artArt

Linda Carroli's blog artArt covers a range of art events and projects. There is also a wealth of references to current events in the media, particularly creative projects that use divergent forms of media in innovative and challenging ways.

Jihad Tv cont...

Douglas Kellner has written extensively on the role of media in the production of spectacle, terror and propaganda and his article September 11, Spectacles of Terror, and Media Manipulation: A Critique of Jihadist and Bush Media Politics explores these themes in the context of media theory.

He comments that:

In a global media world, extravagant terror spectacles have been orchestrated in part to gain worldwide attention, dramatize the issues of the terrorist groups involved, and achieve specific political objectives. Previous al Qaeda strikes against the U.S. hit a range of targets to try to demonstrate that the U.S. was weak and vulnerable to terrorism...Terrorism thus works in part through spectacle, using dramatic images and montage to catch attention, hoping thereby to catalyze unanticipated events that will spread further terror through domestic populations.

Jihad Tv (Cutting Edge) SBS

From program promo:

"Videos of smiling suicide bombers and insurgent attacks have become as important a weapon as explosives in Al Qaeda's global jihad against the West. Tonight's Cutting Edge looks at how the jihadis have seized the power of the internet and their message cannot be silenced. But who actually watches these videos and what effect are they having on young people in the Muslim world? And – for that matter – on their enemies in the West?"
(From the UK, in English and Arabic, English subtitles) M CC WS. Text from SBS (www.sbs.com.au)

This program in relation to media cultures studies has many relevant links to notions of idenity, stereotypes and how media used as propaganda. The role of user publishing (produser) or 'citizen journalism' (this term is very loosly in this context) is a central theme in the production of this type of video and interent media. There is an online version of Jihad Tv if you are interested in watching the entire documentary.

Mike Parr

Further to the Week 3 lecture and the discussion about stereotypes and power relations, here is an image of Mike Parr's 2002 performance 'Close the camps' as mentioned.

Adam Geczy's comments in his review of Parr's Internet Performance work in Real Time that:
"Performances such as these, which are dramatic in the way they both formalise and ritualise discomfort, as well as frame the scene of deprivation, have a distinctly different effect when they appear at home on the screen. What is most disturbing is the simultaneity of impotent deadness and uncomfortable proximity; the world wide web has on the one hand reduced this insane feat of bodily and psychological distension to the median level of cybernetic sameness, and on the other brings the performance so close to you and your living space that it invades it, infiltrates it."

Blog tutorials

Hi everyone,

I have set this blog up for the NEWM1001 tutorial groups. Information about tutorial lists and topics will be posted to the blog regularly and students are welcome to submit their tutorial papers to the blog for discussion.

Please check the blog regularly as I will be posting links to useful web sites and information.