Paradox Gouache and watercolour on paper 56 x76 cm 2021
THE DEAD PRUSSIAN PODCAST
Before I write about Paradox - an alert!
Yesterday my interview with Mick Cook from the
Dead Prussian Podcast went live. We discuss my work, research, creative practice and the future of war. You can listen to my interview
HERE I am thrilled to be given opportunities like this!
You can see the list of other great interviews on
The Dead Prussian Podcast site. I have listened to quite a few, and they are always interesting, with a diverse number of topics and interviewees.
The term 'Dead Prussian' refers to nineteenth century General Carl von Clausewitz, who wrote the famous tome On War. Regular readers will know that I reference Clausewitz in my Theatre of War series of paintings. Clausewitz uses the term 'theatre of war' variously and often in On War.
THE STORY OF PARADOX
Group Capt Brick's thoughtful and hard hitting essay stimulated four paintings - all works on paper. Paradox is the painting she chose. I am delighted!
Below is my artist's statement, written to accompany Paradox
PARADOX
Gouache & Watercolour on Paper 2021
Artist’s Statement: Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox
Paradox was
inspired by Group Captain Jo Brick’s essay “Kill the Enemy, and Don’t Forget to
Buy Milk on the Way Home”. The painting evokes the sense of liminality
experienced by remote drone pilots who fight wars and insurgencies in distant
countries from inside home-based ground control stations. While inside these
bunkers they are at war. Upon leaving the bunker, they re-enter domestic life.
As Brick notes “their psychological existence occupies both war and peace”. The
ongoing rhythm of this existence creates a liminal zone where the pilot’s psyche
grapples with seemingly unreconcilable paradoxes. This agitation is deepened by
experiences of witnessing, perpetrating and perpetuating scopic intimacies of
surveillance, identification, targeting and killing.
The circles
in Paradox link and overlap in ways that draw the drone pilot, the
drone, and the surveilled or targeted, together. This occurs against a vast
sky, or could it be a seascape? This depends on the viewer’s perspective. A
sense of flying, hovering, floating is suggested. Are you a pilot, maybe a
drone, a bird or even an intergalactic space traveler passing by Earth? Perhaps
you are a target, living a precarious life on the edge of life and death? A melancholic
kind of resignation is felt as clouds semi-obscure details. These clouds act as
visual metaphors for liminality. They also act as metaphors for the
contemporary ‘cloud’ of networked, interconnected and interoperable militarised
and militarise-able technologies. This techno-cloud is the drone pilot’s
operational space. The colour red disrupts melancholia with warnings of
violence. The red squares denote computer screens, ‘windows’ into the scoped
lives of the targeted. The red tinged clouds speak to violence, blood and death;
reminding us of corporeality in a techno-world. The human-like outline indicates
the presence of a human in the loop, but can we be sure of this? It may be a
robot.
Cheers,
Kathryn
