WARUM 2.0 in 4 dvd’s with interviews with Paul Virilio and cameraman Daniel Demoustier; a visual and sound tour through the installation arena & ‘the unbearable lightness of doom’ sequence as bonus. Preview
The dvd package is for sale (50 euro plus shipment costs).
Contact cargoweb@pandora.be
DANIEL DEMOUSTIER : This is Basra, in the Southern city of Iraq. Basra was captured, in the last Gulf War, by the British army. That always has been the plan, the Americans would take Baghdad and actually the rest of Iraq, the British would occupy South Basra. Basra is actually, ohm, it has a strong history and it’s a place with many Shi’a-people live there, Shi’a-Muslims. So they also had a history with Saddam Hussein, because they were oppressed, during the Saddam-regime, the Shi’a-people got a lot of troubles from Saddam Hussein. Remember the mass graves we found later on, most of the victims were Shi’a-victims. There’s a story behind it because in the first Gulf War the Shi’as tried to oppress Saddam Hussein and at the last moment they didn’t get the promised support from the Western troops. So, when the Americans pulled out, when Kuwait was captured in the first Gulf War, these people were the victims, because then Saddam Hussein took revenge for their uprising. But now this after the… I call it the invasion of the British troops in the second Gulf War now, in 2003. And I’m here with a, in a sort of patrol… These are pictures shot from an APC or a British military vehicle, driving through the streets of Basra and at this time, everyone was still more or less quiet, I mean, the people were, there was a sort of positive feeling actually towards the British troops, I have to say. I mean, people were thinking things were now getting better and unfortunately we have to say now that it wasn’t totally the truth. But you see therefore, you see little kids waving at you, you see people being, or at least trying to be, friendly to you and, but it’s a strange feeling because, you know, you are with the army and I don’t really particularly like it but sometimes you don’t have a choice. Nowadays there’s not much more alternative to go with them because if you walk in the streets with your big camera, you might be captured and kidnapped within 10 minutes, so. This is sometimes the only way to do it. It’s also a nice way to do a nice pan shear from a higher position in the car and you can capture daily life when you pass by. People don’t, sometimes don’t know that their getting filmed because you come on a quite, you know, you travel with some speed and you capture daily life moments while driving by, so it’s a long tracking shots of daily life in Basra, after the British invasion.
DANIEL DEMOUSTIER : These people don’t have anything, I mean, Basra is a very, very poor area. Although that’s where most of the oil comes from. But it always has been. I mean, they have the most oil, they have big electricity factories, they have water but all that was going to Baghdad and all taken away from them. And this was true during the Saddam regime and is still the case now because Baghdad is more important and everything goes away from them. And they live in terrible, poor conditions. I haven’t been there this year, but, you know, they try to improve the situation slightly. For instance, of course there’s no electricity, no water and the irony is, you can see the oilfields all around you, you can see the rich, the gold coming out of the earth. And they have nothing of that; it’s very frustrating to be there I think. And therefore Muqtada al-Sadr has a strong support in this place. At night the rebels would take the ambulances and they would use the megaphones in the ambulances and they say, you know, don’t go and work for the enemy, you know, don’t go and work for the Americans or the British, you know, because we know who’s going to work, we get you, you know. I mean, there’s always been a position and, I believe, not long after I’ve done this shot, the first bomb attack happened in Basra, which was a total shock to everyone. It started in Baghdad but everyone thought maybe in Basra because they’re all Shi’a, they will, they will stay quiet but they didn’t and so some of the attacks started to happening in Basra only a couple of days after I took these pictures.
“Which parts of society are exploiting this symbolic capital? Which kinds of collective memory and imaginary are at stake? Who are to benefit most (from these pictures)? Who is giving them marks of distiction? Capital value that is for the competitive market? Whose collective memory, whose aesthetics, and who benefits?”
As “capitalism is not a mode of production, but a production of modes and worlds” (engineered by corporations and sold to the people), the “planetary economic war is an aesthetic war between different worlds”.
Matteo Pasquinelli, in ICW – Immaterial Civil War (My creativity reader, edited by Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter, published by the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2007)
Daniel Demoustier told me that when he was filming the war victims he talked to them and they to him. These conversations however were not recorded. We then, we see the faces, but we don’t hear them speaking to us. So then, why not go back to them? Anybody interested? Support? Suggestions?
Moving image with a comment by cameraman Daniel Demoustier (such will be rarely the case in this blog, in contrast to the daily practice of it on television). Original shooting treated for WARUM 2.0. Obviously, this image is far too layered for a blog… (anyways)
FAR FROM IMPACT - EVENT 1: Brussels, October 2007, the Video Vortex international symposium part 1, organized by the Institute of Network Cultures, in collaboration with Argos Brussels. Video Vortex. One of the speakers present was media artist Keith Sanborn. Program by Keith Sanborn.
At one point Sanborn described an installation project he produced in Antwerp, where, in one and the same room, he showed a collection of very extreme videoclips, all equally loud and simultaneously visible on multiple screens of all sizes. Sanborn definitely created an impact there. Visitors, he said, could stay no longer in the installation environment for more than 5 minutes.
But then he said something very strange : ‘I want to understand what the impact is of all these surrrounding pictures’ / ‘I want to understand the impact’ / ‘I wanted to discover new ways of relating to these images’
These remarks made me think about the notion of impact, and its relevance to videomaking, television and more specifically in relation to the situation of video vortex on platforms such as YouTube.
Whenever ‘impact’ happens, so I thought, the only thing one can do and does, is to run away from it, to look for shelter, if not to react to it, responding to it with counter-impact, more impact that is.
When one is confronted with impact – of a bomb, an explosion, a newsbite, a shout (be it by an artist, a guru, a politian, it doesn’t matter by whom), an info bomb - , the only one thing one definitely cannot do, is, to start thinking about it, to reflect on it, to try to understand it, let alone to start searching for new ways of understanding, to discover new ways of expression. Neither can one start then a new kind of development, form an opinion, start up a new creation as a witness, a pro-active visitor, or as a maker. Impact excludes, annihilates creation. It only call for reaction or even intensification.
Only with a certain distance from impact, I started thinking, only ‘far from impact’ indeed, can one reflect, think, investigate and comment, as a person, as a user, as a maker.
In the installation arena WARUM 2.0 25 pictures of victims, originally shot by Daniel Demoustier in Darfur, Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza and Kosovo, are repeated, copied, processed and displayed over and over again. Enhanced that is. For what reason?
