Spectacle

Adventures in Form and Content: an investigation into into possible methods for encouraging socio-political engagement through manipulations in visual culture.

by Peter Buwert

MRes thesis project questioning the extent to which we can separate form from content. See link for images of project.

Visual communication design is big business, and growing, as our society becomes ever more visually literate and... more Visual communication design is big business, and growing, as our society becomes ever more visually literate and demanding. However, within the fields of professional image creation, comparatively little thought is given to the designer’s responsibility for the societal impact of their manipulations of visual culture. The unspoken and often unquestioned assumption is that visual form is merely a vessel for content. Any socio-political impact on the viewer derives from the received content of the message; therefore responsibility lies with the client not with us: “Don’t shoot the messenger!” This thesis is presented as an embodied challenge to the assumed separation of form and content. One cannot exist without the other. Form is not neutral. The document set before you is an experiment in using various techniques of visual manipulation to ‘defamiliarise’ the conventional experience of reading the text of an academic thesis. In summary, the design of this thesis aims to bring the content communicated by the experience of the visual form of the document onto an equal footing with the content communicated by reading the text. In order to achieve this, techniques of reflexivity designed to draw the viewer's attention to the constructed, manipulated nature of the visual form have been employed. The aim of this experimental methodology is to encourage the active engagement of the viewer in critically considering the complete experience of the content set before them. This goal is pursued by placing obstacles and inconsistencies in the way of the viewer's effortless consumption of ‘data’, forcing them, to some extent, to engage in critical thought as to what the content is, and what their response to the subject will be. In the unique case of this project, the sphere of content is doubly reflexive as it is the document’s own very form and manifestation which is to be questioned.

‘Spectacle and witnessing: constructing readings of Parsons’ marine turbine’, Technology & Culture 52 (2011): 287-309.

by Don Leggett

Slavoj Žižek sur Walter Lippmann: Un méta-commentaire sur la question du pouvoir

by Dominique Trudel

Cet article interroge la présence de la figure de Walter Lippmann dans le corpus žižékien et développe l’hypothèse que... more Cet article interroge la présence de la figure de Walter Lippmann dans le corpus žižékien et développe l’hypothèse que celle-ci s’avère cruciale pour illustrer le fonctionnement contemporain du pouvoir. Après voir montré comment la figure de Lippmann permet également d’exemplifier les concepts de «biopolitique» (Foucault, 2004) et de «société de contrôle» (Deleuze, 1990), cet article propose une relecture de la critique žižékienne des « philosophes pervers » (Foucault et Deleuze) mettant l’accent sur des complémentarités et des incompréhensions entre ces différentes conceptions du pouvoir.

‘How does she do that?' Belly Dancing and the Horror of a Flexible Woman

by Virginia Keft-Kennedy

Keft-Kennedy, V. (2005). "'How does she do that?' Belly Dancing and the Horror of a Flexible Woman." Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 34(3-4): 279-300.

The role of belly dance and the meanings attached to this dance for both the women who perform it and their spectators... more The role of belly dance and the meanings attached to this dance for both the women who perform it and their spectators have undergone radical change since it was first introduced to the West in the 19th century. This article raises a series of questions about the process of bodily transformation through the practice of belly dance and explores the mechanisms by which women attain empowerment through the moving body. In particular, the complex intersections between ideas of display, spectacle, and the “grotesque” moving body are examined.

Stained Glass and the Culture of the Spectacle, 1780–1862

by Jasmine Allen

Published in Visual Culture in Britain, (2012), 13:1, 1-23.

Abstract:

Stained glass has been significantly overlooked in studies of nineteenth-century visual culture.... more Abstract:

Stained glass has been significantly overlooked in studies of nineteenth-century visual culture. This article examines the important role that stained glass played within ‘the era of public glass’ by exploring the dialogues between stained glass and ‘spectacle’ in the late Georgian and early Victorian periods. The first International Exhibitions held in London and Paris, between 1851 and 1862, provide a unique vantage point from which to assess key developments and changing attitudes towards stained glass after the Georgian era. Uniquely, they provided a secular, competitive and international environment where the stained glass of several nations could be seen. The article considers stained glass in a broad cultural and material context, encouraging new art-historical approaches to the medium alongside traditional historical, iconographical and ecclesiological methodologies. In order to do this, I consider stained glass in relation to other theatrical, illusory and illuminated spectacles involving glass transparencies, such as the diorama and Magic Lantern. I also draw attention to a number of ‘para-stained-glass novelties’, objects that were intended to recreate the appearance or effects of stained glass in other media. What can the kaleidoscopic display of stained glass at the International Exhibitions tell us about mid-Victorian visuality, imagination and the taste for spectacle? And what implications does this have for future scholarship on the marginalized medium of stained glass?

Making Democracy Spectacular

by Nick Mahony

Spectacles of Disintegration

by McKenzie Wark

published in Social Research

Controlling images: Surveillance, spectacle, and the power of high-stakes testing (Vinson & Ross, 2003)

by E. Wayne Ross

Vinson, K. D., & Ross, E. W. (2003). Controlling images: Surveillance, spectacle, and the power of high-stakes testing. In K. J. Saltman & D. Gabbard (Eds.), Education as enforcement (pp. 241-257). New York: Routledge.

Comedy of the Spectacle (and its alternative)

by Ray Campbell

Published in School of Humanities and Social Sciences Yearbook, "Crossing Conceptual Boundaries", 2011. This is a work in progress.

In this paper I will discuss the cultural and stylistic tension between alternative comedy (alt-com) and working men’s... more In this paper I will discuss the cultural and stylistic tension between alternative comedy (alt-com) and working men’s club (WMC) comedy of the mid to late 1970’s. I am interested in the way in which comedy can exist as part of a Debordian “spectacle”, and how it utilises its voice to articulate the universalistic discourses of the dominant culture. I am also interested in alt-com’s cultural parentage and how it deployed its inherited subcultural capital to create a new form of comedy performance to challenge the comedy-cabaret orthodoxy of the early 1980’s.

Alt-com and WMC comedy are aesthically different to each in many ways and I will analyse their respective aesthetics in order to identify the way in which alt-com negated its opposite and to uncover the spectacular-power relationships that exist between the dominant culture, the WMC comics and their audiences. Comedy has the potential to be innovative, experimental and daring, WMC comedy was frozen in time and resistant to change. To illustrate my argument, I have chosen Alexei Sayle and The Dangerous Brothers to serve as my alt-com exemplars and I will compare and contrast them to their antithetical exemplars, Bernard Manning and Colin Crompton. To further illustrate my thesis, I will be utilising clips from The Comedians, OTT, The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club and Boom Boom... Out Go The Lights.

Interrogating Athletic Urbanism: On examining the politics of the city underpinning the production of the spectacle

by Thomas Carter

International Review of the Sociology of Sport. (2011) 46 (2): 131-139.

This is the introduction to the first ever special issue published in the International Review of the Sociology of... more This is the introduction to the first ever special issue published in the International Review of the Sociology of Sport. It lays out some theoretical ideas related to the production of urban spectacles that underpin the economies of global capitalism

Guantánamo Does Not Exist: Simulation and the Production of ‘the Real’ Global War on Terror

by Elspeth Van Veeren

Published in Journal of War and Culture Studies, 2011, 4:2.
Guantánamo, Baudrillard, simulation, War on Terrorism, mediation, spectacle

Joint Task Force Guantánamo, the high-profile U.S. military detention and interrogations facilities was established in... more Joint Task Force Guantánamo, the high-profile U.S. military detention and interrogations facilities was established in January 2002 in order to demonstrate the capture of the ‘worst of the worst’ of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It nevertheless became a public spectacle that was essential for constituting the reality of the Global War on Terror. Through evolving media and VIP tours of the facilities and the Bush administration’s Military Analyst Program, a system of reverse embeds used to promote Pentagon messages within the U.S. media, Guantánamo became a simulation essential for producing the reality of the war. It became a key way to convince the public that the war was real and necessary, but also that its conduct was just and humane, and by extension, that the U.S. can be understood as ‘good’. Through a triple screen of the tours, the visitors and their mediation, the telegenic spectacle of Guantánamo was transmuted into a reality of Guantánamo as ‘safe, humane, legal, and transparent’. The importance of this for producing understandings of the GWoT bears closer examination. Without this triple screen, Guantánamo does not exist.

Violent Pastime(s): On the Commendation and Condemnation of Violence in Belfast.

by Thomas Carter

City & Society. (2003) 15 (2): 255-281.

The 1998 Belfast Accord or Good Friday Agreement presented Belfast's civic authorities with an opportunity to rebuild... more The 1998 Belfast Accord or Good Friday Agreement presented Belfast's civic authorities with an opportunity to rebuild much of the devastated city. Taking this opportunity, they began creating an image of the city that had rid itself of the problem of sectarian violence, even though the city remains a violent urban environment. Civic leaders recast the symbolism of violence to legitimate their gentrification strategies by controlling access to specific urban spaces in the city. This article plays with the different ways urban leaders contextualize violence. Their efforts to present Belfast as a cosmopolitan city contrast with working-class youth's practices of engaging in communal violence as a means of rejecting their spatial and social marginalization, a result of the implementation of urban leaders' vision of the city,

Image and event in recent Hungarian film (The Man from London, Delta, Milky Way)

by Izabella Füzi

Published in Orientation in Occurrence, ed. by István Berszán. Cluj-Napoca, 2009. 331-341.

The article deals with the visual dimensions of narrative film as a site of the film in which new forms of event can... more The article deals with the visual dimensions of narrative film as a site of the film in which new forms of event can emerge. The descriptions of narrative and spectacle as opposing forces cannot account for the event character of the visual component. Through three recent Hungarian films the article points out a shift which indicates the weakening of narrative (causal, motivational) structures and the foregrounding of a temporality different from the time of the story. In The Man from London (Béla Tarr, 2008), Delta (Kornél Mundruczó, 2008), and The Milky Way (Benedek Fliegauf, 2007) aspects of visuality create meanings on different levels (the mechanistic autonomy of the camera, and seriality of frames, the relation between the setting and characters, and dynamics of what is outside and inside the frame) outside, in opposition to, or alongside the narrative dimension of the film.

The Self Separated from Violence: Spectacle, Material Appropriation, and Voices of Resistance on the Western Front, 1914-1918

by Christopher Schultz

Canadian Journal of History, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Winter 2011): 563-584.

Trench culture is a field of First World War studies that, until recently, has received primarily descriptive... more Trench culture is a field of First World War studies that, until recently, has received primarily descriptive attention. It is, however, a key element in avoiding oversimplified and occasionally facile analyses of participants’ wartime experiences. Employing a multi-sensory analytical style, this article explores topics in visuality, materiality, and aurality in an attempt to trace both continuities and contradictions in these aspects of trench culture. Moreover, this article pleads for a mode of analysis that distances trench culture from “purpose-driven” narratives—these too often resulting in participants’ experiences becoming subordinated to military objectives and war aims. By analyzing the aforementioned concepts, one sees firstly that trench culture is not necessarily attached to any sense of military pragmatism, and secondly that war participants often were required to negotiate the potentially deadly lines between the spectacular and the terrific.

Us to-Come: Francesco Vezzoli's Nonconsensual Futures

by John Ricco

Avatar obama in the age of liquid celebrity

by Sean Redmond

Apocryphal Now Redux

by Jack Bratich

in Contesting Empire/Globalizing Dissent: Cultural Studies after 9/11
Editors: Norman K. Denzin and Michael Giardinia
(Paradigm Press, 2007, pp. 264-279)

Public secrecy and immanent security: A strategic analysis

by Jack Bratich

In Cultural Studies Vol. 20, Nos. 4 !5 July/September 2006, pp. 493-511

Secrecy proliferates everywhere, but is
not negated in revelation. How can we communicate this secrecy... more Secrecy proliferates everywhere, but is
not negated in revelation. How can we communicate this secrecy proliferating?
How are we to think of secrecy in the current conjuncture, in what has been
called ‘The New Normal?’
In this essay, I argue that recent events in the construction of Homeland
Security compel us to revise our conceptions of publicity, secrecy, and activist
strategy. I will specifically speak to some of the recent changes in secrecy and
its offerings.1 First, I examine post-9/11 innovations in strategic secrecy,
specifically focusing on the Terror/War, Iraq Theater. Homeland security, I
argue, depends on the spectacular deployment of secrecy.
In the second part I explore the possibilities
posed by what we might call popular, minor or insurgent secrecy. I argue that
reconceptualizing secrecy as strategy not only unmoors it from its State
deployments, it also provides conceptual tools to rethink security itself.
Following Paolo Virno’s argument that the multitude has a ‘need for refuges
that safeguard us from previous forms of protection’, this section ends by
finding in the proliferation of secrecy a strategic potential for inventing new
safeguards and countersecurity.

Subjectivity Rosa: Undercurrent Affairs

by Jack Bratich

Published in
Fifth Estate (#380, Spring 2009, pp. 16-18)

Over the past two years, various actors have ruminated over the perceived loss of the “movement” (specifically... more Over the past two years, various actors have ruminated over the perceived loss of the “movement” (specifically referring to the counterglobalization movement, but also referring to a sense of momentum, coordinated actions, targeted purpose, and most importantly a sense of effectivity). Like a drug, Seattle99 was a vehicle that became confused with its effects. The enthusiasm and infectious power of that moment became a lost object of desire, a model whose failure to reappear seemed to diminish possibilities (for more on this see my previous article “Becoming-Seattle” in Fifth Estate #374, Winter 2007).
This waning of capacity might have come to an end now that another election has cyclically intervened to rearrange elements of the “movement” (anarchist and otherwise). But as we undergo the recomposition of the collective activist body, we would be wise to pay attention to the subtle, if not hidden, dimensions of this body. Here I want to sketch out three qualities of this Subjectivity Rosa...

Just Spectacles

by James Eric (Jay) Black

Black, James Eric (Jay). "Just Spectacles." 2008 Semiotics Annual: Specialization, Semoiosis, Semiotics. Ed. John Deely and Leonard G. Sbrocchi. Semiotic Society of America, 2009. 230-44.  (Winner of the 2008 Roberta Kevelson Scholarship Award from the Semiotic Society of America)

The demand to fill the “news hole” of a 24-hour channel dictates the necessity to deliver unfinished products as... more The demand to fill the “news hole” of a 24-hour channel dictates the necessity to deliver unfinished products as spectacle rather than finished news packages. Because we accept a reporter will not lie as a priori, we do not have to think about the events as they occur.  What the viewer experiences is a form of communication that is more phatic than factual. When the real world is transformed into images, the images become real and dynamic figments. Our social realities are not only the product of our histories but also fundamentally connected to the structural conditions of the media messages.