESS supported local activists in choosing an emblematic story: one that would be relevant and consonant with the global and regional policy-​maker audience they were trying to engage. The video makes a conscious narrative claim on a community of action in her region, and is guided by a conscious advocacy interpretation layered-​in by the human rights groups involved. There is also a somewhat hidden interplay (visible to the knowledgeable observer) around how Naw Paw Paw has chosen to frame her experience –​for example, how much to particularise it, and how much to link it, to the broader discussion of Karen independence and resistance, for instance. Occasionally, I  idly Google ‘Shoot on Sight’ to see where it sits on the YouTube search algorithm –​next to a Bollywood film of the same name –​and to read how people are interpreting the video. For a number of years, a recurring ‘remix’ of the theme evident in the comments was a narrative framing about Iraq and oil and US intervention. For example, at one point, the top-​ rated user ‘holyrust’ noted: ‘Wondering why we “save Iraq” from its evil dictator and Afghanistan from the Taliban but ignore what’s going on in countries like Burma? Hmm … lets see … Iraq has oil, Afghanistan has a major pipeline route, what’s Burma got?’ However, the last time I looked for the video via Google search results I stumbled on a video titled Shoot on Sight –​A Story of Oppressed Myanmar Muslims, uploaded on 3 June 2013 (IranClips 2013). Subtitled in Farsi, the video has been co-​ opted and reappropriated as dramatic evidence of attacks on the Rohingya minority in northwest Burma, where a burgeoning human rights crisis has captured the attention of some Western policy-​makers who are typical advocates of human rights in Burma, but has also created surprising allies for the Rohingya in the not-​ normally-​very-​attentive-​to-​human-​rights halls of power of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and among global publics in majority-​Muslim countries. This

189

190

190

Image operations

is an example of what I would call a ‘reincarnated’ video, in this case, a completed advocacy video reframed and reincarnated as concerning a different situation. In a similar instance of ‘reincarnated images’ a human rights colleague in another group wrote to a colleague of mine to ask for guidance on how to verify an appalling video he had received from a contact in South Sudan –​in his words: ‘this morning southern Sudanese friends sent me a very graphic and disturbing cell-​phone video … labelled “violence in Juba”, and given who sent it I’m guessing that it is showing an attack against Nuer civilians in Juba when the fighting first broke out in December’ (personal communication 2014). He went on to say a few days later: ‘I heard back this morning from my friend who sent this –​and shockingly he says this video is not from December but rather just a few days ago in Juba’ and went into further details on the specifics of who shot it and how. Yet when I  looked at the video and when a colleague of mine did a reverse image search on a key frame in Google (a way to search for usage of the same image in other contexts rather than a word-​based search) the first result that came up claimed that this was a video from Burma. Further investigation via Google search as well as consultation with other sources showed that this was a clip of imagery that had circulated –​to my knowledge, and direct exposure –​in Burma (again in relation to attacks on minorities), as an Anonymous video about the Rohingya (Anonymous 2013), as well as in Kenya, the Ivory Coast and most recently, at the time of writing, in South Sudan. In its Ivory Coast incarnation, the title reads: Genocide Alert! More than 1200 Civilians Burnt at Duekoue by Pro-​ Ouattara Supporters (EssaneChrist, YouTube 2013). And in its (perhaps) original Kenya incarnation in 2009, it circulated with the title Kenya –​11 Witches Burnt Alive, from kaotal.com (Serignesene, YouTube 2009) (Plate 28). Understanding the motivations behind the deliberate recycling and reincarnation of previous imagery in new contexts is challenging, given the diversity of people involved and the fact that they are often anonymous or pseudonymous. However, it is possible to review comments and audience reactions to develop some understanding of why others view this content and believe it, and how they understand it as valid witnessing. In both the erroneous reincarnations of the Shoot on Sight video and the raw footage from Kenya, a literally recycled set of images (for these are not cases of a pre-​conditioned frame for how violent inter-​ethnic conflict takes places in Asia or Africa or is presented, but of the same images being reused) speaks to a set of public expectations of what is happening, and expectations of what can and will be captured on camera by a bystander. The Kenya burning images are believable to distant witnessing publics in Kenya, Ivory Coast and South Sudan and to external solidarity constituencies of the Rohingya in Burma who ‘reincarnate’ them not only because they are conceivable in the context of what they believe is happening in their and these societies, but also because it seems conceivable and likely that someone would have been there and would have filmed it in our mediatised society, and that their friends would have chosen to share this with them via mobile

191

Human rights in an age of distant witnesses

phone and the Internet. These are not radical image events  –​they are normal image events for the context. Expectations that images will capture atrocity also play a role  –​what Susan Sontag describes as a contemporary ‘notion of atrocity, of war crime’ that ‘is associated with the expectation of photographic evidence’ (Sontag 2003, 84). As James Polchin (Polchin 2007, 217) has described (in relation to an exhibition of lynching photographs), the ‘photographs strike us as truthful because we have come to understand graphic and shocking images as qualities of reality and truthfulness’. Beyond a vested-​interest public of individuals implicated and caring about these contexts at hand, it may also be that there is an element of circulatory success here external to the core audience experience that relates to it as a contemporary ‘experience of looking’, in this instance for the audiences of sites like LiveLeak and others, that ‘coheres around the experience of being shocked’ (217). In yet another spin on the ‘truth’ of this image operation, in one case of the reincarnation of the video in the Burma context, the perspective of the uploader (a non-​Burmese person) notes essentially that we know this could have been filmed in Burma: Many people who want this bloodshed continue, promote the propaganda about all images and videos that these are fake. The above video is not so clear, so it can’t be said that this is not burma, burma’s poor people also have dark skin. Let’s say it is not Burma, then can you deny that it is not happening in Burma? search the net for past 2 months news, you will find many photos of burned bodies of Muslim adults and children in Burma …. Please watch this video and listen careful.

In essence, using this image as if it were a real image from Burma is seen as appropriate if the video is showing the genre of violence happening to people in that country, and succeeds in inciting the audience to action. The implications of this are acute for a witnessing principle that requires a representational truth claim grounded in accurate particularity.

Live experience, co-​presence and simultaneously distant and proximate witnessing I conclude with a more speculative set of observations on a new form of distant yet proximate witnessing and image/​action operation and intervention. A co-​present distant witnessing is emerging out of both the democratisation of live broadcast, passing from the monopoly of television into the hands of ordinary citizens, and the possibilities of simultaneous interaction between direct and distant witnesses. Live-​streaming from sites of conflict –​from the balcony of Syria Pioneer in Homs, where the blogger was capturing strikes into the heart of his hometown until one such strike killed him (Mackey 2012), or the protest sites of Gezi Park, Zuccotti Park, Tahrir Square, Euro Maidan or Ferguson, Missouri –​has created a new form of mediated and mediatised co-​presence experience for ordinary

191

192

192

Image operations

civilians in both distant and local context. Distant witnesses are co-​present in conflict, embedded –​and indeed embodied –​via the first-​person perspective of much live-​streaming. They play a role in providing guidance to onsite documenters, directing resources to them, and in circulating their live-​streamed content further. They play a role in deterring violence and pushing for accountability, for example at the 2013 protests in Brazil when, during an encounter between police and activists, a police officer approaches members of an activist collective to try and stop them filming and potentially arrest them (PosTV 2013) and the following exchange occurs (Plate 29): Police Man: Watch the search. Midia Ninja: I will watch. There are 5 thousand people watching it.

Commercial affordances are likely to increase the role of live-​streamed direct co-​ present experience in the future, as Google, Facebook and other major commercial software and hardware companies invest in ‘wearables’ and in enhancing feelings of co-​presence via the use of immersive experience, 360-​degree video and virtual reality. The combination of these technological trends provides the possibility of a different type of co-​present experience with people at sights of struggle that moves beyond distant watching and witnessing to the distant witness-​as-​agent of change impacting directly on the context on the ground. From here, we move into the terrain of actions that can take place when there is a distributed network of potential distant witnesses applying their skills and leverage as skilled individuals, and as an aggregated watching collective –​what are the action options for distant witnesses intervening live in a distant situation that is being witnessed? Here again, commercial trends are driving the development of a set of tools to reach distant witnesses at the right time and right place based on their skills and timetables and at the moment when their skills, capacity or leverage is needed. Some examples of these include apps like Pulsepoint that identify someone near an emergency who can do CPR in order to provide timely care before professional ambulance crews arrive, as well as networks such as the Crisis Mappers Standby Task Force of distributed volunteers worldwide responding to humanitarian emergencies. These just-​in-​time witnessing and intervention applications and related networks of individuals are increasingly driven by consumer tools in all our smartphones  –​for example, the way in which the Google Now app on many people’s smartphones anticipates their schedules. These tools allow a better utilisation of ‘distributed willingness’ within distributed movements and networks of distant witnesses and potential distant witnesses. So what are the practical possibilities and ethical dilemmas when we are able to use live video tools to drive empathetic connection by enabling individuals to ‘walk in someone’s shoes’ and to see through others’ eyes, for example, at a forced eviction in Cambodia or an LGBT rights rally in St Petersburg? How do we combine this with practical task-​routing and opportunity matchmaking to involve people watching in other locations (such as the distributed global LGBT movement) in

193

Human rights in an age of distant witnesses

ways that optimise their skills and leverage, and translate feeling and experience into relevant witnessing action? Is it possible to pressure perpetrators suppressing an LGBT protest via the virtual presence of thousands made manifest in a location, or to conduct analysis of a situation drawing on the power of hundreds of watching eyes (for example, identifying all the police IDs in order to call ahead to the relevant police stations), or to mobilise rapid response action offline or online, or to generate and embody the solidarity of distant witnessing audiences (for example, in support of embattled activists) or to bring distant expertise (for example, on legal observation) into a location where those skills are not present (for example, in Honduras during a land eviction in a rural area)?

Distant witnessing through the lens of reincarnation, remix and live Remixed narratives and ‘reincarnated’ images raise important questions about the nature of contemporary witnessing. To what extent is the active remix of on-​the-​ ground witnessing an act of distant witness with implications of moving beyond seeing into saying and action? And how do we grapple with the realities of recycled witnessing when ‘reincarnated’ images transferred from conflict to conflict are as efficacious in mobilising action as the real images from the right-​now? Live-​shared and live-​experienced images inciting immediate action similarly introduce elements of witnessing as seeing, saying and doing, unconstrained by geographical proximity as distant witnesses operate in real-​time, in co-​presence with activists and witnesses on the ground. These forms of live distant witnessing-​ as-​agent inciting immediate action engage many of the same ethical considerations as other forms of witnessing and human rights media. These ethical considerations relate to vicarious emotional experience in general and the extent to which, when aligned with the commoditisation of contemporary activism, it could perpetuate ‘narcissistic indulgence in the authenticity of the self ’ (Chouliaraki 2013, 18) over genuine identification and engagement with the complicated voices and needs of those in sites of trauma, or create a false understanding of historicity and causation based on narrow bursts of emotionally intense experience. And indeed, even if we are just exposed to intensely public moments of trauma, what is our ethical obligation as witnesses, when it is hard for us to know who is also watching simultaneously (so responsibility is diffused), and when there is potentially a contingent obligation to not look if we will not do something (see Klonk, this volume)? If we could have been simultaneously witnessing the death of Neda Agha-​Soltan in Iran in 2009, should we have? Although not new, these ethical issues are given heightened salience by the emotional urgency of live experience, by the possibilities of counter-​productive actions emerging from the actions of a distant witness as active agent and by the complexities of understanding witnessing as responsibility in a diffused network of distant witnesses.

193

194

194

Image operations

Note 1 The discussion of the Tamer Shaaban video draws on previously published work (Gregory and Losh 2012).

References Askanius, Tina. 2013. ‘Online Video Activism and Political Mash-​Up Genres.’ Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies 4. Accessed 9 June 2016. cf.ac.uk/​jomec/​jomecjournal/​4-​ november2013/​Askanius_​Mashups.pdf. boyd, danah michele. 2008. Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics. Accessed 4 December 2015. www.danah.org/​papers/​TakenOutOfContext. html. Chouliaraki, Lilie. 2009. ‘Witnessing War: Economies of Regulation in Reporting War and Conflict.’ Communication Review 12: 215–​26. Chouliaraki, Lilie. 2013. The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of Post-​Humanitarianism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Chouliaraki, Lilie. 2014. ‘‘I have a voice’: The Cosmopolitan Ambivalence of Convergent Journalism.’ In Citizen Journalism: Global Perspective, vol. 2, edited by Einar Thorsen and Stuart Allan, 51–​66. New York: Peter Lang. Cocozza, Paula. 2014. ‘How a First-​Time Film-​Maker Alerted the World to Venezuela’s Student Protests.’ The Guardian, 17 February. Ellis, John. 2000. Seeing Things: Television in the Age of Uncertainty. London: I.B. Tauris. Gaines, Jane. 2007. ‘The Production of Outrage: The Iraq War and Radical Documentary Tradition.’ Framework 48(2): 36–​55. Gorbis, Marina. 2013. ‘The New Kind of Worker Every Business Needs.’ Harvard Business Review, 22 April. Accessed 4 December 2015. https://​hbr.org/​2013/​04/​the-​new-​kind-​of-​ worker-​every-​business/​. Gregory, Sam. 2012a. ‘The Participatory Panopticon and Human Rights:  WITNESS’ Experience Supporting Video Advocacy and Future Possibilities.’ In Sensible Politics: The Visual Culture of Nongovernmental Activism, edited by Meg McLagan and Yates McKee, 517–​45. New York: Zone Books. Gregory, Sam. 2012b. ‘Human Rights Made Visible:  New Dimensions to Anonymity, Consent and Intentionality.’ In Sensible Politics: The Visual Culture of Nongovernmental Activism, edited by Meg McLagan and Yates McKee, 551–​61. New York: Zone Books. Gregory, Sam. 2014a. ‘Images of Horror:  Whose Roles and What Responsibilities?’ The WITNESS Blog, 18 September. Accessed 4 December 2015. http://​blog.witness.org/​2014/​ 09/​sharing-​images-​horror-​roles-​responsibilities/​. Gregory, Sam. 2014b. ‘The Power of the Citizen Witness  –​and How WITNESS is Strengthening Their Impact.’ The WITNESS Blog, 23 September. Accessed 4 December 2015. http://​blog.witness.org/​2014/​09/​power-​citizen-​witnesses/​. Gregory, Sam, and Elizabeth Losh. 2012. ‘Remixing Human Rights:  Rethinking Civic Expression, Representation and Personal Security in Online Video.’ First Monday 17(8). Accessed 4 December 2015. http://​firstmonday.org/​ojs/​index.php/​fm/​article/​view/​4104/​ 3279. Guerin, Francis, and Roger Hallas, eds. 2007. The Image and the Witness: Trauma, Memory and Visual Culture. London: Wallflower Press.

195

Human rights in an age of distant witnesses Hinegardner, Livia. 2009. ‘Action, Organization and Documentary Film:  Beyond a Communications Model of Human Rights Videos.’ Visual Anthropology Review 25(2): 172–​85. Hoskins, Andrew, and Ben O’Loughlin. 2010. War and Media: The Emergence of Diffused War. Cambridge: Polity Press. Ito, Mizuko. 2005. ‘Intimate Visual Co-​Presence.’ Position paper for Ubiquitous Computing Conference workshop 2005. Accessed 4 December 2015. www.itofisher.com/​mito/​ archives/​ito.ubicomp05.pdf. Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture:  Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. Jenkins, Henry, Sam Ford and Joshua Green. 2013. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York: New York University Press. Lunch, Nick, and Chris Lunch. 2006. Insights into Participatory Video: A Handbook for the Field. Oxford: InsightShare. Mackey, Robert. 2012. ‘Syrian Video Blogger Reportedly Killed in Homs as Shelling Continues.’ New York Times, 21 February. McIntosh, Jonathan. 2012. ‘A History of Subversive Video Remix before YouTube: Thirty Political Video Mashups Made between World War II and 2005.’ Transformative Works and Culture 9. Accessed 4 December 2015. http://​journal.transformativeworks.org/​ index.php/​twc/​article/​view/​371/​299. McLagan, Meg, and Yates McKee, eds. 2012. Sensible Politics:  The Visual Culture of Nongovernmental Activism. New York: Zone Books. Neri, Priscila. 2013. ‘Can 114 Videos Tell One Story about Forced Evictions in Rio?’ The WITNESS Blog, 7 October. Accessed 4 December 2015. http://​blog.witness.org/​2013/​10/​ can-​114-​videos-​tell-​one-​story-​about-​forced-​evictions-​in-​rio/​. Peters, John Durham. 2001. ‘Witnessing.’ Media, Culture & Society 23(6): 707–​23. Polchin, James. 2007. ‘Not Looking at Lynching Photographs.’ In The Image and the Witness:  Trauma, Memory and Visual Culture, edited by Francis Guerin and Roger Hallas, 207–​22. London: Wallflower Press. Rasza, Maple John. 2013. ‘Beyond “Riot Porn”: Protest Video and the Production of Unruly Subjects.’ Ethnos 79(4): 496–​524. Sontag, Susan. 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Videos Alerte génocide!!Pus de 1200 civils calcinés à Duékoué par les pro Ouattara, uploaded by Essenechrist. No country, 2011, web video. Accessed 4 December 2015. www.youtube. com/​watch?v=xxbT0a7H2CQ&bpctr=1420335509. Anonymous –​ #OperationRohingya, uploaded by Anonymous. No country, 2013, web video. Accessed 4 December 2015. www.youtube.com/​watch?v=nA-​z3ytS5nE. Kenya 11 sorciers brûlés vifs par la foule kaotal.com, uploaded by Serignesene. No country, 2009, web video. No longer available online. www.youtube.com/​watch?v=7PCiZUIXLek. The Most AMAZING Video on the Internet #Egypt #jan25, uploaded by Hadi Faour. No country, 2011, web video. Accessed 4 December 2015. www.youtube.com/​ watch?v=ThvBJMzmSZI. Prisão do Repórter da Mídia Ninja, uploaded by PosTV. No country, 2013, web video. Accessed 4 December 2015. www.youtube.com/​watch?v=aDO6tr6kgAk.

195

196

196

Image operations Shoot on Sight, uploaded by Burma Issues in association with WITNESS. No country, 2007, web video. Accessed 4 December 2015. www.youtube.com/​watch?v=z2EEJkyntV4. Shoot on Sight –​A Story of Oppressed Myanmar Muslims, uploaded by IranClips. No country, 2013, web video. Accessed 4 December 2015. www.youtube.com/​watch?v=AhitMpV9grw. What’s Going On in Venezuela in a Nutshell, uploaded by Andreina Nash. No country, 2014, web video. Accessed 4 December 2015. www.youtube.com/​watch?v=EFS6cP9auDc/​.

197

The hunger striker: a case for embodied visuality Bishnupriya Ghosh

The images are iconic: a woman’s face framed in dark hair sutured to an invasive tube forcing its way into her nostrils, taking root there for fourteen years (Plate 30). It is a recognisable image of Irom Sharmila, the poet-​activist christened ‘the iron lady of Manipur’. Perhaps less known than iconic male hunger strikers, a Bobby Sands or a Mahatma Gandhi, Sharmila exemplifies the embodied visual relations activated by the corporeal image of the hunger striker. Those relations are the subject of the chapter, for they are precisely what makes her image politically efficacious in the fight against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (generally known as AFSPA) implemented since 1958 in Manipur, a mountainous state in northeastern India. Sharmila went on hunger strike in 2000 to protest at the Indian Army’s state-​sanctioned murder of ten civilians, and she has been force-​fed by the Indian government for fourteen years. As a ‘bio-​icon’, an exemplary figure whose iconic image is focalised through biographical fragments that induce recipients of the image to assign specific properties to the image, Sharmila has brought the daily corporeal violence in Manipur to mainstream national and international image recipients like no other. Her image circulates widely in mass-​produced visual media (posters, stickers, postcards): the recursive graphic mark of a woman’s face, dark hair, protruding tube1 instantly signifying AFSPA-​sanctioned corporeal violence of the state against its citizenry and the potential for enduring resistance to that violence. The second image (Plate 31) is a postcard from the ‘Postcards for Irom’ campaign hosted by Nitesh Mohanty, a Delhi-​based graphic artist/​designer. Mohanty hosts a creative media and merchandise platform named ‘The Root’, orientated towards facilitating discussions on social, cultural, political and environmental issues (see Modi 2012). The design illustrates the aesthetic function of iconic images: often highly stylised or ornamental images made to stimulate the senses that minimally reiterate ‘original’ material (here, a woman’s face, dark hair, feeding tube) and therein function as cultural shorthand. The postcards were made to raise awareness of Sharmila’s plight when she was arraigned to stand trial in 2013.2 Circulating as pop artefacts, their distribution in customary public sites (cafés, college canteens, movie theatre lobbies) in the nation’s capital, Delhi, galvanised

14

198

198

Image operations

a social network. The campaign was launched when Sharmila was arraigned for suicide in March 2013. The charges against her were dropped in the context of the Indian Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling codifying the hunger strike as ‘a form of protest which has been accepted, both historically and legally in our constitutional jurisprudence’.3 The trial placed Sharmila’s theatre of starvation within an established moral economy of hunger strikes against the colonial and the postcolonial state in India.4 And in doing so, the state tacitly acknowledged what her widely circulated images and biography have achieved:  they have brought to national attention the corporeal violence of emergency rule in Manipur. Clearly the image is politically efficacious in protesting against the AFSPA. Invoked to eliminate radical secessionist tendencies in the provinces bordering China and Myanmar, AFSPA was imposed in Manipur in 1958, providing legal immunity to Indian Army measures to restore order in the state. The most draconian measures of the Act were put in place in 1980 after a particularly bloody period, and Manipur was declared a ‘disturbed region’. The extreme provisions of AFSPA derive from a British Ordinance of 1942, and that colonial hangover in administrative policy finds its cognate in ‘mainland’ Indian attitudes toward the region: the northeast is seen as a wild, lawless frontier, its denizens dismissed as ‘tribals’ who do not have the wherewithal to live up to the responsibilities of a modern citizenry. For more than half a century, Manipur has remained in a perpetual ‘state of exception’, and, as such, provides a glimpse of the normative strong security state. The chronic low-​intensity war in Manipur has reorganised social relations, generating a ‘culture of exceptionalism’ across all aspects of life. Everyday life falls under the shadow of both the Indian military and around thirty insurgent groups: days are hobbled by eight-​to ten-​hour blackouts; the major highways to and from towns and cities are periodically shut down; open drains fester in the capital; and the supply of goods (from grains to medical supplies) to local markets remains a gamble. Caught between the insurgents and the Indian Army, young Manipuri men live under the constant threat of interrogation, even death, while women are subject to daily sexual violence. It is this slow violence of depletion that Sharmila has turned into political theatre, the proverbial invasion of the feeding tube making visible the thanatopolitics of the state. Her iconic image of eviscerating corporeal depletion circulates through print health bulletins, oral elegies, posters, television news and other platforms, local and national. On the national stage, the mass-​produced images do not just ‘raise awareness’ about AFSPA in Manipur, but they ‘quilt together’ heterogeneous groups with varied social demands who live under AFSPA elsewhere in India. The other standout instance of a militarised state of exception within the Indian democratic nation-​state is Kashmir, where human rights abuses against the citizenry have become normalised ever since the declaration of AFSPA in July 1990. Irom Sharmila emerges as the embodiment of resistance against AFSPA in Kashmir in the innumerable rallies protesting at corporeal violence, demanding redress, highlighting sexual violence and mourning the dead.

199

The hunger striker

On these occasions, her iconic image operates as a powerful signifier for mobilising a popular front through the formation of loose, associative chains (as Ernesto Laclau has suggested of the anti-​hegemonic popular; Laclau 2005). It brings together a contingent collective across different states, and thereby constitutes a social network of action against AFSPA. To underscore this quilting function, I have chosen images that do not circulate in Manipur, but in Srinagar and the nation’s capital, Delhi. The first, a screenshot (Plate 32) from feminist documentarian Kavita Joshi’s twenty-​three-​minute Tales from the Margins (2006), is also the most famous, and its function within the documentary actually illustrates the quilting mechanism of powerful iconic images. Framed by a collage of photographs of daily atrocities (police lineups, murders, posters of missing people), a close-​up of Sharmila speaking to Joshi makes five syncopated appearances in the documentary. Formally, the appearances stitch together other stories, including two major episodes involving the disappearance of a young man and the rape and murder of a young woman, each subjected to sexed and gendered forms of violence. The recursive audiovisual trace incorporates visual (photographs, found footage) and audiovisual (interviews) evidence of corporeal violence through associative chains, making the disparate events recounted in the film cohere as instances of the corporeal violence that Sharmila lives every day. This formal operation enacts a metonymic quilting function: the invasive feeding tube signalling the state’s rationalised legal and medical response to the citizen-​subject’s refusal to guarantee its control over her body, and associating that refusal with an enduring public outcry against other invasions. I  will return to these politics of embodiment shortly, but here, the point is to elaborate how the formal operation of iconic images constitutes a popular, a collective event of subjectivity. That is, the iconic image takes on a social materiality because the acts of making, distributing and using the image forges a loose social network organised against corporeal violence. Here the semantic and aesthetic field of cultural reference for the iconic image plays a central role. One encounters an image as an iconic one when one has seen it before, when one recognises the repetition of minimal graphic elements; the graphic mark carries with it a semantic core, cultural associations that have been naturalised through recursion as the icon’s ‘natural’ properties. In this way, the woman’s face framed in dark hair with a protruding tube has become shorthand for undying corporeal resistance to corporeal violence. The feeding tube along with the hyperbolic carceral space of the prison and prison hospital, often the proverbial setting for the hunger strike, function as mnemonic for sexualised, penetrative, medical and legal state-​sponsored violence. The regular news of indictments and trials, of health bulletins and hospital visits, accompanying the iconic image, reinforce the state’s assertion of sovereign power over the citizen’s bare life. But despite the feeding tube, the individuated hunger striker icon’s core properties are precisely a removal of the body from state control. In his exegesis of the hunger strike, Patrick Anderson argues that the image of the incarcerated hunger striker is at once an explicit reminder of juridically legitimised violence and a refusal of that violence (Anderson 2010; see also Feldman 1991; Ellman 1993). The ‘surface’ of

199

200

200

Image operations

the body –​in this case, with the prosthetic of the feeding tube –​shrinks, a corporeal wasting approaching death as the final event, even as it protects the inviolable integrity of the body’s interior. That interior is exposed to the public eye in the reports on the loss of muscles and viscera, the failure of organs. But it is the hunger striker that regulates the event of death and controls the interior of the citizen’s body –​the very body that is the last guarantee of the state’s sovereign power. Such disciplined refusal becomes political spectacle inductively imparting heroic properties to the iconic image. Over time, the image carries these properties without the original context, a mystification that gives the iconic image the capacity to enchant its recipient. In the long tradition of critical iconoclasm (Mitchell 1986), such mystification spells political danger since icon adoration eschews critical reflection for unthinking attachment. But, as we shall see, the attachment is anything but unthinking; upon unpacking the processes constitutive of attachment, we arrive at what I characterise as an ‘embodied visuality’ with transformative powers. In the case of the hunger striker, those processes activate ‘an event of subjectivity’, in Anderson’s words, as this variety of icon highlights the disappearance of the state-​ disciplined productive citizen-​subject; in its place arises the possibility of another emerging political subject in full control of the emancipated space of the body. The body subject to corporeal violence looks to its freedom as inviolable, sovereign. If death is the inaugural event of subjectivity, both the disappearance and emergence of the subject, Anderson maintains, then coming death is also a horizon  –​the beginning of a new political subject that cannot be subjugated. While such a philosophical reading might seem far removed from the troubled streets of Srinagar or Imphal where people gather around Sharmila’s image, the protests concretise its possibility in articulating a collective demand for a freedom from the state’s (and AFSPA’s) sovereign power. As the crowd collects around the image, the political event is not only the sudden appearance of a contingent social network, but also a future to come. The hunger striker embodies this latent potentiality in the living figure’s role as social prototype. At once exceptional and representative, that social prototype presents a template for new political subjects free of AFSPA. Those who celebrate the iconic image finally aspire to be like the icon –​to follow the intrepid exemplar. This desire to become icon activates a psychic structure of yearning that is the basis for deep attachments to popular icons. The distinction of the bio-​icon from other icons  –​be those functional graphics of the sort we see blinking on our computers everyday or generic commodity images of people, places and things –​lies in the bio-​icon’s ability to instigate social action at the collective level. While all iconic images open their receivers into larger systems (semiotic, aesthetic, technological) and more often than not harness libidinal desires, biographical fragments that frame the reception of an iconic image can orient, even direct (when didactic), receivers toward future pathways that the icon lives in the present or has lived in the past. Since the bio-​icon’s present or past is projected as a future for its adorers, these images function as social prototypes: their exemplary actions are still to be realised for the greater good. The richer the field of biographical fragments (think

201

The hunger striker

Gandhi or Mandela), the more wide-​ranging the impact of the exemplary figure. This function of exemplarity granting authoritative force to the bio-​icon is precisely why the analysis of religious icons is especially relevant to discussions of ostensibly secular images. For it is the political labour of devotion in the production, distribution and reception of secular images that can turn a historical image into an eternal force –​that can enable it to activate a much greater network of adorers than the original collectivity it once historically represented. For instance, my invocation of the iconic photograph of Irom Sharmila might immediately recall scholarship on secular iconic photographs, such as Robert Hariman and John Lucaites’s exploration of the famous 1936 Dorothea Lange photograph of pea pickers in Nipomo, California (Hariman and Lucaites 2007, 53–​67). The later circulation of the ‘Migrant Mother’ as an iconic image enduring beyond Lange’s social reform photograph, they argue, continues to provide closure for a larger public drama around particular historical circumstances (life at a camp in California) and democracy’s utopian promise (of a ‘new’, economically just, life). Such enduring mythologies (to recall Barthes5 (1972)) naturalise even the most historically intended document, often through cultural reference to religious icons: the Madonna at the centre of Lange’s photograph signals eternal selflessness, eternal fecundity. If we pursue what makes the photograph tick beyond aesthetic reference, however, one may argue that it harnesses devotional literacies to a secular cause in disenchanted times. While a focus on devotional literacy is rarely found in communications studies scholarship on mass-​mediated secular images, it is well-​charted ground in interdisciplinary visual culture studies in which scholars have shown how sacral enchantments persist –​even in the so-​called ‘disenchanted’ historical West. If historians of religious art such as David Freedberg argue that devotional literacies have an abiding afterlife in popular attachments to secular icons (Freedberg 1989), scholars of star studies such as Richard Dyer have long claimed the persistence of sacral image economies in auratic movie stars amidst secular disenchantments (Dyer 1986). In Global Icons: Apertures to the Popular (Ghosh 2011), I have explored this scholarship on religious art and film stars to explain the transformative social power of secular mass-​produced images. Devotional literacies are central to the nature, scope and depth of political attachments to avowedly secular ­figures –​poet, politician or movie star. Cultural training in aesthetic ornamentation of religious icons effectively sacralises a secular photograph so that it authoritatively represents a greater collectivity (not just the pea picker, not just Manipuri citizens). The cultural habits of embodied dispersal into the collective in devotional acts are precisely why devotion remains an important critical category for understanding the social efficacy of bio-​icons such as Irom Sharmila –​or else, we are back to dismissals of mystifying attachments as unthinking mass delusion. In this chapter, I  argue for the persistence of devotional literacies in the embodied visual relation of icon adoration, a relation that enfolds the recipient of the image into the corporeal space occupied by the icon. I expand on the

201

202

202

Image operations

general ‘embodied visual relation’ accentuated in the corporeal theatre of the hunger strike. Harnessing the sensorium, this image economy particular to the iconic image incorporates the recipient of the iconic image into the iconic image, while paradoxically maintaining a reflective distance from an ‘original’ or ‘natural’ prototype. As art historian Hans Belting explains, such oscillation generates the sense of an ‘absent presence’ that is at once alluring and unreachable (Belting 1997). In short, to adore an icon is simultaneously a sensuous immersion into the image and a reflective recognition of what is still to be done. To elaborate: across disciplinary territories, the image economy of adoring or desecrating icons (both occupying the same structure of veneration6) harnesses and organises the human sensorium, enfolding the recipient into the corporeal space occupied by the icon. Icons are highly sensuous artefacts, ornamental and stylised through devotional labour. Icon adoration is often a synaesthetic experience (the ringing of bells, music, incense, procession, dance7), even as looking is eminently carnal. The point is underscored in studies of very different religious traditions. Pausing on the Patriarch Nikephoros’s theory of the icon as a graphic window, for instance, Marie-​José Mondzain underscores the carnal relationship to the ‘artificial’ or ‘material’ image, lustrous and finely made, that allows the devotee to move through it toward unrepresentable divinity (Mondzain 2004). Sensory attachment to the material image is the starting point for the process of incorporation:  an embodied movement toward an ontos that the devotee realises is unreachable. The devotee infers divinity through a prototype, a natural ‘original image’ (Christ the icon) that is like the divine whose essence it shares. In acts of icon contemplation, the material image is a corporeal aperture through which the devotee yearns to be like Christ but falls short of the exemplar; the divine recedes, invisible, absent. With regard to Hindu liturgical icons, Diana Eck also describes the visual act of ‘seeing’ and ‘being seen’ by deity as a carnal process that involves an organisation of the entire sensorium (Eck 1998). Here, too, the material image is a yantra or ‘technology’ that focuses ekagrata (one-​pointedness of thought), providing a momentary glimpse of the absent divine through a corporeal aperture. Importantly, despite differences in the nature of divine manifestation, in both liturgical traditions, divinity is always inferred and is never confused with the material image –​however perfect. The one Brahman, in Hinduism, much like God the Father in Christianity, remains infinite, absent and nirguna (without qualities).8 What is key to this image economy is the embodied visuality of icon contemplation: it establishes a corporeal continuity with the material image, even as it institutes a distance between recipient/​devotee and the real that is unreachable. In the case of secular icons, the ‘absence’ is a utopian horizon whose potentiality is latent in the ‘natural image’ of the social prototype. The recipient/​devotee is caught within a psychic structure of yearning for transformation articulated as the desire to be like the exemplar, to live by the rules of the prototype; hence the capacity of secular icons to activate the will toward social change. To bring accounts of religious devotion to secular pastures is to underscore the transdisciplinary nature of the iconic image. Scholarly orthodoxies might baulk at

203

The hunger striker

such excursions into well-​guarded disciplinary territories, but my incursions precisely underscore the inadequacy of any one disciplinary armature in explaining the transformative social power of mass-​produced secular icons. What the inter-​ disciplinary thoroughfare achieves is to excavate critical genealogies that once fell into disrepute as once more significant. This is certainly true of the contemporary return of the American pragmatist philosopher and logician Charles Sanders Peirce to image scholarship. Peirce’s realist metaphysics (influencing intellectuals such as William James and John Dewey; see Misak 2004) led to his dismissal by a critical theory informed by Saussurian linguistics (see Houser and Kloesel 1992; Peirce 1996; Freadman 2004) well until the latter part of the twentieth century; in recent years, he has made something of a comeback to media studies. Despite the fact that it is now customary to distance visual studies from its linguistic epistemologies, Peirce’s discussions of the iconic signs as ‘natural’ and ‘degenerate’, difficult to disentangle from their referents,9 are especially clarifying to the image economies explored in theories of religious art. For Peirce, this sign-​type’s capacity to enchant lies in an insufficiency of reason: in encountering the icon, one does not rely on inductive or deductive logic, but intuits the sensory quality of the ‘thing’ or the ontos. The ontological closeness of the iconic image to its ground beckons the recipient toward an ever-​receding reality, thereby instituting a psychic structure of yearning. Such yearning brings with it forgetfulness, manifest as the dreamlike state that accompanies icon contemplation. The recipient forgets the artifice, the formality of the graphic image, so that the ‘copy’ appears momentarily as the real: ‘So in contemplating a painting, there is a moment when we lose consciousness that it is not the thing, the distinction between the real and the copy disappears, and it is for a moment a pure dream –​not any particular existence, and yet not general. At that moment we are contemplating an icon’ (Peirce 1885, 181). In this Peircean account, the icon is phantasmatic, allowing recipients to hallucinate an image just like the sign itself. What such an account underscores is not just a reiteration of the argument made regarding liturgical icons, but also likeness as the representational ground of the icon’s image economy. The recipient contemplates a material image that refers back to a natural exemplar (a perfect diagram, a portrait that captures the subject’s ineffable essence); the stronger the perception of perfection, the more auratic the image. The imitative basis of encountering the iconic image motivates recipients to become the icon. As they do so, they move inward toward a latent futurity. Such acts of icon contemplation suggest personal transformation. But scholars of popular religiosity insist that adoring or desecrating icons is more often than not a social project, unifying adorers in common devotional labour. In the language of politics, both image production and reception at the collective level are acts of solidarity. In this regard, iconic images come to be regarded as ‘perfect’ images when recipients are savvy to the pact between image-​maker and subject. Kavita Joshi’s cinematic image of the imprisoned Sharmila (Plate 30), for example, circulates across media platforms (photographs, televisual footage, posters) as an ‘authentic image’ partly because it was made in solidarity

203

204

204

Image operations

with Sharmila –​with her explicit consent. So this image functions much like the ‘perfect image’ of liturgical lore. Belting (1997) notes that certain liturgical icons have similar value, operating as the ‘perfect’ or ‘originary’ trace when they are collectively remembered as sanctioned by the exemplary figure in question. The Virgin Nicopeia icon, for instance, Belting writes, has formidable sacral authority because it is known to be made correctly with the Virgin’s cooperation at the time of the Apostles. Such perfection is equally a concern in other traditions: in the case of Hindu icons, Diana Eck (1998) notes that silpins or artists strive for likeness or livingness (sajivta) to the ‘original’ traces of the divine mostly by following strict iconometric/​iconographic instructions, even as the stylised adornments of the trace might vary. Joshi’s image (Tales from the Margins, 2006) fulfils these conditions of production, her political devotion establishing her footage as an ‘originary trace’ with indexical power; to receive such a perfect image is to be transported into the absent real of Imphal’s central prison. The status of Joshi’s footage as documentary image further enhances this social value, for documentarians, often working in collaboration with anti-​military and anti-​insurgent in Imphal, have a great deal of politically legitimacy as anti-​hegemonic storytellers and image-​makers. They bear a heavy historical burden of ‘making’ events in contexts where censorship (under AFSPA) does not allow for regular journalistic reportage of daily atrocities; re-​enactments and fictional accounts, testimonials without images, smuggled photographs and rare interviews record events that would otherwise prompt a media blitz. Left-​progressive documentaries unaffiliated with the state or insurgent groups are regarded as credible witnesses, more so than the news media that are allowed into certain parts of the state.10 These conditions of production authenticate certain documentary images such as Joshi’s footage as perfect images. Produced by artisanal labour, such images constitute a social network through their redistribution; indeed, as Nitesh Mohanty explains, his ‘Postcards with Irom’ campaign was conceived in solidarity with other Sharmila image-​makers such as Joshi (Modi 2012). Mohanty considers his organisation, ‘The Root’, as a technological infrastructure for the production and distribution of images necessary to mobilising anti-​hegemonic struggles.11 And beyond production, distributors and receivers of such iconic images express their solidarity with the enterprise through acts of collective adoration. In this way, the iconic image exerts socially transformative power. For those not on the streets, the auratic image made in political devotion transports recipients into the corporeally violent space of Manipur. While the ordinary news photo or televisual footage might bring the ‘Manipur situation’ to national viewers as just another news item, even incidental curiosity, as an ‘originary’ trace with indexical power, Joshi’s footage reverses the equation:  it transports viewers into the absent real of the Imphal prison. Incorporating viewers into the material image, an embodied visuality ensures a phenomenological experience of corporeal violence. The bourgeois citizen-​subject nested in an elegant Delhi barsati, enfolded into corporeal violence, is at the very least unsettled, discomforted; the student

205

The hunger striker

at the university, unable to swallow the promise of the Indian democracy. But for those most directly in the line of fire, the woman’s face framed by dark hair with a feeding tube heralds the possible emergence of a new political subject –​sovereign, inviolable, recalcitrant.

Notes 1 Kavita Joshi’s interview made the rounds across media platforms. It circulated on the Tehelka website, which begins with a description of the iconic image: ‘An eye: piercing, intent. A nose, covered by a swatch of medical tape, as a yellow tube forces its way in. Lips, stretched tight as if in pain. A woman sits against a bare wall, huddled under a blanket, tightly hugging herself ’ (Joshi 2006). 2 Irom Sharmila has been arrested and released every year since she began her hunger strike under the Indian Penal Code prohibiting suicide. On every occasion, she has denied the charge of suicide. In October 2013, after the publicised March 2013 trial in Delhi, Amnesty International recognised Sharmila as a ‘Prisoner of Conscience’. 3 In February 2012, the Supreme Court of India observed in its ruling in the Ram Lila Maidan Incident case that a hunger strike is ‘a form of protest which has been accepted, both historically and legally in our constitutional jurisprudence’. The British Medical Association, in a briefing to the World Medical Association, has clarified that, ‘[a]‌ hunger strike is not equivalent to suicide. Individuals who embark on hunger strikes aim to achieve goals important to them but generally hope and intend to survive.’ The World Medical Association forwards this rule as part of its Malta Declaration on Hunger Strikers (India Resists 2014). 4 Of course, the most famous among these are Mahatma Gandhi’s hunger strikes against the British-​Indian state. In the postcolonial years, anti-​dam-​building environmental activist Medha Patkar has protested state actions through highly public hunger strikes; she, too, was force-​fed by the government and charged with the intent to commit suicide. 5 I discuss Roland Barthes’s famous discussion of the elision of French imperialism from the mythic photograph of ‘A Negro Saluting the French Flag’ in Ghosh 2011, 41. Barthes positions the ‘Negro’ as an anthropomorphic figure that conceals its own history, much in the same way as the migrant mother conceals the fact of the camp in the later circulation of Lange’s photo. 6 As Michael Taussig has reminded us, to deface an image is to be held in its thrall (Taussig 1999). 7 Diana L. Eck describes the visual act of ‘seeing’ and ‘being seen’ by deity as the primary act in an essentially synaesthetic experience: the ringing of bells, the scent of flowers and of incense, the kinaesthesia of dance and procession (Eck 1998). 8 Divine essence is manifest in the natural image, Christ or the Hindu gods and goddesses that draw devotees to divinity; only in Hindu polytheism the Absolute has an exuberance of transformations, it manifests saguna (qualities) in multiple forms and names. 9 In Peirce’s early writings, both icon and index share a consubstantial relation with the ‘thing’ (the ontos in religious studies); that thing, however, Peirce insists in his later studies of signs, is inferred as a natural form (the perfect diagram) in a flash of abductive knowledge. See Peirce 1992 for specific essays on the icon, index and symbol.

205

206

206

Image operations 10 The film on AFSPA that made a splash was Haobam Paban Kumar’s AFSPA, 1958 (2006), when it bagged the national ‘Best Non-​Fiction Award’ at the fifty-​sixth National Film Awards (under the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting) in 2008. 11 As such, ‘The Root’ also took Joshi and Imphal-​based documentarian Haobam Paban Kumar’s films to college audiences and facilitated lectures and discussions connected to the screenings.

References Anderson, Patrick. 2010. So Much Wasted:  Hunger, Performance, and the Morbidity of Resistance. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Barthes, Roland. 1972 [1957]. Mythologies. Translated by Ann Lavers. New  York:  Hill & Wang. Belting, Hans. 1997. Likeness and Presence:  A  History of the Image in the Era before Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dyer, Richard. 1986. Heavenly Bodies:  Film Stars and Society. London:  Macmillan Education Ltd. Eck, Diana L. 1998. Darśan:  Seeing the Divine Image in India. New  York:  Columbia University Press. Ellman, Maud. 1993. Hunger Artists: Starving, Writing, and Imprisonment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Feldman, Alan. 1991. Formations of Violence:  The Narrative Body of Political Terror in Northern Ireland. New York: Columbia University Press. Freadman, Anne. 2004. The Machinery of Talk:  Charles Peirce and the Sign Hypothesis. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Freedberg, David. 1989. The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ghosh, Bishnupriya. 2011. Global Icons:  Apertures to the Popular. Durham, NC:  Duke University Press. Hariman, Robert, and John Lucaites. 2007. No Caption Needed: Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Houser, Nathan, and Christian Kloesel, eds. 1992. The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings (1867–​1893). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. India Resists. 2014. ‘Authorities Must Release Irom Sharmila Following Government Decision to Decriminalize Attempt to Suicide.’ India Resists, 16 December. Accessed 4 December 2015. www.indiaresists.com/​authorities-​must-​release-​irom-​sharmila-​ following-​government-​decision-​to-​decriminalize-​attempt-​to-​suicide/​. Joshi, Kavita. 2006. ‘Irom’s Iron in the Soul.’ Tehelka, 25 March. Accessed 4 December 2015. http://​archive.tehelka.com/​story_​main17.asp?filename=Cr032506_​Iroms_​iron.asp. Laclau, Ernesto. 2005. On Populist Reason. London: Verso. Misak, Cheryl. 2004. ‘Charles Peirce (1839–​1914).’ In The Cambridge Companion to Peirce, edited by Cheryl Misak, 1–​26. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mitchell, W. J.  Thomas. 1986 Iconology:  Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago:  University of Chicago Press.

207

The hunger striker Modi, Chintan Girish. 2013. ‘Postcards for Irom:  Interview with Nitesh Mohanty.’ The Alternative, 18 March. Accessed 4 December 2015. www.thealternative.in/​lifestyle/​ postcards-​for-​irom-​interview-​with-​nitesh-​mohanty/​. Mondzain, Marie-​ José. 2004. Image, Icon, Economy:  The Byzantine Origins of the Contemporary Imaginary. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Peirce, Charles S. 1885. ‘On the Algebra of Logic:  A  Contribution to the Philosophy of Notation.’ American Journal of Mathematics 7: 180–​202. Peirce, Charles S. 1966. Charles S. Peirce: Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Change), edited by Philip P. Wiener. New York: Dover Publications. Peirce, Charles S. 1992. The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, vol. I, 1867–​ 1893, eds. Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Taussig, Michael. 1999. Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Films AFSPA, 1958, directed by Haobam Paban Kumar. India, 2006, col., 52 min. Tales from the Margins, directed by Kavita Joshi. India, 2006, col., 23 min.

207

208

15

The visual commons: counter-​ power in photography from slavery to Occupy Wall Street Nicholas Mirzoeff

If global visual culture summons up a world of surveillance, drones, rendition and annexation, I want to begin with a reminder: we were there first, on the commons, claiming the right to look.1 The right to look was and is a horizontal process, producing the visual commons that has become photographic (Mirzoeff 2011). This photography exists in the moment I claim the right to look, and grant that right to others without reservations or guarantees:  and someone takes a photograph. This right is the right to look into each other’s eyes; we know this as the look exchanged between friends, and those we love and trust. This look is the invention of the other and the permission for the other to invent the looker, who is also looked at. It creates a commons between us because neither of us owns or controls the exchange that is created. It is an exchange with no surplus and it cannot be accumulated. Collectively, this interpersonal exchange becomes common when individuals come together to appropriate ground as the commons. Enclosed or privatised space, physical or virtual, becomes common by means of the refusal to move on and the insistence that there is something to see here. This commons is not abstract but material. It constitutes the grounds of freedom. It is the refusal to stay in the place allocated to you in systems such as that in Plato’s Republic. It is the refusal to serve with downcast eyes, as required by codes of slavery, segregation, mass incarceration and servitude. The visual commons is not space in a purely abstract sense. It makes a claim to be grounded. It is not an atavistic relic or a tradition to be reinvented. It is the means by which social change metabolises. That sensation occurs when we see, in the sense of coming to understand, a photograph of the commons that emanates from the commons and is not simply about the commons. When Zuccotti Park was under occupation, people would often approach from Broadway and stand at the top of the steps to take a photograph. That was not the commons. If a person

209

The visual commons

went down into the park, engaged with what was happening and then took a photograph, it could be. When the commons appears where there is a state, it creates a form of counter-​power, ‘the joining together of women and men willing to expend all of their energy to solve in common, at the margin of, beyond, and outside state normativity, the problems that stifle them’ (Gutiérrez Aguilar 2014, xi, emphasis in original). Yet the commons is not permanent. It is a recurrent moment and so each time it is present is a revolution. Its sustained state would be permanent revolution. Making and sustaining the visual commons is what I call groundwork. Here, ground has the double meaning first as non-​owned earth (land, territory and other such terms have legal and colonial meanings). Such ground is the possibility of a world in which, as Grace Lee Boggs puts it, we can ‘make a life rather than make a living’ (Boggs and Kurashige 2012, xxi). Secondly, the ground is the element that makes depiction possible. In photography, the ground enables the subject or figure to be comprehended as such. Groundwork is itself common, understood as co-​activity, collaborative in process and conversational in research method. Claiming ground in the post-​encounter Americas is the work of abolition. When slavery is abolished or suspended, the space between regimes becomes a space without regime, an abolition democracy. In abolition, a person is not a subject for representation but claims to be a subject, as in Sojourner Truth’s call ‘Ar’n’t I a woman?’ (quoted in Mirzoeff 2003, 117). Truth famously sold her own photograph to support abolition, using ‘the shadow to support the substance’ as she put it. This substance was the basis of her abolitionism. Making ground in abolition is undoing the shattered worlds caused by slavery. This work has been described by the Spanish feminist collective Precarias a la Deriva as militant research, which they define as ‘a desire for common ground when the common ground is shattered’ (quoted in Colectivo Situaciones 2005, 606). The reshaped ground is the common in which we can be photographed, a ground that can hold and shape our imprint. The commons is our desire. We see ourselves in common, as, and in the visual commons.

The photographic commons (1832–​1953) The visual commons can effectively be explored through photography because photography has become the medium of the commons, and it is today perhaps the first universal medium in interaction with the Internet which is already overtaking it. Photography’s beginnings can be told in this context as a reclaiming of the commons from slavery. The French artist Hércules Florence was the first person to use the term ‘photography’ in the Americas in 1833. Florence emigrated to Brazil in 1824 and settled in Campinas, now part of São Paolo, a coffee-​growing district in which slaves outnumbered free persons by two to one (Conrad 1972, 6). According to Florence’s own account, it was in ‘1832, on August 15, while strolling on my veranda [that] an idea came to me that perhaps it is possible to capture images in a

209

210

210

Image operations

camera obscura by means of a substance which changes colour through the action of light. I captured a negative view of the jailhouse’ (Kossoy 1976, 16). With the assistance of the local pharmacist, Joaquim Correa de Mello, Florence named this process ‘photographie’. On the plantation, the veranda of the slave-​owner’s house was designed to give a clear view of the world created and sustained by slavery. The prison would have housed runaways and otherwise disobedient slaves because Brazilian slavery used state mechanisms for punishment, unlike North America. European artists visiting Brazil often depicted enslaved Africans being beaten in prison, as seen in drawings by Augustus Earle (1821–​24) and Charles Landseer (1825–​26) (Honour 1989, 143). Florence’s experiments in visual form included a version of photocopying and extensive ethnographic illustration, especially of the Bororo people from what is now called the Mato Grosso. A hunter-​gatherer people, the Bororo are today active in resisting deforestation and claiming land rights. Florence produced colonial photography at the intersection of visual technologies of discipline (the jailhouse), spectacular punishment (the whipping and torture of the enslaved) and the ‘ethnographic entrapment’ of the ‘native’ (Smith 2014, 207–​34). Florence did not imagine his photography and other forms of visual archiving against a tabula rasa of visual technology and theory. Both the enslaved and the Native peoples deployed modes of visual thinking and contested their subjection within that frame. As the Brazilian scholar Denise Ferreira da Silva puts it, ‘I do not assume that those in contention, political subjects, precede their emergence in representation. Instead I  conceive of them as political, because they emerge in signification’ (Ferreira da Silva 2007, 27). In any hitherto existing world, these relations are always violent. As Ferreira da Silva argues, the colonial project is to create a ‘scene of representation’ in which only the coloniser has the interior judgement capable of recognising and interpreting representation. As Marx famously commented, ‘they cannot represent themselves, they must be represented’ (Marx 1852). Such representation engages both meanings of the term: political representation and visual or cultural depiction are interfaced aspects of the same violent relationship. Colonial representation overwrote the existing forms of the visual commons in Brazil and across the Americas. Named ‘Amerindian perspectivism’ by the anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, this commons understands that ‘the world is inhabited by different forms of subjects or persons, human and non-​human, which apprehend reality from different points of view’ (Viveiros de Castro 1998, 469). What is common here is that humans, spirits and animals all share the same form of subjectivity or personhood: the capacity to act. This subjectivity is humanity but not specifically the human form. A human sees a human as a human. A spirit or a jaguar sees the human as prey but themselves as human. It is this category which de Castro calls the soul; it is indexical but unseen. What is seen is not a representation, because the specific ‘point of view is located in the body’ (478), be it spirit, human or animal, as opposed to the common condition of humanity. This does not mean that humans are equal or that there is a commons in Amerindian society, but whereas Western understanding attributes a point of view to a subject, here

211

The visual commons

‘the point of view creates the subject’ (476). The body of a howler monkey sees differently to that of a spirit or a human, producing one culture but many natures. Photography superimposes onto this cosmology the scene of representation, in which the index is a material trace. It is no coincidence that Charles Sanders Peirce used the bullet hole as his example of the index, pointing to the bullet which must have been there. The photograph is the Western representation of reality as the scene of actual or potential gunfire. After all, we shoot a photograph. Cosmology has a different form of indexicality. A depiction of a cosmology is a cosmogram, hence in the cosmology of the visual commons the photograph is the mark made by the imprint of the commons, just as a photogram is created by placing objects directly onto the surface of a light-​sensitive material. Photography becomes a commons and forms such cosmograms when it refuses to represent, but intersects and interfaces points of view that create subjects. Photography creates a ground against which figures or subjects can be seen. Like land, the photograph holds the imprint of the commons. Consider memory: it exists, it cannot be represented, and it is individual. But photography surrogates it into material form that itself becomes a kind of common memory. In the commons, photography gives shape to the ground of a commons and depicts the ground that it occupies. Not all photography can serve as common ground. In order to do so, it needs to be for the common, about the common, in a moment where the perspective of the common is visible and then it can retain its imprint as memory. Here is a key example of common ground, taken on the other side of the Atlantic world at the time Florence was formulating colonial photography. In England, the Chartist movement arose alongside photography. The Chartists (so called because their demands were organised into a charter) argued for universal male suffrage, annual parliaments and an end to the property qualification to vote. They refused to be represented, claiming instead to represent England. The Chartists were an abolition movement in the sense that they called on people to reject their condition as ‘slaves of capital’. This commons was imprinted in a remarkable daguerreotype taken by William Kilburn of the 1848 Chartist gathering at Kennington Common, London, the first such outdoor photograph. At this rally, held on literally common ground, the Chartists gathered 50,000 people to deliver their petition of 5 million signatures in support of the Charter (Goodway 1982, 129–​38). The shock of the picture is to actually show the usually invisible mass resistance to early industrial capitalism. Women and children are dotted across the mostly male crowd which, judging by the photograph’s clarity, must have been standing remarkably still, presumably listening to speeches. Speeches were relayed in the manner recently revived by Occupy as the human mic (abbreviation for microphone). The viewpoint situates us in the crowd, looking forward (as all the other Chartists are) but from an elevated position, suggesting we are on one of the carriages or carts that can be seen. The flag numbered two, visible on the left, indicates that the assembly was carefully organised. In the background, eighteenth-​century Georgian townhouses appear to be crowded out by working-​ class terraces and a factory, all clustered around the iconic smokestack chimney.

211

212

212

Image operations

The scene as a whole evokes the drama of the enclosure of common land that had driven former agricultural smallholders into the cities to become the industrial workforce. This is the moment of transition from one means of production to the next (in this case, from colonial feudalism to imperial capitalism). Here, too, is a new means of visual production: the daguerreotype, with the radical, democratic potential to make visual memory common. At this moment, the assembled multitude has not yet consented to what now seems to be its inevitable immiseration by, and subjection to, capitalism. They stand as the common alternative. Any echoes of our current transition to financialised capitalism with its digital media –​ sometimes common, mostly not –​are entirely intentional. So, too, the presence of 80,000 police and the charges of ‘unlawful assembly’ directed at the Chartists resonate with recent occupations. It was the sight of this counter-​power that led Thomas Carlyle to assert that ‘The history of the world is but the biography of great men’ (Mirzoeff 2011, 125ff.). Carlyle called this viewpoint ‘visuality’, generalising the military technique of visualising the battlefield. Just as the modern general had to visualise a battlefield that was too extensive to be seen, the great man visualised the flow of global history. Under the gaze of colonial visuality, all ground becomes either the battlefield of military action or land for coerced labour. Under these conditions –​just as the rank and file must obey orders and nothing else –​the commons cannot exist. It does not even have a name. For Carlyle, there is no such thing as the people, the masses, or any other form of collectivity. There is the Hero, or great man, and those he has to lead, who have only the right to be led. If they refuse, they are the mob, always designated by him as ‘Black’, be they Irish, French sans-​culottes or Haitian revolutionaries. All are revolting slaves. But the Haitians are, for Carlyle, ‘Black beyond redemption’: a condition to which we should all aspire. As capitalism constantly revolutionises social life, so the visual commons must be made and remade. It was remade in Timothy O’Sullivan’s 1861 photograph of African Americans who had participated in what W. E. B. Du Bois called ‘the general strike against slavery’ (Plate 33). Here, people have gathered for the purpose of being photographed to attest to their right to do so. At the time, their very persons were interstitial:  neither slave nor free, they were technically contraband because they had, under slave law, ‘stolen’ themselves. By presenting themselves to be seen by the camera, a machine that had been used to advertise human property, the strikers claimed a new subjectivity before and outside the law. The land they claimed for the visual commons became a material commons in 1865, when General Sherman’s Special Field Order no. 15 confiscated plantation land and redistributed it in forty-​acre allotments to the newly freed. This measurement of the commons reverberates to the present day, because reparations for the many wrongs of slavery remain unpaid. Although the opportunity to use the Reconstruction state to compel former slave owners into bankruptcy and enable bottom-​up redistribution was lost, in places like Scanlonville, South Carolina, the freed pooled their resources and labour to create a commons, purchasing land from a bankrupt plantation. Reporting on

213

The visual commons

such endeavours in 1873, the Charleston Courier rightly called it ‘colored communism’. The paper noted that ‘some of the largest plantations … are now owned and successfully conducted by colored people, who have united their resources and combine in their labor’ (repr. as ‘Negro Cooperation’, New York Times, 17 August 1873). The neighbourhood still survives today in the suburbs of Charleston. The achievement of the strikers and the commoners can be measured within their own time and across modern time. In 1865, Harvard professor Louis Agassiz went on a scientific voyage to Brazil in pursuit of global racial formations (Dos Santos Gomes 2012). The now-​notorious set of photographs taken by J. T. Zealy having failed to make race fully visible on the body of the South Carolina enslaved, Agassiz imagined that Brazil would offer clearer visions. Accompanied by the young William James, Agassiz set out to take and collect racial photographs in the plantation colony. Among the pictures he collected were those of Augusto Stahl (1828–​77), a German expatriate working in Rio. The results are strikingly similar to those from South Carolina. A woman, known only by what Agassiz presumed to be her racial type ‘Mina Igerichà’, confronts the camera wearing a magnificent headdress. Her head is tilted, her mouth slightly open (but not in a smile), her eyes look askance and defiant. Despite the resistance of the woman’s embodiment, she is engulfed by the racialising name that carries with it the spectre of annihilating murder, the social death of slavery (Ferreira da Silva 2007, 29). For Agassiz she was a ‘pure racial type’, but he had no real idea where she was from. According to colonial thought on slavery, she could not have an interior life and could not be a subject, only the object of colonial representation. This is not to withhold in any way the compelling personhood of the Mina woman: her isolation sends us a message, telling us to constitute a visual commons to which she can belong. Across the post-Reconstruction (1865-77) United States, such looking was criminalised under the new Black Codes as the offence of ‘reckless eyeballing’ meaning the look of any person designated black at any person designated white, especially from man to woman. Matt Ingram was the last person formally convicted of reckless eyeballing in the state of North Carolina in 1951. Despite having lost official legal force, the concept is still fully active in the prison-industrial complex. The command ‘Don’t eyeball me’ was documented at Abu Ghraib, where sexualised punishment was rife (Greenberg and Dratel 2005, 1294). Two examples might help explain the distinction between the scene of representation and the visual commons. One is banal, the other extraordinary. It is, to say the least, a common experience to dislike your passport or driver’s licence photograph. People will say that these photographs do not look like them and they are right. Such photographs show you as the state sees you, not as a subject but subjected, according to the careful codes of identification. The police do not, in fact, say ‘hey, you there’, as Althusser puts it (Althusser 2001, 118). They say, in effect: ‘This is you’ and they will add, ‘You are nothing’ (Ward 2013, 249). The photograph depicts your subjection and nothing else. By contrast, consider this drama of identification. Once in Buenos Aires on a warm night in the garden of Eva Perón’s former mansion, a woman I had just

213

214

214

Image operations

met told me her story under the dictatorship. Now an editor at a major publishing house, she recounted how, when she was young, her sister disappeared. Through family connections, they were able to communicate with the regime. She was taken to a police station and shown a photograph of a dead person –​in itself an astonishing moment of acceptance of state murder. She at once declared that she did not recognise it. Once the regime was over, the site of former detention and torture known as the ESMA was opened as a memorial. It displays photographs of many of the disappeared in its entrance hall. When my new friend entered the ESMA, she again saw the photograph she had seen under the dictatorship. Only now she at once recognised it as being her sister, a fact confirmed by her brother, who had not seen the picture the first time. The photograph was invisible, or perhaps un-​visible under autocracy. It could not be seen when offered by the police because the police obliterate and disappear people. It became visible only once there was autonomy. This is not just an isolated example: Argentina and Chile formed the hinge between nuclear deterrence and global counterinsurgency when the Cold War became neo-​ liberalism. And Argentina was where, in 2001, Americans began a new resistance under the slogan ‘they do not represent us’ (Sitrin and Azzellini 2014).

From Resurrection City to Zuccotti Park The experience of counter-​power creates a visual commons that returns and revolutionises itself. It was often said during that period that the Civil Rights Movement was the second Reconstruction and the commons of Reconstruction was powerfully felt on its return. As Elizabeth Abel, Maurice Berger, Leigh Raiford and others have shown, photography was the common ground of the Civil Rights claim to be visible in public space (Abel 2010; Berger 2010; Raiford 2011). It was also the counter to the permanent militarisation of social life, exemplified by Lyndon Johnson’s double war in Vietnam and war against poverty. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965), the movement looked beyond formal legal inequality to the structural violence maintaining social inequality in order to create a new commons. In his 1967 book Where Do We Go from Here?, Dr King stressed that ‘the inseparable triplets’ of racism, poverty and war required a new Reconstruction (King 1967). In 1962, Michael Harrington’s The Other America had highlighted the invisibility of the poor, showing that in 1959 an extraordinary 55 per cent of African Americans lived in poverty (Harrington 1962, 63). The Poor People’s Campaign of 1967–​68 was inseparable from the anti-​ war movement and anti-​racist direct action. It explicitly designated the poor as the ‘colonised’ within the settler colony (Goldstein 2014, 137). Connecting the movements produced a new commons. It was made visible at Resurrection City, where thousands camped along six blocks beside the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall in Washington, DC for six weeks from 13 May to 23 June 1968, just after King’s assassination. Its day-​ to-​day population was around 3,000, coordinated by the Rev. Jesse Jackson. The

215

The visual commons

600 wooden huts where the occupiers lived were designed by the architect John Wiebenson of the University of Maryland. In the city, Black Panthers mixed with white Appalachians, Native Americans and Mexican-​American farm workers at the Many Races Soul Center and the Poor People’s University. Sidney Poitier led a morning clean-​up brigade and Robert Kennedy’s funeral cortege stopped there for the exchange of mutual respects (McKnight 1998, 125ff.). The goal was to make visible Dr King’s 1967 call for a ‘radical redistribution of wealth and power’ which he openly framed as a correction to the failure to redistribute land in 1865 (Sustar 2015). By designating the commons as a city, and with redistribution of wealth as a goal, the campaign understood that common land itself did not create the commons under late capitalism. Land was a decolonial demand of the Poor People’s Campaign for Native Americans and Mexican-​ Americans rather than a general solution to poverty. The nine Poor People’s Caravans that converged in Washington included a much-​photographed Mule Train from Marks, Mississippi, to visualise the connection to Reconstruction. Land rights claims in New Mexico were made alongside Native American calls to respect the treaties and return both land and cultural property. Gender and sexual orientation were configured by residents as they chose. The city created non-​violent campaigns for a living wage –​not the minimum wage but a basic wage on which a person could live. As the Vietnam War intensified, there were active anti-​war protests, including the first burning of draft cards by women (Plate 34). The goal was to generate a visible and photographable commons capable of reimagining the United States from below. New York photographer Jill Freedman joined the occupation because of her anger at the assassination of Dr King. She lived in Resurrection City from its first days to the eviction. Among the thousands of photographs of the occupation, hers are perhaps the most resonant because she was part of the commons. She called her book of pictures of Resurrection City Old News. ‘Poverty’, she wrote, ‘is ancient history’ (Freedman 1970, 18). She was not just an observer, she was there to work: In our town, work meant demonstrating. And talking man power, woman power, Chicano power, Indian power, black power, white power, people power, soul power. Claiming all our human rights to dignity. Every day. (Freedman 1970, 34)

Most of the media photographs concentrated on the mud, the result of non-​stop torrential rain that summer, or moments of violence. Freedman was aware of all that but saw what else was happening (Plate 35): Dream City had old nightmares. People messing up. Turning their rage on themselves and others, showing how being poor can make you crazy, can kill you long before your body stops. Yet every day I saw incredible acts of kindness and compassion. And I couldn’t understand how they could be so beautiful. (Freedman 1970, 116)

Like the occupations in 2011, Resurrection City attracted the poor, but rather than being praised for offering care, the encampment was criticised for making poverty visible, which was, of course, why it was there.

215

216

216

Image operations

Intersection with the future The very name Resurrection City implied that it was something the function of which was to return. From our perspective, we can see its interaction of indigenous and urban direct action and demands as part of a transition from a commons of the ground to a grounded urban commons. Since 2008, there has for the first time ever been a global majority living in cities. The commons will have to be urban. At the same time, landless, indigenous and peasant commons from Latin and South America have given the first successful forms to the commons in the era of financial globalisation. The global social movements are a process of imagining how such commons might work in global cities. From Cairo to Madrid, New York and Hong Kong, some of the world’s largest cities have taken up this challenge. This interactive process began with the Zapatista uprising of 1 January 1994. The Zapatistas emerged from the Lacandon jungle, at the moment when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) legalised neo-​liberalism across North America, to claim the rights of the indigenous to autonomy. Their cosmology argues for ‘one world in which many worlds fit’: a version of the ‘one culture, many natures’ indigenous cosmology of the global present (Sitrin and Azzellini 2014, 15). As this movement spread across South and Latin America, it generated a widespread rejection of hierarchical governance, expressed in Argentina during the 2001 uprising that drove out no less than five presidents, using the slogan: ‘¡que se vayan todos! They should all go!’ Today’s movements have rejected the idea that democracy means representation. Rather, as Jacques Rancière has put it, ‘[o]‌riginally representation was the exact contrary of democracy’ (Rancière 2009, 53). It is instead an ‘oligarchic form’, precisely the mode of governance that is so palpable under global neo-​liberalism. The commons that is endeavouring to emerge is the interaction of indigenous and urban knowledge. Perhaps the most striking example of this interaction was the People’s Agreement of Cochabamba (2010), a document drawn up in response to the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change that is already visible in countries, like Bolivia, which depend on glaciers for drinking water. Rather than offering a hi-​tech design solution, the People’s Agreement proposes to the peoples of the world the recovery, revalorisation and strengthening of the knowledge, wisdom and ancestral practices of indigenous peoples, which are affirmed in the thought and practices of ‘Living Well’ (People’s Agreement). In November 2014, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change announced that carbon emissions must cease rising immediately. ‘Living well’, or making a life, is now a matter of global necessity, not communal imaginings. What have we learned so far? From the occupations in 1968 to the Zapatista uprising and the social movements of 2011, creating a commons has centred on the practices of care and mutual aid. The kitchen was the heart of Resurrection City, where some families were able to eat three meals a day for the first time. At Zuccotti Park, Kitchen was the first working group to be set up, and the most

217

The visual commons

important. It used local and organic food wherever possible and fed hundreds. The free library in Zuccotti Park was part of later projects to create a free university. This work centred on learning: on how to learn rather than on an apprenticeship to a profession. Like Resurrection City, Occupy came to learn that ‘all our grievances are connected’, as the Maypole in Union Square declared in 2012. And one of the first slogans of Occupy was: ‘You are not a loan’, meaning both that you are part of a commons and that you cannot be equated with the sum of your financial obligations. You cannot build a commons on debt. You cannot survive on a planet with massively unresolved climate debt. In Detroit, Ferguson, Istanbul and many other places, we have learned that each and every one of us has the right to look and the right to be seen. And in Hong Kong in 2014, we were asking: how can a city be different from an empire? What does that change look like? Let’s go and find out.

Note 1 This is a work-​in-​progress around the concept of the visual commons. My thanks go to the editors for their interest in publishing it in that format.

References Abel, Elizabeth. 2010. Signs of the Times: The Visual Politics of Jim Crow. Berkeley: University of California Press. Althusser, Louis. 2001. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Translated by Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review Press. Berger, Maurice. 2010. For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Boggs, Grace Lee, and Scott Kurashige. 2012. The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-​First Century. Berkeley: University of California Press. Colectivo Situaciones. 2005. ‘Something More on Research Militancy.’ ephemera 5(4): 602–​14. Conrad, Robert. 1972. The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery 1850–​1888. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dos Santos Gomes, Flávio. 2012. ‘ “Pure Race” African and Ethnic Diversity in Nineteenth Century Rio de Janeiro.’ 8 May. Accessed 4 December 2015. http://​mirrorofrace.org/​ gomes/​. Ferreira da Silva, Denise. 2007. Toward a Global Idea of Race. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Freedman, Jill. 1970. Old News: Resurrection City. New York: Grossman Publishers. Goldstein, Aloysha. 2014. Poverty in Common: The Politics of Community Action during the American Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Goodway, David. 1982. London Chartism, 1830–​1848. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

217

218

218

Image operations Greenberg, Karen J., and Joshua L. Dratel, eds. 2005. The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib. New York: Cambridge University Press. Gutiérrez Aguilar, Raquel. 2014. Rhythms of the Pachakuti: Indigenous Uprising and State Power in Bolivia. Translated by Tracy A.D. Skar. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Harrington, Michael. 1962. The Other America: Poverty in the United States. New York: Simon and Schuster. Honour, Hugh. 1989. Image of the Black. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. King, Martin Luther, Jr. 1967. Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Boston: Beacon Press. Kossoy, Boris. 1976. ‘Hercules Florence, Pioneer of Photography in Brazil.’ Image 20(1): 12–​21. McKnight, Gerald D. 1998. The Last Crusade: Martin Luther King Jr., the FBI and the Poor People’s Campaign. Boulder, CO: Westview. Marx, Karl. 1852. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Accessed 4 December 2015. www.marxists.org/​archive/​marx/​works/​1852/​18th-​brumaire/​ch07.htm. Mirzoeff, Nicholas. 2003. ‘The Shadow and the Substance: Race, Photography and the Index.’ In Only Skin Deep, edited by Coco Fusco and Brian Wallis, 111–​28. New York: Abrams. Mirzoeff, Nicholas 2011. The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality. Durham: Duke University Press. New York Times. 1873. ‘Negro Cooperation’, 17 August. Raiford, Leigh. 2011. Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare:  Photography and the African American Freedom Struggle. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Rancière, Jacques. 2009. Hatred of Democracy. New York: Verso. Sitrin, Marina and Dario Azzellini. 2014. They Can’t Represent Us: Reinventing Democracy from Greece to Occupy. New York: Verso. Smith, Andrea. 2014. ‘Native Studies at the Horizon of Death:  Theorizing Ethnographic Entrapment and Settler Self-​Reflexivity.’ In Theorizing Native Studies, edited by Audra Simpson and Andrea Smith, 207–​34. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Sustar, Lee. 2015. ‘The Evolution of Dr. King.’ Jacobin 1(19). Accessed 4 December 2015. www.jacobinmag.com/​2015/​01/​martin-​luther-​king-​socialist/​. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 1998. ‘Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism.’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4(3): 469–​88. Ward, Jesmyn. 2013. Men We Reaped: A Memoir. New York: Bloomsbury. Winters, Paxton. n.d. ‘Bororo –​Mato Grosso, Brazil.’ Television report available at World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, Cochabamba, Bolivia, 22 April. Accessed 13 October 2014. http://​pwccc.wordpress.com/​2010/​04/​24/​ peoples-​agreement/​.

219

Afterword James Elkins

The conference from which this book grew was one of the most memorable and challenging of recent years. Its brief was to consider the concept of ‘image operations’. It was from the start a double subject: on the one hand, Charlotte Klonk and Jens Eder were interested in photographs and videos that ‘intervene directly in the world and change it in far-​reaching ways’, including terrorist videos and other images of warfare that impact ‘immediately and concretely on people and bodies’. On the other hand, they were interested in images that are ‘components of media practices’, existing as parts of complex, integrated, multimedial, networked operations. The conference also included a number of papers on medical imaging, including laparoscopies, endoscopies and Sun Microsystems’ Da Vinci Machine, which permits surgeons to operate remotely using virtual reality. The binding idea was that both the Da Vinci Machine and a video made by a drone involve operations and potential casualties. In both cases the images ‘operate’, and in both the contexts and outcomes are matters of life and death. I mention this, even though this book focuses on warfare and journalism and not on medicine, because it shows how volatile and pertinent this subject is, and how important it is to find analytic and historical terms with which to discuss it. In this Afterword I  will concentrate on five fundamental issues that are threaded through the contributions to this book and to the originating conference. I do this, rather than attempting to discuss each chapter individually, in hopes of continuing the very important questions raised by Charlotte Klonk and Jens Eder.

What is the history of the interest in image operations? A first order of business is to consider the reasons the concept of image operations became visible and urgent in the years just before 2014. It is important, in other words, to historicise our own interests, in order to see our academic affiliations, our politics and our philosophic resources.

220

220

Image operations

The immediate reason for the concern with image operations is recent politics. Perhaps since 9/​11, and certainly since Abu Ghraib and the attacks on representations of Muhammad, there has been an accelerating interest in how images act in the world, beyond the gallery and outside of fine art. Shortly before the ‘Image Operations’ conference in April 2014, the journalist Seymour Hersh claimed that Abu Ghraib images include videos of boys sodomised in front of their mothers (February 2014). Since the conference there have been a number of other events that have made the conference’s subject even more pertinent:  Barack Obama acknowledged that a drone strike killed hostages (April 2015); there have been many more Islamic State execution videos; and as several of the contributors note, the offices of Charlie Hebdo were attacked (January 2015). W. J. T. Mitchell’s Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/​11 to the Present (2010) and Nicholas Mirzoeff ’s The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality (2011) and Watching Babylon: The War in Iraq and Global Visual Culture (2005) are examples of books that deal directly with such images, and this book includes recent developments of their work. But analyses of events like the Charlie Hebdo cartoon or the Abu Ghraib photographs are just proximate examples, I think, of a more general tendency: a growing interest in understanding images outside of art. There is, for example, the resurgence of interest in iconoclasm, idolatry and the image wars, whose principal document is Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art (2002). Mitchell’s book What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images (2005, original lecture 1996) proposes the conceit that images are the desiring objects, and that they want something of us; his purpose was to unsettle the normal discourse of agency and open the way, half-​seriously, to a revival of animism. Gottfried Boehm’s concern with ‘iconic difference’ is also a way of acknowledging the peculiar presence of images and the actions and thoughts they seem to elicit from us (Boehm 2007). Marie-​José Mondzain’s L’image peut-​elle tuer? (2002) is concerned with the theological significance of images and their relation to violence in the Judaeo-​Christian tradition. Hans Belting’s study An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body (2014, German original 2001) was an existential and anthropological attempt to rethink how images work in various cultures. Horst Bredekamp’s Theorie des Bildakts (2007) and his research group Bildakt und Verkörperung (Picture Act and Embodiment) (2008–​11) were also concerned with the ways images make their way through the world. The root of many of these diverse lines of inquiry is, broadly speaking, the advent of poststructuralism in the 1960s, and the turn away from aesthetics and toward other meanings of images. David Freedberg’s Power of Images (1989) is one of the first academic markers of this interest, although it could also be traced to English cultural studies in the 1970s and Anglophone visual studies beginning in the mid-​1980s. What has mattered in all these cases is that images somehow work in the world, rather than as representations or markers of fine art values. It helps to bear in mind this anti-​or post-​Kantian, anti-​or non-​aesthetic orientation, because the field is still so labile that it attracts a wide variety of theorisation. There is a bewildering range of theoretical sources in this book.

221

Afterword

Klonk and Eder also mention the role of the ‘new media ecology’ (Hoskins and O’Loughlin 2010); the camera as agent and the function of the ‘frame’ (Goffman 1986; Entman 2003; Butler 2010); and theories of ‘embodied visuality’ (Ghosh 2011). A full inventory of the contributions to this volume would yield dozens more. One sign that a conceptual field is not yet settled is that each scholar feels free to assemble her own set of theorisations. Bishnupriya Ghosh, for example, draws on Mitchell, Belting, Mondzain, Peirce, the sociologist of religion David Morgan (Morgan 2012) and Diana Eck’s classic study of Hindu visuality (Eck 1981). In the coming decade, I  expect the range of references will narrow, and the readings of pertinent texts will become more uniform. (My own choice for an emergent theory would be affect, which is emphasised in different ways in this book; Eder’s concept of ‘affective structure’ is central here.) As things are now, it is important not to lose sight of the sea change away from aesthetics and toward politics, which informs virtually all the critical choices made in this book. Judgements against aesthetic qualities and values are the invisible accompaniments, and sometimes determinants, of a number of chapters in this book.

What is the place of aesthetics? In the book Beyond the Aesthetic and the Anti-​Aesthetic (2013) I gathered about fifty scholars, critics and artists to discuss the relation between aesthetic work (broadly identified, for our purposes, with modernism) and anti-​or non-​aesthetic work (equally broadly construed as political, gender or identity-​based work, informed by poststructuralism, and beginning with Hal Foster’s Anti-​Aesthetic in 1983. There is no consensus formulation of the relation between aesthetic and non-​aesthetic values in contemporary art, and no emergent third term or synthesis of the two. The best critics can do at the moment is watch to see how aesthetic values are assigned, and what work aesthetics is thought to do in the context of pre-​eminently political and social practices. Trevor Paglen, who contributed to the 2014 conference, provides a good example. His series of photographs of ‘secret’ military installations, classified military satellites and US military dark sites engage the logic of testimony and evidence. Paglen presents his work as art that addresses issues of political significance through a practice of documentation. Photographs with titles like KEYHOLE/​ IMPROVED CRYSTAL Optical Reconnaissance Satellite Near Scorpio (USA 129) (2007; a photo of a satellite streaking across a night sky) or Illuminated Workspace and Worker (2008; a telephoto picture of a window in the National Reconnaissance Office, Chantilly, VA) look like the kind of surveillance pictures that the military provides, but they cannot be mined for further information. When Paglen was asked what he thinks about this, he answered: Photo interpretation is one of those murky arts (as we’ve seen most strikingly with the infamous Colin Powell UN presentation [in 2003]) but having those images

221

222

222

Image operations somehow helps to put the things they purportedly depict into our cultural/​political consciousness. In my own work I am wholly unconcerned with any evidentiary role of the images –​they are really meant to be art images. A successful image for me (in my own work) is one that makes a statement and simultaneously undermines any possibility of a traditional truth claim based on that image. It’s a sense of seeing/​not seeing that I’m trying to capture. There is also a performative gesture I’m interested in –​what are the politics of photographing some of these things, even though the photographs themselves don’t show anything? (Email to the author, October 2009)

This is an eloquent statement of a fine art position in relation to documentary photography of political subjects: Paglen does not hope people will use his photographs as evidence. He is interested partly in testimony and partly in how images can simultaneously make statements and undermine them. It matters that the taking of such pictures can itself be a politics, even though the pictures themselves ‘don’t show anything’. In terms of Wittgenstein’s distinction between showing and telling, the first claim is that a photograph can appear to tell, and yet not tell: it can have an appearance of telling, a feeling of telling. The second claim is that there is a political force in not showing in conjunction with ambiguously telling and not telling. Both Paglen’s positions are articulate in their acknowledgment that both politics and aesthetics are partly occluded. Such an acknowledgment might be especially useful if it were applied to the subjects of this book, because it might then appear that aesthetics –​directly addressed by only a few contributors –​erodes politics, and politics –​addressed in different ways by every contributor –​both obscures and depends on an often unacknowledged aesthetics.

Strong and weak interpretations of ‘image operations’ In her introductory remarks to the 2014 conference, Klonk noted that ‘images do not only represent or depict. They build on, augment and create events.’ Some of those images, in turn, ‘bring forth strong direct effects on represented persons and their bodies’, in Jens Eder’s formulation. Hence, Klonk said, the expression image operations needs to be understood literally ‘as well as linguistically and semiotically …. [P]‌eople, for example, are beheaded in order to create videos.’ That astonishing fact –​that terrorist groups have executed prisoners in order to generate new videos –​forms an extreme point against which more moderate positions can be measured. Let me divide these remarks into two possibilities. Either images effectively are operations, and need to be reconceived as such, or they involve, enact, entail or produce operations. The former is a ‘strong’ reading in the sense that it has ontological consequences; the latter is ‘weak’ in the (non-​judgemental) sense that it makes images more complex by embedding them in new contexts.

223

Afterword

The touchstone for the strong reading is Harun Farocki, who is analysed in this book by Volker Pantenburg. It has been tempting to say, with Farocki, that some contemporary digital images are ‘operative’, that is, they ‘do not represent an object, but rather are part of an operation’ (Farocki 2004). Some of Mondzain’s remarks at the 2014 conference were also in harmony with a strong identification of image and operation. ‘If image is neither theory nor thing but an operation’, she said, ‘then we need to acknowledge two registers of its efficiency: a sensible presence which enables a singular space and temporality, and, on the other hand, the image as a guerrilla operator.’ But this ‘strong’ reading is never, I think, literally true. When a video-​enabled missile flies to its target, the image sent to the operators is ‘operative’ in the sense that it provides part of the information that guides the missile, and also in that the image itself could be said to participate in the operation of destruction (of itself and the target); but adequate, verifiable or deniable representation of objects is a condition for the operation itself. It is certainly the case that technologies such as drones involve a ‘complex socio-​technological infrastructure’, as Tom Holert says, which comprise ‘a powerful ideo-​technological entity’: but that may not be enough to claim that such technologies or operative images are new ways of seeing, requiring reconceptualisation of the image. Instead what may be involved is a radical increase in the complexity of imaging. What concerns the contributors to this book is not only that some images might have become operations, but that some images are of interest primarily because they are embedded in networks of operations. The images enable, interpret and sometimes control: and at the same time a number of contributors would also like to say, with Farocki, that representation is no longer the purpose, and that image has become operation. This produces a rhetorical and conceptual tension that I think is formative to this book. Because no images are only operations, claims about image operations function as rhetorical pointers, moving arguments forward and away from older concerns with representation and depiction. In the coming years I think the concept of image operations might modulate its investment in a radical, non-​depictive reconceptualisation of the image and focus instead on the complexities of image production (see Eder, this volume; Holert, this volume; Lenoir and Caldwell, this volume). One way this change might take place is by retaining the move away from the consideration of images as objects (‘on this level’, Pantenburg writes, ‘it would indeed no longer be justified to speak of images’) while avoiding the strong ontological claim in favour of an interest in the complexities of contemporary militarised images (as Pantenburg continues, ‘the visual presentation of the data is a mere epiphenomenon of processes of calculation’). Alternatively, what might ‘blur’ is not the nature of the image as an engine of representation, but the nature of agency around the image. Lenoir and Caldwell, for example, conclude that ‘the image absorbs human agency on route to eliminating it altogether’: a more frightening and less conceptually implausible alternative to the idea that images no longer represent, but are parts of ‘operations’.

223

224

224

Image operations

When are image operations more about operations than images? Mitchell does not reproduce the iconic image of the hooded man from Abu Ghraib in his book Cloning Terror (2010), ostensibly because it has been sufficiently seen, but arguably also because he is less interested in the visual detail of the image than in its dissemination. Mirzoeff does not use many images in Watching Babylon (2005), ostensibly because the ‘weaponised images’ of the Iraq war were largely produced by the military-​industrial complex and therefore not easily susceptible to new readings, but possibly also because he is not concerned with the visual particularities of the images as much as their political life. When the subject is how images operate, it is not always necessary to attend to the images in detail. Christian Christensen’s essay on a video of a helicopter strike in Baghdad raises the question of whether or not the afterlife of the video is different from the afterlife of analogously politically sensitive texts. The video, known as Collateral Murder, was posted by Julian Assange’s site WikiLeaks in 2010. The entire WikiLeaks files, available online, were approximately 15 MB in 2014; the great majority of files were texts. It has been said that the texts leaked by Assange, Edward Snowden and others require extensive interpretation in order to become meaningful; but aside from that question of efficiency, it is not clear that the critical literature makes a fundamental difference here between images and texts. As highly political images are disseminated, their visual properties and specificities can become less important, and that is especially true of images where the fact of an object or event is more important than the details of the event. This suggests several questions that could be put, inter alia, to some of the uses of images discussed in this book. When the subject of an essay is a political regime or ideology, as it is for example in Mirzoeff ’s recent work, might the arguments be made as well using texts or ideas? What specific visual qualities distinguish examples like the Collateral Murder video, or pictures of Irom Sharmila, or videos taken by missiles, from analogously ‘hot’, affective, ‘weaponised’, politically powerful texts? Are there cases where the ‘particular forms of agency and action … enabled or disabled by image usage’, in Sam Gregory’s words, are indistinguishable from the agencies and actions of texts? When are images no longer our subject?

Is the analysis of image operations inherently biased? The controversy that followed the publication of twelve cartoons of Muhammad in the Danish paper Jyllands-​Posten in 2005 was partly the result of the conflicted attitudes in the Danish press. The original idea had been to test to see whether Danish cartoonists felt intimidated, or worked under full freedom of the press. Several journalists and scholars involved in the issue felt that the paper’s motivations went beyond their stated aim of testing self-​censorship. The media scholar Peter Hervik noted the Jyllands-​Posten’s desire to provoke and insult Danish

225

Afterword

Muslims, and Peder Bundgaard, a cartoonist who drew one of the least offensive of the twelve –​the image of Muhammad with a star and crescent, at the top of the page –​felt, according to Hervik, that he and his colleagues had been lured into the swing by a newspaper, whose motives have been self-​assertion and provocation for the sake of provocation. Incitement was a necessarily unstated but widely understood purpose. And yet in the repeated republications of the cartoons, including their installation on the Wikipedia page ‘Jyllands-​Posten Muhammad Cartoons Controversy’, in the many assertions by journalists such as Christopher Hitchens that the West continue to assert ‘the right to criticise not merely Islam but religion in general’, and even in studies by Western anthropologists and sociologists, there is an ongoing lack of acknowledgment of the insult that the apparently simple expression of freedom of speech continues to perpetrate. It is possible that one of the limits of the European and North American discourse of images, including Mitchell’s, Mirzoeff ’s and Klonk’s, is a dissonance between the way the discourse focuses on images  –​even when they are transformed into operations  –​and the plausible reception of that scholarship in the places where such ‘image operations’ take place. Verena Straub’s chapter includes the claim that ‘martyr operations are image operations’. She analyses the pictorial strategies and artistic choices made by the martyrs and their commemorative photographers. It is a cogent essay, which seems to be a reasonably complete inventory of visual properties that can reasonably be found in the images. (It is also, incidentally, a good example of an essay in which specific visual properties of the images do matter.) Yet there is dissonance here between the implication that an interpretation in terms of the image is adequate, and the plausible reaction of a member of the martyrs’ communities. Presumably, what is at issue in these photographs and videos for people in the martyrs’ communities is injustice, sacrilege, piety and duty, not pictorial details, composition, framing, gendering, identity, pictorial precedents or art. I cannot imagine a family or friend of one of the martyrs discussed in Straub’s chapter reading her text and finding it adequate, persuasive or useful; I can’t imagine the chapter appearing as anything but insulting and impertinent. This dissonance, to give it a more neutral appellation, is a serious issue in the entire enterprise of analysing image operations, even if it appears more subtly when the subjects are videos from missiles or other products of military imaging. I wonder, for example, if Mirzoeff ’s ‘visual commons’ could be applied to an exchange like the one I am imagining between Straub’s account and the accounts proposed by her subjects, the martyrs: such an exchange might well be ‘the grounds of freedom’, but could there ever be a conference in which a martyr’s family responds in kind –​in words and texts –​to Straub’s chapter? These are only five of the many demanding and unresolved themes raised in this book. I think the future of visual studies, Bildwissenschaft and art criticism needs to lead through the paths charted by Image Operations: certainly this book is one of the best conceptualisations of the contemporary image.

225

226

226

Image operations

References Belting, Hans. 2014. An Anthropology of Images:  Picture, Medium, Body. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [German original 2001.] Boehm, Gottfried. 2007. Wie Bilder Sinn erzeugen:  Die Macht des Zeigens. Berlin: Berlin University Press. Bredekamp, Horst. 2007. Theorie des Bildakts. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Butler, Judith. 2010. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? London: Verso. Eck, Diana L. 1981. Darśan:  Seeing the Divine Image in India. Chambersburg, PA: Anima Books. Elkins, James, and Harper Montgomery. 2013. Beyond the Aesthetic and the Anti-​Aesthetic. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. Entman, Robert. 2003. Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Farocki, Harun. 2004. ‘Phantom Images.’ Public 29: 12–​22. Foster, Hal. 1983. Anti-​ Aesthetic:  Essays on Postmodern Culture. Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press. Freedberg, David. 1989. The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Goffman, Erving. 1986. Frame Analysis:  An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Ghosh, Bishnupriya. 2011. Global Icons:  Apertures to the Popular. Durham, NC:  Duke University Press. Hoskins, Andrew, and Ben O’Loughlin. 2010. War and Media: The Emergence of Diffused War. Cambridge: Polity Press. Latour, Bruno, and Peter Weibel, eds. 2002. Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mirzoeff, Nicholas. 2005. Watching Babylon:  The War in Iraq and Global Visual Culture. London: Routledge. Mirzoeff, Nicholas. 2011. The Right to Look:  A  Counterhistory of Visuality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Mitchell, William J. Thomas. 2005. What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Original lecture 1996.] Mitchell, William J. Thomas. 2010. Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/​11 to the Present. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mondzain, Marie-​José. 2002. L’image peut-​elle tuer? Paris: Bayard. Morgan, David. 2012. The Embodied Eye:  Religious Visual Culture and the Social Life of Feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press.

1

Plate 1  Desktop screenshot by W. J. T. Mitchell

2

Plate 2  Aby Warburg, Mnemosyne Atlas, plate 45, 1924

3

newgenrtpdf

Plate 3  Neil Brown, Dennis Del Favero, Matthew McGinity, Jeffrey Shaw, Peter Weibel, T_​Visionarium II, iCinema Scientia Facility at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Festival, 2008

4

Plate 4  Unit coordination in Virtual Battlespace 2, Bohemia Interactive Simulations, 2007

Plate 5 The ARC4 augmented-​reality display for the soldier of the future

5

Plate 6  Plan X visualises networking information on large touchscreen monitors to allow intuitive conduct of cyberwarfare, DARPA, 2014

Plate 7  Geospatial Intelligence conference (GEOINT) in Tampa, Florida, April 2014

6

newgenrtpdf

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

7

newgenrtpdf

(e)

(f)

Plate 8a–​f  Predator C Avenger UAV Great War Machine, General Atomics promotional video, c. 2009

Plate 9  Predator Sensor, USAF video, 2014

8

newgenrtpdf

Plate 10  #NotABugSplat, A giant art installation targets predator drone operators, April 2014, photograph taken from a small drone

i

Plate 11  Montage of CCTV footage of the men behind the 21 July 2005 failed bomb attack in London

ii

Plate 12  Charles Maurin, Ravachol, 1893

Plate 13  Arrest of Muktar Said Ibrahim and Ramzi Mohammed on 29 July 2005 in London

iii

Plate 14 Video testimony by Sana Yusif Muhaydli, broadcast on 9 April 1985 on Lebanese television

Plate 15  Photograph of Dareen Abu Aisheh, handed out by her family in Nablus on 28 February 2002

iv

Plate 16  Photograph of Ayat al-​Akhras, presumably taken on 29 March 2002

Plate 17  Photograph of Reem Riyashi with her three-​year-​old daughter

v

Plate 18  Portrait of Eliot Higgins, at his house, in his town and at work, Exposing the Invisible film series, 2014

vi

Plate 19  Reference image of Iranian 107mm rocket (above) and occurrence of Iranian rocket in Syrian war video (below), Exposing the Invisible film series, 2014

vii

Plate 20  Rajwa and co-​activist of the Mashaa group at work, Exposing the Invisible film series, 2014

Plate 21  Connecting Nabih Berri, Speaker of the Parliament of Lebanon, to his coastal house, Exposing the Invisible film series, 2014

viii

Plate 22  Hagit Keysar’s work–archives in Jerusalem (left) and a still from video of House Demolition in East Jerusalem by Haitham Khatib (right), Exposing the Invisible film series, 2014

Plate 23  Kids and kites, Exposing the Invisible film series, 2014 © Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski

ix

Plate 24  Portrait of James Bridle (above), image of rendered drone as seen on online hobbyist forum (middle) and Bridle’s drone model in car park (below), Exposing the Invisible film series, 2014

x

Plate 25  Render drone: canonical but deceptive drone image, Exposing the Invisible film series, 2014

Plate 26  Real-​sized drone model in the car park, Exposing the Invisible film series, 2014

xi

Plate 27  The Most AMAZING Video on the Internet #Egypt #jan25

Plate 28  Kenya, 11 witches burnt alive, from kaotal.com

Plate 29  Live-​streamed arrest in Brazil

xii

Plate 30  Irom Sharmila in Tales from the Margins (2006)

Plate 31  Postcard from ‘Postcards for Irom’ campaign

xiii

Plate 32  Protesters hold banner of Irom Sharmila’s image in Srinagar

xiv

Plate 33 Timothy O’Sullivan, Untitled (Slaves, J.  J. Smith’s Plantation, near Beaufort, South Carolina), 1861

Plate 34  Jill Freedman, Untitled (woman burning draft card), 1968

xv

Plate 35  Jill Freedman, Untitled (Rev. Kirkpatrick), 1968

227

Index

Abel, Elizabeth 214 abolitionism 209–​12 Abu Aisheh, Dareen 143–​4, Plate 15 Abu Ghraib prison 4, 14, 38, 121, 126, 129, 220, 224 Adams, Eddie 38 Adorno, Theodor 135 adversarial emotions 66 aesthetic values 221 affect 10, 64–​5, 109, 129, 202, 221 affective cues 67–​70 affective image operations 63–​75 affective structures 71–​4 Afghanistan 104, 121–​6, 189 Agamben, Giorgio 80–​1, 154 Agassiz, Louis 213 agency (of images and media) 7, 15, 56, 89, 119, 141, 184, 222 Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud 29 Akbar, Shahzad 111 al-​Akhras, Ayat 144–​5, Plate 16 al Aloul, Ayman 74–​5 al-​Aqsa Martyrs Brigade 142–​4 al-​Idris, Wafa 142–​3 Alexander II, Czar of Russia 130–​1 al-​Qaeda 7, 133, 141 Althusser, Louis 213 America’s Army (videogame) 92–​5, 98 Amnesty International 70–​1 ‘amplified individualism’ 188 Andersen, Robin 119–​20 Anderson, Patrick 199–​200 Apel, Dora 13 Arab Spring 169, 185 archives 16–​17, 118, 154–​6, 159

Argentina 154, 213–​14, 216 art history 80–​3, 201–​2 Askanius, Tina 186 Assad, Bashar 30 Assange, Julian 224 assemblage 79 Atta, Mohammed 132–​4 ‘augmented reality’ 91–​2 Augustine, St 28 Auschwitz 55 Autonomous Real-​Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance (ARGUS) 110 Azoulay, Ariella xi, 16 Baader, Andreas 133 Bakunin, Mikhail 130 Barthes, Roland 40, 50–​3, 153–​4, 201 A Beautiful Mind 84 beheadings 2–​5, 9, 39, 141 Behram, Noor 111 Belting, Hans 202, 204, 220 Ben Gurion, David 163 Benjamin, Walter 101, 160, 164 Berger, John 37, 40 Berger, Maurice 214 Bilderatlas 79–​84 Bildwissenschaft 50, 53, 225 bin Laden, Osama 6–​7 binaries, use of 39–​42, 46–​7 Bing, Gertrud 81 bio-​icons 17, 200–​1 Bitomsky, Hartmut 55 Bleiker, Roland 14 Boehme, Gottfried 220 Boggs, Grace Lee 209

228

228

Index Bolter, Jay 6 Boot, Max 89 Borges, Jorge 25, 33 Bororo people 210 boyd, danah 185 Brazil 192 Brecht, Bertolt 55–​6 Bredekamp, Horst 13, 141, 220 Breivik, Anders Behring 133 Bridle, James 107, 169, 171, 179–​81, Plate 24 Brown, Michael 124 Bundgaard, Peder 225 Burma 188–​91 Bush, George W. 29–​30 Butler, Judith 39, 112, 129, 135 Caldwell, Luke xi, 10, 16, 223 Cambodia 154 Cameron, David 69 Card, Orson Scott 93 Carlyle, Thomas 212 Carruthers, Susan L. 120–​1, 126 Carter, Kevin 1 Cartier-​Bresson, Henri 45 Cebrowski, Arthur 89 Central Intelligence Agency 103 Chad, Elias 147 Charlie Hebdo murders (2015) 39, 220 Chartist movement 211–​12 Chmagh, Saeed 2 Chouliaraki, Lilie 31, 185–​93 Christensen, Christian xi, 13, 31, 63, 69, 121–​3, 224 CICR see Red Cross civil rights movement 214 Clark, Ian 29 Clarke, Simon 65 Clinton, Bill 104 Clinton, Hillary 29 Coleman, James 79 Collateral Murder (video) 1–​2, 5, 11, 16, 73, 118, 121–​6, 224 collective emotion 65 colonialism 210 ‘compassion fatigue’ 4, 8 conflict, mediatisation of 4 visualisation of 169–​70 co-​present experience 191–​2 core metaphors 32–​4 cosmology 211, 216 crime drama 83

Croitoru, Joseph 139 Crowd Sourced Formal Verification (CSFV) programme 97–​8 Darboven, Hanne 80 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) 90–​2, 96–​7, 106, 110 Der Derian, James 119 detective stories 83–​4 devotional literacies 201–​3 Dewey, John 203 diasporic communities 33 Didi-​Huberman, Georges 82 digital technology 10, 134, 169 diplomacy 28–​9 ‘distant witnessing’ 184–​8, 191–​3 Drew, Richard 128–​30, 135 drones 16, 101–​12, 169, 179–​81, Plates 25 and 26 game-​changing nature of 101–​3 Du Bois, W. E. B. 212 Dyer, Richard 201 Earle, Augustus 210 Eck, Diana 202, 204, 221 Eder, Jens xi–​xii, 10, 64, 221 Elkins, James xii, 13, 17, 221 emotion collective or shared 65–​6 and images 66–​9 political 64–​6 reflective or communicative 68 ‘emotional contagion’ 72, 74 empathy with opponents 66 empirical questions 7–​8 Ender’s Game (novel) 93–​4, 97–​8 Ensslin, Gudrun 133 Entman, Robert 32 ‘ephemeral communicative spaces’ 121 epistemic potential of images 54 ethical issues 8, 44–​5, 146, 192–​3 ethnic cleansing 162, 164 evidence, exhibition of 71–​3 Eye/​Machine installation (Farocki) 49–​51, 55–​8 Facebook 70, 188 Fagan, Stuart I. 26 Falkland Islands 32 The Family of Man exhibition (MoMA, 1955) 43–​4, 152–​4 Farocki, Harun 7, 12, 15, 49–​59, 223

229

Index Fauor, Hadi 187 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 132 Ferreira da Silva, Denise 210 film 1, 49–​61, 79, 83–​4, 171, 182, 199, 206 see also videos film studies 13–​15, 55–​6, 83 Fiore-​Silfvast, Brittany 119, 126 Florence, Hercules 209–​11 Flusser, Vilém 50, 52–​3 Foley, James 2 foreign policy 33 Foster, Hal 221 Foucault, Michel 33–​4, 81 framing mechanisms 40, 129 Freedberg, David 81–​2, 84, 201, 220 Freedman, Jill 215, Plates 34 and 35 Frenkel-​Brunswik, Else 135 Freud, Sigmund 82 Fukushima disaster (2011) 30 Furness, Thomas III 90 Future Combat System (FCS) 95–​6, 98 Galtung, Johan 31 Garstka, John 89 gender roles 144–​6 see also women, role and status of General Atomics 107, 110 General Dynamics 105–​7 Geneva Conventions 123 Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) ­conference 104, 219, Plate 7 Géricault, Théodore 128–​9 Ghandi, Leela 155 Ghosh, Bishnupriya xii, 7, 10, 12, 14, 17, 63, 201–​2, 221 Ginzburg, Carlo 80, 82 Goodman, Nelson 37 Google 190 Graitl, Joseph 143 Gregory, Derek 107 Gregory, Sam xii, 6, 10, 13, 17, 224 Groys, Boris 138–​9 Grusin, Richard 6 Guantanamo Bay 121 Gürsel, Zeynep Devrim xii–​xiii, 11–​12, 15, 25–​6 Gutiérrez Aguilar, Raquel 209 Hall, Stuart 14, 69 Hamas 138–​45 Hamilton, Alexander 26 Hankey, Stephanie xiii, 6, 10, 12, 17, 107, 188

Hariman, Robert 201 Harrington, Michael 214 Harrison, Mark 141 Hasso, Frances 143 Hastings, Michael 111 Hattler, Max 70–​1 Hersh, Seymour 220 Hervik, Peter 224–​5 Higgins, Eliot 171–​3, 181, 188, Plate 18 Hinegardner, Livia 186 Hines, Pierre 109 Hitchens, Christopher 225 Hobbes, Thomas 26 Hoffman, Bruce 131 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von 80 Hoggett, Paul 65 Holert, Tom xiii, 10, 12, 16, 31, 63, 179, 223 Homeland (TV series) 83 Horkheimer, Max 135 Hoskins, Andrew 32, 64, 185 Howard, Ron 84 Human Interface Technology (HIT) laboratory 90–​1 human rights 29, 184–​5, 188–​90, 198 hunger strikers 197–​202 Ibrahim, Muktar Said 134, Plate 13 Ice Bucket Challenge 74–​5 iconic images 199–​204 Ikenberry, John 27–​8 Illustrated London News 130–​1 ‘image act’ concept 9, 141 image activism 70 image brokers 38–​42, 46–​7 image operations 4–​13, 17, 89–​91, 96–​8, 130, 219–​25 and affective strategies 70 analysis of 224–​5 cold and hot 15, 63, 70 research on 13, 17 strong and weak interpretations of 222–​3 see also affective image operations ‘image warfare’ 4, 70 images aesthetic, sensual and affective potentials of 10 cultural contexts of 12 definition of 9 effects of 3–​5, 11–​12, 38 and emotions 66–​9 four-​layer structure of 67–​8 goals aimed at by 12 operational domain of 10

229

230

230

Index images (cont.) operational potential of 59 reception and appropriation of 13 relations between 11 to show or nor to show 9 of suffering 4, 129, 133–​5 of terror attacks 133–​5, 139 used as tools 6 see also ‘martyr operations’; operational images India 204–​5 Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) 197–​9, 200, 204 information operations, definition of 12 insurgency and counterinsurgency 8, 103–​4, 112, 131 interdisciplinary studies 15, 17 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 216 international law 123 international relations 15, 25–​31 kinship and body-​in-​movement ­metaphors of 28–​34 international society, membership of 29 Iran 29, 41–​2, 188 Iraq 2–​3, 16, 30, 104, 119–​26, 188–​9, 224 Islam 140, 142, 145, 225 Islamic Jihad 142 Islamic State (IS) 2–​3, 5, 39, 133, 169, 188–​9, 220 Israeli state 162–​3, 176–​7 Ivory Coast 190 Jaar, Alfredo 1 Jackson, Jesse 214 James, William 203, 213 Japan 30 Jasper, James M. 68 Jenkins, Henry 6–​7, 186 La Jetée (film) 79 Jing, Chai 74 Johnson, Lyndon 214 Jónsdóttir, Birgitta 125 Joshi, Kavita 199, 203–​4, Plate 32 journalism 32, 37; see also photojournalism Kashmir 198 Kennedy, Robert 214 Kenya 190, Plate 28 Keysar, Hagit 171, 176–​8, 181, Plates 22 and 23 Khaldei, Yevgeny 158 Khaled, Leila 144 Khoury, Elias 146–​7

Kilburn, William 211 King, Martin Luther 214–​15 Kittler, Friedrich 53 Klonk, Charlotte xiii, 13, 16, 39, 63, 139, 146, 193, 219–​22, 225 Kony, Joseph 73 Krauss, Dan 1 Kropotkin, Peter 130 Laclau, Ernesto 199 Landseer, Charles 210 Lange, Dorothea 201 Lebanon 137–​9, 142, 147, 173–​5 Lenoir, Timothy xiii, 10, 16, 223 live streaming 191–​2, Plate 29 London assassination (2013) 135 London bombings (2005) 132–​4, Plates 11 and 13 Lucaites, John 201 Lynch, Jake 31 Maasri, Zeina 140 McCollum, Alan 80 McDonald, Kelly M. 119 McGoldrick, Anna 31 Machiavelli, Niccolò 27 McIntosh, Jonathan 186 McKee, Yates 15 MacLagan, Meg 15 Macleod, Norman 81 Madrigal, Alexis 107 magazines 11 Malraux, André 79 Maltby, Sarah 32 The Man Who Fell to Earth (film) 84 Manipur region 198, 204 Manning, Chelsea 2, 118, 123 Marker, Chris 79 ‘martyr operations’ and martyr imagery 137–​47, 225 Marx, Karl 210 ‘media’, different meanings of the word 11 media studies 15–​16, 203 Memento (film) 83 Merari, Ariel 140 Meyrowitz, Joshua 11 Michaud, Philippe-​Alain 81 ‘militainment’ 119 military images 4, 8, 12, 14–​16, 118, 120 mimetic potentials of images 9–​10 Mirzoeff, Nicholas xiv, 10, 13, 17, 103–​4, 224–​5 Mitchell, W.J.T. xiv, 9, 11, 13, 16, 26, 220, 224–​5

231

Index Mohammed, Ramzi 134, Plate 13 Mohanty, Nitesh 197, 204 Mondzain, Marie-​José 17, 202, 220, 223 montage 54 Morgan, David 221 Morgenthau, Hans 27 Morris, Robert 80 motherhood 145 Mroué, Rabih 146–​7 Muhammad the Prophet, cartoons of 224–​5 Muhaydli, Sana 137–​44, Plate 14 Münkler, Herfried 139 Musée Imaginaire 79 Muzheir, Hani 158 Nancy, Jean-​Luc 134 napalm 59 Narodnaya Volya 130 narratives, audiovisual 72 Nash, Andreina 187 nation-​states 25, 162 Nelson, Robert S. 79 network-​centric warfare 89, 93, 96, 98, 103–​4 networked devices 16 Neumann, Iver 28, 33–​4 New York Post 132, 134 New York Times 1, 128 news images 37–​40, 43 brokering of 47 see also image brokers news values 31, 34 Nietzsche, Friedrich 28, 82 Nolan, Christopher 83 Noor-​Eldeen, Namir 2 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 216 #NotABugSplat campaign 16, 111–​12, Plate 10 Obama, Barack 29–​30, 109, 220 ‘Occupy’ movement 64, 216–​17 O’Loughlin, Ben xiv, 15, 37, 64, 185 operational images 15, 49–​59 definition of 49, 57–​8 effects of 55 research on 53–​4 O’Sullivan, Timothy 212, Plate 33 Packer, Jeremy 103 Paglen, Trevor 221–​2 Palestinian communities 104, 139–​46, 160–​3, 176–​7 Pantenburg, Volker xiv, 7, 10, 12, 15, 223 pattern recognition 54, 58

Paul, Gerhard 13 Peirce, Charles Sanders 17, 203, 211 photographic commons 209–​14 photographic events 156–​7, 160–​1 photography 11, 17, 75, 135, 151–​64, 208–​14 human interaction with 156 origin of 209–​10 role of 37 untaken, inaccessible or unshowable pictures 157–​64 vernacular 151–​2 photojournalism 1, 40–​7 Pias, Claus 53 Pisacane, Carlo 130 ‘Plan X’ 96–​8, Plate 6 Plato 208 Poe, Edgar Allan 84 Poitier, Sidney 214 Polchin, James 191 political activism 4–​8, 14–​17, 187 political conflict, affect in 64–​5 political events, influences on 64–​6 political images 10, 14–​17 political videos 70–​1 poststructuralism 220 Proll, Thorwald 133 propaganda 69, 118, 122, 140, 146 by deed and by image 130–​1 Public Lab (East Jerusalem) 177 Puchala, Donald J. 26 punctum (Barthes) 40 Raiford, Leigh 214 Rajwa 171–​6, 181, Plate 20 Rancière, Jacques 79, 216 ‘Ravachol’ 133, Plate 12 Red Army Faction 146 Red Cross 16–​17, 159–​63 Reeves, Joshua 103 reflection 68 ‘refrigerator door’ images 80 ‘reincarnated images’ 189–​93 remixes 186–​8, 193 Resurrection City 215–​17 Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) 90, 103–​5 rhetoric 28, 54, 73, 106, 223 Richter, Gerhard 80 Riyashi, Reem 145, Plate 17 Robb, Richard 92 Roger, Nathan 70, 139 Romania 154 Russell, Jason 73 Ryan, Marie-​Laure 11

231

232

232

Index Saadeh, Antoun 137 Satava, Richard 91–​2 Satti, Jamal 147 Saussure, Ferdinand de 203 Scatter Piece 80 Schweitzer, Yoram 146 Scott, James C. 30 sensual symbolism 70–​1 September 11th 2001 (9/​11) attacks 104, 128–​9, 131, 135, 220 Serious Games (film series) 7, 56, 58 Sesame Street (TV series) 6 Shaaban, Tamer 185–​7 Sharmila, Irom 17, 68, 197–​204, 224, Plates 30 and 32 Sherman, William 212 The Silence of the Lambs (film) 84 Simon, Joshua 13, 140 simulations 56–​7, 94–​6 Slome, Manon 13 Smith, Christina M. 119 Snowden, Edward 224 social media 2, 6, 14, 63, 70, 171 social sciences 15–​16 sociology 14 Söhnlein, Horst 133 Sontag, Susan 4, 129, 135, 191 sovereignty 25–​7, 163 stadium (Barthes) 40 Stahl, Augusto 213 states, power of 30 Steele, Brent J. 30 Steichen, Edward 43, 152–​4 storytelling, visual 72–​3 Straub, Verena xv, 12, 16, 63, 225 Suchbilder conference (2001) 53 suicide bombers 16, 138–​47 symbolic potentials of images 10 Syria 2–​3, 30, 137–​8, 170–​3, 188 Tagg, John 154–​5 technical images 52 terrorism 4, 16, 104, 129–​31, 135, 138, 141 theoretical questions 8 Thompson, Simon 65 Thorpe, Jack 93–​4, 98 Thucydides 26 Tiananmen Square 186, Plate 27 torture 121, 129–​30 Toufic, Jalal 138–​9 True Detective (TV series) 83 Truth, Sojourner 209

Turkey 45–​6 Tuszynski, Marek xv, 6, 10, 12, 17, 107, 188 Twitter 188–​9 Under the Dome (documentary) 74 United Nations (UN) 27, 32–​3, 162 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) 101 see also drones user-​generated content 11, 119 Ut, Nick 69 Vertov, Dziga 52 Victor, Barbara 146 videogames 90–​6 videos 1–​5, 11, 49–​51, 63–​77, 107–​11, 118–​27, 137–​50, 171–​3, 184–​96 video platforms 11, 120 Vietnam War 215 violence, images of 39 Virilio, Paul 14 Virtual Battlespace (VBS) software 94–​5, 98 Visa pour l’Image festival 38 visual commons 208–​9, 212–​14, 225 visual culture 169–​70 visual studies 7, 203 Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo 210 War on Terror 39, 135 Warburg, Aby 16, 53, 79–​82, 84 Wardynski, Casey 92–​3 Warhol, Andy 54 Webb, Gary 92 Werckmeister, O. K. 13 Wessing, Koen 40 Westphalia, Treaty of (1648) 27 Wiebenson, John 214 WikiLeaks 1–​2, 11, 16, 73, 118, 121–​6, 224 Wilson, Woodrow 27 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 9, 222 women, role and status of 138–​46 World Press Photo organisation 37–​8, 43–​7 ‘worldmaking’ 37–​9, 46–​7 Yadin, Rivka 140 Yassin, Sheikh Ahmad 142 YouTube 2, 16, 109, 118–​26, 138, 171–​2, 186 Zapatista uprising (1994) 216 Zealy, J. T. 213 Ziolkowski, Britt 143 Zuccotti Park 208–​9, 216