The 8th of February 2013 meeting was a presentation by Sabine El Chamaa.
Abstract:
This
practice-based PhD analyses 24/7 live war media coverage from the perspective
of a citizen residing inside a city being bombed, by means of a film-based
installation and a theoretical text. The argument of the text is that,
intrinsic to the experience of contemporary wars waged by the US and its allies
in the Middle East, there exists a space of co-liveness that remains absent
from the scholarship that is critical of the rise of live war as ‘spectacle’. I
have defined co-liveness, as the space inhabited by a citizen who is not
involved in war in the function of a fighter, living the bombing of the city as
both an embodied experience, as well as a mediatized live image. The research
reveals the manner in which this embodied space, which is potentially political
and ethical is made invisible by analyzing the rise of liveness (Telstar,
1961), and the politics of its framing where notions of peace and democracy are
introduced as inextricably linked to the advancement of satellite technologies
that enable the visibility of history in the ‘now’. Subsequent live war
coverage (The first Gulf war in 1991 and the Iraq war in 2003 on CNN) equally
formulate the confines of what can be considered “live” and “democratic” and
thus “human” within a technological framework which consistently affirms the
power of those who can bomb and film due to access to an aerial point of view/
of control. The practice component of the research is an installation where
audio-visual, pictorial, and textual elements represent various “types” of
frames that question the inherent limitations of any representation of war. In
a playful and interactive space that refuses the notion of the “untouchable and
museumized war images” no trajectory or map is provided. The public is asked to
share their impressions in a round table discussion where co-presence lends to
a renewed reading of the elements on display.
Sabine El Chamaa is a Lebanese Writer/Director, currently in
her last year as an Audio-Visual Phd candidate.
* The following meeting will take place on the 8th of March and Didem Pekun will be presenting her work.
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