THEATRE OF WAR: GHOSTS WARN

Theatre of War: Ghosts Warn Gouache on paper 56 x 76 cm 2021

This is my sixth Theatre of War painting. The other paintings can be accessed via my post Theatre of War: Spectrum

Clausewitz
Theatre of War: Ghosts Warn is again inspired by thinking about the famous 18th/19th century General Carl von Clausewitz's famous tome On War . In this book Clausewitz regularly refers to the term 'theatre of war', even devoting a chapter to it [Book V, Chapter II]. In the 21st century the concept of 'theatre of war' extends beyond Clausewitz's idea of a "portion of the space over which war prevails as has its boundaries protected, and thus possesses a kind of independence". While the idea of a portion of space, independence and protected boundaries are blurred by new modes of warfare, such as cyberwar, information war, electronic and electromagnetic warfare, I think it is interesting to ponder what the contemporary 'theatre of war' actually might mean.

For a start, Clausewitz describes journeying to a 'theatre of war' and moving within a 'theatre of war'. With contemporary modes of warfare operating across multiple domains in mind, moving to or within theatres becomes problematic, even obsolete in certain circumstances. For example, what if we ask ourselves, are we permanently within the contemporary 'theatre of war'? If so, journeying to the 'theatre' is not possible. Maybe it's more like moving across a stage, sometimes the drama can be wild, and at other times subdued.

Clausewitz also writes about 'our theatre of war' and the enemy's 'theatre of war'. The 'theatre of war' he describes is geographically based, overlaid by strategy, movement of armies, and politics.  While the politics bit remains, geography, strategy and movement of armies are part of a complex matrix of concerns in an equally complex matrix of battle spaces, where notions of 'ours' and 'theirs' are increasingly blurred, if not similar. In a world where technology renders various modes of state and non-state warfighting capabilities as continuously engaged, escalation and de-escalation can potentially occur at light speed. This includes the information war, and its partner social media. Speed is a key ingredient that helps 'conduct' and 'produce' the contemporary everywhere-all-the-time 'theatre of war'. 

Roles Played in the Contemporary Theatre of War
In the contemporary 'theatre of war' we are all wittingly or unwittingly 'playing' roles that change in type, degree and importance. If we own a mobile phone, for example, we could provide a node for a state or non-state actor to appropriate for multiple reasons. With both state and non-state actors having commensurate or near-commensurate technical capabilities, a more synchronised and ubiquitous 'theatre of war' potentially destroys a traditionally understood story arc - declaration of war, duration of war and end of war. My ideas here are informed by cultural critic Paul Virilio's commentaries on technology, Jean Baudrillard's three essays first published in the French newspaper Libération in 1991 ie: “The Gulf War Will Not Take Place”, “The Gulf War is Not Really Taking Place,” and “The Gulf War Did Not Take Place,” March 29, 1991, plus David Kilcullen's very interesting recent book The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West [2020].

Ghosts
In Theatre of War: Ghosts Warn I have painted various elements of contemporary war ie: two drones [one a Loyal Wingman drone], parodies of geolocation and terrain visualisation technology, targets, a satellite, indications of built environments, and signals transmitting instructions, information and data. All of these either normally visible or normally invisible aspects of contemporary war create a scape that overlays a background that could be a landscape or a skyscape - are you above or below this 'production' of the contemporary 'theatre of war'? Flipping your perspective could possibly be helpful!

I have also included ghosts. Maybe speed makes everything ghostly? What are these ghosts warning us about?

I'll leave it up to you to ponder.

NEW PODCAST NEWS

I was interviewed by Paris-based Cecilia Poullain for her Brave New Women series of podcasts. She asks me about my PhD, the influences of my parents, my artwork, and about being a single Mum. You can watch it here on YOUTUBE

Cheers,

Kathryn

PREPARING FOR "WAR, ART AND VISUAL CULTURE" - SYDNEY SYMPOSIUM

Mission Capable Oil on linen 137 x 72 cm 2018 

Art, War and Visual Culture: Sydney

On Monday 25th February I am one of the speakers presenting at Art, War and Visual Culture, An International Symposium on the Art and Visual Culture of War, Conflict and Political Violence. You can view the conference website HERE. The symposium is taking place in Sydney. A sister symposium will take place in London on May 31, with artist and author James Bridle as a keynote speaker. You can view the London symposium site HERE. 

Art, War and Visual Culture: London

I would love to be able to attend the London symposium, as I have followed James Bridle's work for some time. I recently read his book New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future, which I highly recommend. One of the key messages in the book is the identification of the insidious arrival and influence of what Bridle calls "computational thinking". The whole book demonstrates how to expose and resist this kind of thinking. I use the word 'demonstrates' because Bridle does not merely explain, he poses questions that flip the mainstream, thus forcing the reader to confront how they think about the world. For example, he details some historical and current failures of computation, such as US military systems identifying "flocks of migrating birds as incoming Soviet bomber fleets" to "government IT initiatives that fall short of their much-vaunted goals and are superceded by subsequent, better engineered systems before they're even completed, feeding a cycle of obsolescence and permanent revision."[1] He then poses a question, "But what if these stories are the real history of computation: a litany of failures to distinguish between simulation and reality: a chronic failure to identify the conceptual chasm at the heart of computational thinking, of our construction of the world?" [2] Here, he presents us with a critical resistance to the bravura that surrounds contemporary technology.

James Bridle and Jean Baudrillard

Bridle's book gives us tools to bust open and resist the confines that French philosopher Jean Baudrillard warned us about in his 2003 book Passwords. He warned of a digital future where it will be “possible to measure everything by the same extremely reductive yardstick: the binary, the alternation between 0 and 1.”[3] "Computational thinking" is a symptom of this reductive space...this reductive yardstick that Baudrillard identified. The concept of reduction suggests homogeneity, sameness, uniformity. These, in turn, enable ease of control and management by systems and the entities that operate these systems. It provides a space that perpetuates "computational thinking" and its elevated status.  

This systemic 'landscape' is enabled by signals that ricochet around the world. from subterranean/undersea cabling, to land-based nodes, and into sky and space, via drones and satellites. I 'see' connecting and networked signals as netting the planet, holding us hostage, although we are largely unaware of the hostage situation. And, a hostage situation indicates a reductive space. 

Art and Resistance: New Landscapes in the Drone Age

The title for my Sydney symposium presentation is "Art and Resistance: New Landscapes in the Drone Age". In twenty minutes I will argue that signals net the planet with new kinds of hidden or invisible topographies that enable the scopic intent of contemporary technology. Landscape is reduced, homogenised and made uniform to allow ease of access. I will show paintings, like the two here in this post, to demonstrate how these signals have infiltrated the landscape, in a sense volumetrically colonising it. I sometimes try to mimic a computer screen or lens [camera or weapon] to pose questions about how we view landscape and our environment, the real vs the virtual. The real window or the computer 'window'? More importantly how do the machines that scope life and landscape, for surveillance and targeting purposes, impose new 'landscapes' onto the real, and onto our psyches? 

I am going to talk about how I use cosmic perspectives to take an imaginational reach beyond the drones and satellites, to see if an expansive picture can expose the anomalies that must exist in the reduced space of the signal-net. How can I make visible the invisible? Is a signal-enabled hostage situation a sign of war, a perpetual war and Derek Gregory's "everywhere war'? 

I will let you know how the presentation goes. 

Cheers,

Kathryn

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1. James Bridle,  New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future, (London and Ne York: Verso, 2018) 34.

2. Ibid.

3. Jean Baudrillard, Passwords, trans. Chris Turner (London and New York: Verso, 2003), 76.

New Horizons oil on linen 97 x 112 cm 2018

SEEING THROUGH THE FAKE WINDOW

Seeing Through the Fake Window Oil on linen 30 x 46 cm 2018

FAKE STUFF

Fake stuff is happening everywhere! Fake news, fake videos, and now there is a thing called "deep fake". "Deep Fake" uses artificial intelligence to create images or videos the depict seemingly real events, with depictions of real people, sometimes even with fake people. So, for example, videos of politicians saying and doing things they have not said or done. Here are two interesting articles that discuss fake phenomena and artificial intelligence, and "deep fake":  You Thought Fake News Was Bad? Deep Fakes is Where Truth Goes to Die.  by Oscar Schwartz in The Guardian, and What You Have to Fear from Artificial Intelligence  by Ryan Metz in Current Affairs: A magazine of Politics and Culture.

Paul Metz writes: "If you think “fake news” is a problem now, just wait. When an image can be generated of literally anyone doing literally anything with perfect realism, truth is going to get a whole lot slipperier."

Fake news clearly has political, social and security issues, but "deep fake" takes these issues even further. Used indiscriminately, "deep fake', to my mind, is a threat to civilisation as we know it. 

"DEEP FAKE"

Fake news, and particularly "deep fake" are intrinsically linked to digital and cyber technology generally, and the screen more specifically. The screen is the "third" or "cathode window", as Paul Virilio, called it in interviews and text. Jean Baudrillard also proposed a loss of reality delivered by the screen. His "perfect crime", the death of reality, may reach its ultimate prosecution in "deep fake". 

SEEING THROUGH THE FAKE WINDOW

So, to my new painting Seeing Through the Fake Window. Obviously I am playing into the news about fake phenomena. I am also playing into the idea of the screen being a window, a fake one. Without the ubiquity of the screen would fake news and "deep fake" pose threats to the fabric of society? The screen is ubiquitous because it is the computer screen, mobile phone screen, or other device screen. The screen is, however, also associated with the camera and the weapon, surveillance and targeting. 

In Seeing Through the Fake Window. you can imagine yourself looking through a fake window, aka screen. Maybe it is an airborne drone screen, one of its many multispectral cameras perhaps ? Or, maybe you are looking at a remote drone pilot's screen. Or maybe, you are looking at a television screen, watching news of a true or fake story about a true of fake drone strike? I have painted a dark blue square in the middle of the night- vision green 'cloud'. Is that a new window? Maybe, maybe not.

Seeing Through the Fake Window is not only about giving an impression of looking through a window, a fake window. It is also about exposing the fakery, critiquing the fake window that delivers fake news into our private and public lives. 

FAKE LANDSCAPE

As with many of my paintings, I have painted lines that crisscross a landscape. These lines are signals and computer graphic-like markings. They create a new landscape topography, one which is normally invisible, except perhaps on a screen, maybe a remote drone pilot's screen. It is a fake landscape! As I have previously written, nets of signals that enable connectivity and networking, wrap the planet, extending from land to satellites in space. Theses signals transmit news, stories and images - real and fake - around the world. 

"Deep fake" is a potentially disastrous 21st century tactical weapon, deployable via our nets of signals.

On that happy note!

Cheers,

Kathryn

COUNT DOWN

Towards The Past and Future Gouache on paper 2013

 

 

Count Down has begun for my exhibition COSMIC ADDRESS! The doors are open from Tuesday 15 October... 3 weeks away. The exhibition will end on Sunday 27 October. 

 

I rather like the term 'Count Down' in reference to an exhibition called COSMIC ADDRESS.

 

Let me explain...as well as I can.

There are a few things that have lead me to wonder...and wonder.

 

One is this most fascinating article A Jewel At The heart Of Quantum Physics by Natalie Wolchova in Quanta Magazine . It is about the fact that Physicists have discovered a jewel-shaped geometric object that challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental constituents of nature.

 

The geometric object is an amplituhedron...yes an amplituhedron!

 

Here are a few quotes, but please read the whole article and the comments it has attracted.

 

.....the new geometric approach to particle interactions removes locality and unitarity from its starting assumptions. The amplituhedron is not built out of space-time and probabilities; these properties merely arise as consequences of the jewel’s geometry. The usual picture of space and time, and particles moving around in them, is a construct.

 

And: 

 

But the new amplituhedron research suggests space-time, and therefore dimensions, may be illusory anyway.

 

And:

 

Beyond making calculations easier or possibly leading the way to quantum gravity, the discovery of the amplituhedron could cause an even more profound shift, Arkani-Hamed said. That is, giving up space and time as fundamental constituents of nature and figuring out how the Big Bang and cosmological evolution of the universe arose out of pure geometry.

 

Ye gads! Holy mackerel! Hey what!

 

Where does all of that place a COSMIC ADDRESS?

 

 

Shadow's Secret Gouache on paper 2013

 

 

I did say there were a few things that have made me wonder...

 

SIMULATION

The next is  Prof Nick Bostrom's idea that we are living in a simulation, somehow determined by a post-human project/'life' of re-'living' humanity's history. But, there's more, the simulation includes the creation/re-creation of the Universe...even the multiverse. So, it's a pretty stupendous simulation! These poor post-humans essentially have no life of their own...they just recapture memory...certainly not a pathway to Utopia one would think?! Could be more Kafkaesque?

 

LIVING INSIDE A COMPUTER

So, we maybe living inside a computer? But, then again we may not? But if, indeed, we are living inside a computer it would have to be a really magnificent computer and probably not recognisable as a computer to us, otherwise we'd detect the subtext, the guile, the subterfuge...wouldn't we? But, as the Professor writes, if someone did detect something, the post-human simulators could eradicate the memory of detection, wipe the slate clean...and the simulation would continue.

 

But....maybe the Professor's postulation is a sign of the simulation itself...maybe an undetected leakage from the post-human future or maybe a deliberate play...a teasing loop?

 

And...maybe... the discovery of the amplituhedron, and it's indication that time and space are illusions, is evidence that the simulation postulation is indeed plausible?

 

So, if we are living in a computer simulation, it would be fair to say that we are, in French philosopher Jean Baudrillard's seductive terms, fatally mediated. Because, if we are living in a simulation based on 'memory', the world has already come to an end. Our fundamental destiny is not to exist and survive, as we think: it is to appear and disappear.**

 

 

Cosmic Ouroboros  Oil on linen 120 x 150 cm 2012

 

And,

 

When I was very young, laying awake at night or gazing out the school bus windows, I used to wonder if Life was orchestrated by someone or something that moved us and everything else around like pieces of a board game. I remember thinking that whoever/whatever was in control would have to think of a lot! But, I also thought it would be great fun...

 

But:

 

Back to COSMIC ADDRESS:

If time and space are illusions then a COUNT DOWN and an ADDRESS are actually illusions too! Why... because counting, in this way, is a 'measurement' of time and an address is normally a place in a geographic space. And a COSMIC ADDRESS is situated in time and space...seemingly so anyway.

 

The three paintings above will be in COSMIC ADDRESS.

 

 

** Baudrillard, J. Fatal Strategies, Semiotext[e], Columbia University, NY, 1990 P. 175

 

 

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COSMIC ADDRESS:

Earth Maybe Our Home But The Universe Is Our Environment

Solo Exhibition

 

BRISBANE

15-27 October

 

Graydon Gallery

29 Merthyr Rd, New Farm, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, Earth, The Universe

 

Please check out  my

 

COSMIC ADDRESS PAGE

 

for all the details!

 

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 If you have not already done so, please read my last post Putting On A Show

 

Cheers,

Kathryn

www.kathrynbrimblecombe-fox.com