THEATRE OF WAR: TECHNO-COLONISED PLANET

Theatre of War: Techno-Colonised Planet Gouache on paper 56 x 76 cm 2022

 

NEWS

Third Text Article

Thrilled that my article "Night Vision, Ghosts and Data Proxies: Paintings By War Artist Jon Cattapan" has been published online for Third Text, a leading peer reviewed international journal dedicated to the critical analysis of contemporary art in the global field. The hardcopy is forthcoming.

Cattapan was an official Australian war artist in Timor Leste in 2008. Key to his subsequent paintings were his experiences using night vision technology while accompanying Australian Peace Keeping forces on night patrols. The effect of the night vision green entered his paintings in ways that continue to 'speak' to us today. Thus, I analyse Cattapan's paintings through a 'future of war' lens-a future we are now living, nearly 15 yrs later. I argue that although the paintings were inspired by experiences in Timor Leste, the images could relate to the iterative modes of contemporary, and likely future war, ie: grey zone, hybrid, informational, cyber, as well as kinetic warfare.

Theatre of War: Techno-Colonised Planet 

This new painting relates to a few other recent paintings - examples: Theatre of War: Plague Cloud, Theatre of War: Dromo-Domain and Theatre of War: Law

Invitation to 'Fly'

In Theatre of War: Techno-Colonised Planet you are invited to fly, in your imagination, away from Earth. When you are ready, you peer back at the planet from a distance. And, from this distance what patterns become apparent? For me, I see a planet occupied by an insidious fake cloud that extends from Earth to orbiting satellites. The outline of the pale blue dot shimmers like a ghost behind the 'cloud'. This 'cloud' represents the ubiquitous presence of interconnected and interoperable systems, all reliant on access to, and use of, the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS). 

But, what if you are not 'flying' at a great distance from Earth? What if you 'fly' in closer? What if this is an image on a computer screen and you have flown through the window of a ground control station where remote operators sit in front of an array of computer screens? What if the white circles are computer graphics indicating techno-territorial occupation? Given that civilian technology and military technology rely on the same conduit and enabler, ie: the EMS - is the fake cloud an indication of dangerous synchronicity and homogeneity of techno-system operation? Does it represent an ever-ready always-on war preparedness, especially when various iterations of contemporary war are increasingly perpetrated via technological devices and systems - grey zone, hybrid, information and cyber warfare.

Whether you are flying at close or far distance -  your imagination is the critical tool. For me, this is how imaginational metaveillance works to become a resistance to the kind of normalised techno-surveillance of the world in which we live. 

As artist and writer James Bridle notes, "Today the cloud is the central metaphor of the internet: a global system of great power and energy that nevertheless retains the aura of something noumenal and numinous, something almost impossible to grasp."* In Theatre of War: Techno-Colonised Planet I have tried to 'grasp it'. My invitation for you to take imaginational flight, is my way of sharing this quest.

  

Cheers,

Kathryn

*James Bridle, The New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future (London: Verso, 2018), 6.

LIFE, AT THE FRONT

Life, At The Front Oil on linen 56 x 112 cm 2020

Against a current backdrop of tension and disaster, such as the catastrophic fires in Australia, dangerous flooding in Indonesia [and even Dubai], and heightened tensions in the Middle East, there is also an overlay of political dissonance. As belief systems and politics are twisted and provoked by social media and fake news, opinion collapses into binaries of good and bad, right and wrong. It feels like LIFE is on the front-line of a battle. This battle seeps into our homes and workplaces via the screen - computer screens, iPads, mobile phones, and other devices. That these devices are networked and interconnected allows the binaries to accumulate at extremes, where complexity is lost. Near light-speed transmission of news, opinion, data, Tweets, comments [and photos of cats] keeps us on a fast moving treadmill, that goes nowhere. It creates a kind of inertia. 

No time for complexity. 

No time. 

With little time to think what happens?

I am reminded of Paul Virilio when he described the screen in Open Sky (1997) as “the square horizon” that causes “confusion of near and far, of inside and outside, disorders of common perception that will gravely affect the way we think”.(1) 

Life, At The Front and the Screen

In Life, At The Front I have tried to channel the impression of a screen. The orienting white lines mimic those that could be seen on a remote drone pilot's computer screen. Or, perhaps it is a computer gamer's screen? As the title suggests a battlespace exists. Is it real or virtual? Does it really matter? It could be both?

Squares of colour mimic pixels. These 'pixels' provoke questions about how contemporary images are generated, the veracity of images, how we are trained to look at images...and more. Please note my use of the word 'generated', rather than 'created', to describe the production of contemporary images that require screen-based platforms for production, exhibition and storage. 

The ubiquity of digital imagery and its generative digital and cyber processes, requires and causes standardisation, thus enabling the efficiency of streamlined globalised consumption. Here, my thoughts are informed by Virilio's commentary on standardisation and synchronicity in his 2012 book The Great Accelerator, where he also writes about a resultant inertia. He remarks that inertia threatens a "paralysis or, rather, the sudden tetraplegia of the societal body”. (2)

Tree-of-Life

In the painting a multicoloured burning tree - a tree-of-life - seems to be part of the orienting graphic overlay, but this is unclear. Maybe the tree, on fire, is a warning, just like the catastrophic fires in Australia. It warns, not only of fire, but of other catastrophes caused by not paying attention to science, by not thinking in complex ways, by not being prepared, and not looking into a future beyond a political cycle.........................

A red tree - another tree-of-life - sways in the wind on a distant horizon. Perhaps another warning?

Horizons

The landscape beyond the white-lined graphics, tumultuously unfolds into multiple horizons. And, with multiple horizons, there are multiple potential perspectives. Here, I think of horizons and perspective in literal and metaphoric ways. The fake perspective of the white targeting graphics is prosaic by comparison. Virilio again provides a way to critically think about the effects of ubiquitous screen-based technology. He comments, "What is the danger of globalzation? There is no perspective. There is an optical correctness being set up, and there is a generalized tele-surveillance that comes from the military with its drones, etc". (3)

Perspective

The question of perspective is one that has preoccupied me for a couple of decades. It is not a new interrogation. In my cosmic landscapes of the past I have invited viewers to fly in their imaginations, to play with perspective, both literal and metaphoric. 

My recent work dealing with militarised and militarise-able technology still invites viewers to 'fly' into cosmic realms. My work still plays with literal and metaphoric perspective, to re-enliven perspective, to provoke it - as a form of resistance.

1. Paul Virilio, Open Sky, trans. Julie Rose (London and New York: Verso, 1997), 26.

2. Paul Virilio, The Great Accelerator trans. Julie Rose (Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press, 2012),18.

3. Paul Virilio and Sylvere Lotringer, The Accident of Art, trans. Michael Taormina (New York and Las Angeles, Semiottext(e), 2005), 74.

NEWS

I am presenting at the

Aesthetics of Drone Warfare

 Interdisciplinary conference 

University of Sheffield, UK 

7-8 February.

My painting New Horizons is the conference image!

Cheers,

Kathryn

MILESTONES

Do You Know, Have You Met? Mixed media on paper 37 x 27 cm 1991

MILESTONES

My daughter is getting married next year. With the flurry of excitement about planning for a wedding I have reflected upon life's milestones. When I was pregnant with this daughter, my first child, I painted a series of works about her immanent birth - certainly a milestone! My maternal grand-mother, born in the nineteenth century, passed away - another milestone, a sad one -  shortly before my daughter was born, making many of these images a kind of homage to ancestry and the cycle of life.

You will notice that the pregnant figure in a few of the selected paintings seems to have multiple shadows, or iterations of herself. Maybe these are ancestral figures, maybe they are multiple aspects of the expectant mother, maybe a plethora of interpretations.... 

My last blog post Twelve Years Blogging - Twelve Paintings was an online exhibition of twelve paintings, one from each year since 2006, when I first started blogging. 

BUT, there was life and painting long before Blogspot! 

The selected paintings in this new post are from 1991, the year we bought our first mobile phone, I got a home computer, and had a baby - in the twentieth century!

Homage Mixed media on paper 37 x 27 cm 1991

COSMOLOGY

Regular readers will notice the cosmic appearance of these 1991 paintings. As you know, I still fly into the cosmos - and invite you to fly with me - in my work today! 

The babies, pregnant bellies and figures float against indefinite spaces, cosmological in possibility. In these spaces, circles and dots could be read as planets or atoms, star dust or thoughts. The tree-of-life also appears in these paintings. Here, though, the tree-of-life is linked to a familial tree, a more intimate one than the universal ones I depict in my later and more recent paintings. However, while intimate in intent in these 1991 paintings, the tree-of-life positioned in cosmic-like landscapes is never without universal potential.

Children Mixed media on paper 1991

1991

If you think about these 1991 paintings and my recent dronescape paintings, you can possibly see where my concerns about the future of humanity, in the age of the drone and the algorithm, spring from. I will leave you to think about that...but...the first Gulf War erupted in August 1990 and officially ended in February 1991, a few months before my first child was born. This war, however, never really ended, it just morphed into ongoing conflict, with battlefields existing in real and virtual spaces. These distributed battlespaces blur the lines between military, counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism and security activities. War is now a hybrid of conventional and unconventional warfare, the latter appropriating civilian technological systems and platforms to perpetrate new modes of war, such as cyberwar. Airborne drones were used in the first Gulf War, for surveillance - they were weaponised in the second Gulf War, and continue to be used in declared and non-declared war/battle situations.  

So, in the years since the birth of my first child, the world has changed.

A Pure Life, Haunted Mixed Media on paper 1991

THEMES

It is interesting to me, and I hope for the reader, to identify elements that continue to appear in my work over many years. Even though subject matter has changed, underlying themes have not. Some of these themes, such as cosmology, initially appeared before I had the words or terms to ascribe to them. 

As I have written this post, I am also struck by the links between my recent work dealing with the apparatus of war and conflict in the twenty-first century, and a personal life milestone that occurred in 1991, the year War did not really end. 

But, back to these 1991 paintings. They are joyous images. I am glad I still have some, especially as we are about to celebrate another joyous milestone.

Cheers,
Kathryn

Where Are You? Mixed media on paper 1991

AN INVITATION TO FLY

An Invitation to Fly  Oil on linen 40 x 50 cm 

When I was a child I flew! Yes, I did. 

Somehow, I knew what my parent's farm looked like from above. This was without flying over it in a plane. Also, the farm was on a flat treeless plain, so there were no hills to gaze down upon my childhood landscape. Although my Mum grew a beautiful garden on the flat plain, there were no really tall trees to climb high enough to gain an aerial view. My Father's HAM Radio aerial was probably the tallest thing on the farm - and - it was far too difficult to climb, especially to the top!

I flew!

How I flew I am not sure, but certainly my imagination had a part to play. And, it continues.

Over the years my paintings give testimony to an ability to 'transport' myself above and beyond a landscape, local and planetary! The aerial perspective is one of the common themes that runs through my work. So, it is not hard to understand why I am interested in cosmology, the scientific study of the universe across all temporal and spatial scales. Additionally, my interest in airborne militarised drones and their increasingly autonomous capabilities can be contextualised into themes of aerial perspective. However, I try to elevate myself beyond the reach of the drone to turn the gaze back onto it - in fact - to roam around the drone - above, below, beside it - taking cosmological perspectives. By doing this, I invite the viewer to also play around with perspectives. [Please browse through other posts to see more of my 'dronescapes'].

An Invitation to Fly recalls my childhood daydreams and imaginings. Relentless blue skies, occasionally dotted with white fluffy clouds, seemed to invite me to fly. The flat western horizon often shimmered with mirages that melted land and sky into oneness. This certainly helped to generate a feeling of being aloft, as if the ground had slipped away, leaving me hovering. 

An aerial perspective, even a cosmic one, though, can help us orient the way we perceive threats to our planetary environment and the plants and creatures that inhabit it. These creatures include us human beings. As Carl Sagan's commentary on the famous "Pale Blue Dot" photograph notes, for the current moment there is nowhere else for us to call 'home'*. Sustainable interplanetary squatting by humans is some time away! More specifically the increasing colonisation of the skies by surveillance and lethally equipped drone weaponry disrupts perspective by creating a layer of threat that impedes access to cosmic perspectives, even imagining them. If the sky is 'falling in', as it metaphorically does in conflict places such as Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, it is an indictment on us all - especially in an age where astronomers and cosmologists are discovering more about our universal environment - which may actually be a multiversal one. 

An Invitation to Fly could be an invitation to you. It could be my childhood memory. But, maybe we are already flying and we are gazing down upon Earth - is it actually Earth? Or. are we on Earth gazing upwards, about to take off? 



* My painting and post Pale Blue Dot 

AS I FLEW PAST EARTH, I NOTICED EVIDENCE OF DRONES

As I Flew Past Earth, I Noticed Evidence of Drones, Gouache on paper 76 x 56 cm, 2017

In As I Flew Past Earth, I Noticed Evidence of Drones I have imagined being in a spacecraft, or being a speck of star dust, or being some kind of super force flying around the universe. As I pass by planet Earth I notice evidence of drones, their surveillance and targeting signals. How many drones - I cannot tell. 

I also notice signs of life, human and non-human - fragmented, turned upside down, hidden. However, there are also signs of defiance, regeneration, hope.

AERIAL PERSPECTIVE

Regular readers will observe that in this new painting I've taken an aerial perspective, yet again. Indeed, this perspective is evident in most of my work. I like to fly! I also like to think I can take the viewer with me, way beyond Earth, but also perhaps right up close, even inside its crust. This kind of imaginative flying could be a really significant capability in the 'drone age'. As airborne drones loiter in skies, hovering above terrain, scoping with their various surveillance capabilities, our horizons are netted with signals and vertically delivered potential threats. 

PANOPTICON

The airborne drone channels ideas of a panopticon with an intent to observe without being seen. Eighteenth century social theorist Jeremy Bentham proposed a panopticon as an institution designed for inmates, where a single guard could observe prisoners without being seen. That the guard could not be seen meant that prisoners were never sure if someone was observing or how many might be observing. Are we and other living creatures 'inmates' on a planet increasingly surveilled by drones? Should we also think about how satellite infrastructure, currently conscripted to aid communication and environmental awareness for drone operation, is utilised for surveillance and other potentially more lethal purposes? I claim we need to fly beyond our droned skies and beyond orbiting communication and GPS satellites,ie:  way beyond low Earth orbit, geostationary orbit and high Earth orbit, to get some perspective! 

So, if we can 'fly' around the drone and space-based enabling infrastructure then maybe we can subvert the power drone capabilities insidiously deploy. We can, with imagination, turn ourselves into observers with truly full spectrum temporal and spatial agency. 

The trees-of-life in As I Flew Past Earth, I Noticed Evidence of Drones are showing us how - don't you think?

Cheers,

Kathryn  

HOT

Hot Gouache on paper 56 x 76 cm 2017

CROP STUBBLE

Regular readers will have noticed a few fires in my recent paintings. The inspiration is drawn from childhood memories of my father burning crop stubble. Magnificent fires, over hectares of ground, lit the sky as it darkened...best to light fires at the stillest part of the day. These fires took over the horizon in ways that brought the Milky Way closer. Embers and stars seem to meet - fleetingly. The flat treeless plain, where my parents' farm was situated, provided fire with a 'canvas' of vast proportions.   

In my recent paintings I've transported my childhood memories into cosmic landscapes where orientation is ambiguous. I really like the sense of flying! In Hot I imagine I could be an ember or a star! You could be an ember or a star too.

SERIOUSLY, HOT

But, seriously - Hot does engage with issues relating to global warming and environmental sustainability. Here, in Australia fires and firestorms seem to have become fiercer and more regular, particularly during our long hot dry summers. 'Heated' debates about how land is prepared or not prepared for the possibility of runaway fires occur, before and after fire events. Farmers, green lobbyists, environmentalists, government departments argue about the best ways to prevent fire occurring and spreading. As the arguments continue, we approach each summer with trepidation.

OTHER POSSIBILITIES
What if the fire in Hot is Earth's last remnant, consumed by cataclysmic devastation? Or, it could be a painting of the future, when the Sun meets its demise and the solar system is destroyed. Maybe Hot is the Sun's last gasp, Earth already non-existent? Maybe it's not Earth or our Sun? Maybe, it's a fire at another cosmic address?

Other fiery paintings:

Fire and Flood: Extremus

Stirring the Dark Chasm

Anthropocene

Cheers,

Kathryn

MY LANDSCAPE AND SPAGETTIFICATION

 My Landscape Gouache and watercolour on paper 30 x 42 cm 2015

ME/YOU
Here's me, in the painting above, with my arms and legs stretched across a landscape, that could be read as an aerial view of the Australian outback...after some rain!

Or, it could be read as a cosmic view with me floating in an endless space....my arms and legs stretched to the edges of time and the universe.

Or, maybe I am in the process of spagettification as I enter the event horizon at the entrance of a black hole where gravity is so dense that time stops.

But maybe it's just a shadow of me where light is playing tricks with my body?

And, here's another possibility, it could be a posthuman me...my body simulated with some kind of code, so that 'I' feel like 'I' have a body...except the code may not have worked because 'I' am a stretched version of a human body, not really what the 'source code' ie: the real me looked like?

But, this figure does not have to be me. It could be you! It could be anyone or all of us. 

FLYING BRIDES
In the past I have painted many images of figures floating or flying above a landscape and even in space. Here's an example below, Living With Distance. A bride floats above the Earth, her veil sweeping across the atmosphere as if forming clouds. This painting plays with the word distance in obvious and not-so-obvious ways. I painted a number of flying brides a few years ago. You can see more HERE

Living With Distance Oil on linen 120 x 160 [diptych] 2001 - 2002

OUT NEAR THE MOON

And, the painting below is called When I Was A Child I Dreamt I could Fly. In this painting I am not merely flying above a known landscape, I am flying out near the Moon! Here's a link to a previous post called School Holidays where I write more about this painting. Yes, I actually did dream I could fly...and sometimes I was not asleep!

Actually, I've painted a few paintings where the Moon features...and with floating/flying human figures too. Here's a link to a post I wrote called Moon

When I Was A Child I Dreamt I Could Fly oil on linen 80 x 120 cm 2003

REFLECTING ON MY PRACTICE AND CHILDHOOD LANDSCAPE

I have found writing this post to be very useful. Actually concentrating on a theme like flying has helped me see how my current work links with my previous work. It's not so surprising that I have gravitated towards cosmic landscapes and an interest in how humanity will navigate the future in this universe. 

I also am very aware of the influence of landscape, especially the distance in the Australian landscape AND especially the distance of my childhood landscape...the flat treeless Pirrinuan Plain, between Dalby and Jimbour, Queensland, Australia. It really provided the space for many launches!

REMINDER 

ADELAIDE

THURSDAY FEB 4 at 6 PM

Hosted by Southern Hemisphere Space Program 

at the University of South Australia
in conjunction with the International Space University, Strasbourg, France. 

'Space and Popular Culture'

Panel discussion 

With me, under-water performance artist and Everest mountaineer Sarah-Jane Pell and comedian and Mars One candidate Josh Richards with facilitator, space archaeologist Dr. Alice Gorman.

All the details and registration HERE

Cheers,

Kathryn

www.kathrynbrimblecombe-fox.com 

FAVOURITES

                                                   Paradise oil on linen 62 x 82 cm 2009


I am working on a new painting, which is coming along quite well. I've had my moments of joy, despair, frustration and excitement. Yes, a mixture of emotions, but that's normal. At the moment I am not sure what I am going to do next, but I know the painting is not quite finished. So, I wait, look, wonder.

Why did I choose the title of FAVOURITES? Two reasons. One is that I thought I'd list the top four favourite posts...according to the number of people who have visited them. Secondly, I thought I'd upload 4 paintings I personally have grown very fond of.


TOP FOUR POSTS

1. AIRSPACE and PHANTOMS
Written 24 August 2010, this post discusses water!

2. FOOD- A FANTASY IN THE FUTURE?
Written  21 November 2010, with a 'picture' of the future where food and fantasy play together!

3. OUROBOROS
Written 18 March 2012, this post discusses age-old symbols and connections with cosmology. An auroboros is an age old-symbol of a snake eating its own tail. In my painting I use the age-old symbol of the tree-of-life to create the snake's body.

4. LISTENING TO THE STILLNESS
Written 28 June 2010, this post discusses the still spot inside the vortex....and more!


FOUR OF MY FAVOURITE PAINTINGS

• Paradise [painting at the top of the page] This is hanging my bedroom at the moment . It causes me to stop...and think. The word paradise alludes to the Garden of Eden. But, this is just a metaphor for the paradise of knowledge, wonder and imagination. Click HERE to read my previous post. This painting is one of a group of Adam and Eve paintings.

                                          Ouroboros Oil on linen 122 x 153 cm 2012

• Auroboros  This painting, of the age-old symbol of the snake eating its own tale, is one of my cosmic paintings. Yes, I have a few of them, as regualr readers will know The auroboros is used by modern cosmologists to visually 'describe' the realtionship beween the quantum and cosmic worlds. Please click HERE to read my previous post.

                    When I Was A Child I Dreamt I Could Fly Oil on linen 80 x 120 cm 2004

• When I Was A Child I Dreamt I Could Fly I love this painting, because it reminds of my childhood. I also uploaded it in a recent post SUPER HEROES

                                               Homage Mixed Media on Paper 1991

• Homage This is one of a series of paintings I created when I was pregnant with my first child. I exhibited them in an exhibition when my daughter was 3 months old. Some sold, but I am glad I have a few left for me!

You can see more of my paintings on my website www.kathrynbrimblecombe-fox.com


And, $oils Ain't $oils Anymore is currently hanging as a finalist in SCOPE Galleries inaugural Art and Environment Award. Click HERE for details
Cheers,
Kathryn

FLYING

Flying Oil on linen 80 x 120 cm 2004



Hot Gouache on paper 15 x 21 cm 1995


Following on from my last post, I have uploaded a couple more older paintings. I had hoped to post an image of my very latest painting, but I have only just finished it [like right now!] and will not get around to photographing it until tomorrow. It is 10 pm and I am ready for sleep.

These two paintings are about flying. The first one was painted after I left Goondiwindi [small rural town in western Queensland] and moved to the 'big smoke' of Brisbane. The woman flying is a bride and her shadow on the ground follows her. Readers of my BLOG would know that as a child I dreamt I could fly...and it was not just a night time dream, but an experience I had both at night and during the day. I knew what my parent's farm looked like from above even though I had never been in a plane above it. This experience of 'flying' has obviously influenced my need to experiment with different perspectives in my work.

I was a young bride when I moved to Goondiwindi and my mother was a young bride when she moved to the family farm outside Dalby. In fact, there have been many young brides in my family who have moved to live in rural Australia. The men marked the land literally with their fences, roads, dams, ploughed paddocks etc. But, the women leave markings which are more about the fabric of the community. They leave their spirit in a different way to the men, who also leave their spirit inbedded in the earth with their sweat and in many cases their tears.

The young bride above seems to hover above the land with the horizon enticing in the distance. Over this horizon there maybe other horizons, but she seems wistful about her present place. Readers of my BLOG know that I use landscape elements as metaphors for our emotional landscapes. The horizon can be interpreted literally or be understood as something which is inside us, a place where we search to know who we are.

The second painting 'Hot' is a more playful image, where the two figures placed against a red background seem to be absorbed into the fabric of the image. I played with the word hot to mean both heat and sexy.