The Spectacle of War exhibition presented by The Empty Quarter Gallery is showing photographic and film works by:
Benjamin Lowy : Iraq Perspectives
Richard Mosse : Breach & The Fall
Spencer Murphy : Architects of War
Phil Nesmith : My Bagdad
Trevor Paglen : Limit-Telephotography & The Other Night Sky
US Department of Defense & the military industry.
Contemporary war is presented as a post-modern spectacle, with fluid roles and changing seat orders for viewers, actors, directors and back-stage technicians alike. Visualization of the spectacle has become a vital, viral and seminal activity for all parties involved, both off-stage and on-stage. This visualization happens on different scales, uses a range of technologies, is presented from numerous viewpoints, broadcasted through competing channels, and eventually re-enacted in modern video games. One may say that modern man consumes the war as much as he is consumed by it.
In modern warfare, the camera lens has always been the predestined ‘weapon’ of choice for those tasked with the visualization of the different acts as they are played out, including the stages of preparation and the enduring aftermath of the war. This is no coincidence, if we follow Heidegger’s thinking, that ‘the fundamental event of modernity is the conquest of the world as picture’, and its decisive unfolding a battle of perspectives, ‘for the sake of which mankind brings into play the unlimited violence of the calculation, planning, and breeding of everything.’ It is within this constellation that imaging and mapping technologies have seen a viral growth since the onset of the modern age, with a network of satellites, public and secret ones, now spanning the globe.
Until April 30
The Empty Quarter
Gate Village, Bldg 02
P.O.BOX 506697
DIFC, Dubai, UAE
