1
Sydney College of the Arts
University of Sydney
Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours)
2010
BACHELOR OF VIUSAL ARTS
RESEARCH PAPER
Public Performance Art in the Era of Counter-Terror
by
Adam Adelpour
October 2010
2
Table of Contents
Forward
1
Introduction
2
Section One
Islamophobic National Security and the Media Post 9-11
5
Section Two
A Description of Alakazam
7
Section Three
Calling to account the Western Gaze: A demonstrative deception
9
Section Four
A Parody of the Dominative Mechanism
11
Section Five
Problematising Emancipatory Freedom
14
Section Six
Alakazam as ‘Externalisation’
18
Section Seven
A Negative Political Tendency
21
Conclusion
23
Bibliography
25
Illustrations
31
3
Illustration List
Figure 1. N.S.W Government. N.S.W. Anti-Terror Campaign Poster, 2003 - present.
31
Figure 2. Adam Adelpour. Alakazam (camera-vest)
32
Figure 3. Adam Adelpour. Alakazam (video stills from documentation)
33
Figure 4. Adam Adelpour. Alakazam (map with performance location)
34
Figure 5. Stephen Birch. Dave, 2004.
35
Figure 6. Hugo Ball. Reciting Karawane, 1916.
36
Figure 7. U.R.A/ Filoart Collective. I-R.A.S.C. (headband), 2008.
37
Figure 8. U.R.A/ Filoart Collective. I-R.A.S.C. (film still from intervention), 2008.
37
Figure 9. U.S. Government. U.S. Senate coat of arms.
38
Figure 10. Alison Smith. Phrygian Cap, 2006.
39
Figure 11. Adam Adelpour. Blinded by the Beauty of Our Weapons
40
(Liberty Cap), 2010.
Figure 12. Adam Adelpour. Blinded by the Beauty of Our Weapons
41
(film stills), 2010.
Figure 13. Joan Jonas. Organic Honey’s Visual Telepathy (film still), 1972.
42
Figure 14. Caspar David Friedrich. The Monk by the Sea, 1808-10.
43
Figure 15. Thomas Hirschhorn. Concrete Shock, 2006.
44
4
Forward
Australia has been at war throughout my entire adult life. The social and cultural
ramifications of this ongoing state of war and have influenced my work as an artist. I
arrived home on the afternoon of September 11, 2001, to find that the spectacular
attacks on the twin towers were being covered continuously on every TV channel. The
fiery explosions caused by 747s hitting the twin towers were played over and over ad
nauseam. This kind of sensational media coverage set the hysterical tone for what would
emerge to be a sustained combination of aesthetics and politics in the days, weeks,
months and years to come. Following these attacks, which will henceforth be referred to
as ‘9-11’, terrorist beheadings, torture at Abu Ghraib, the execution of Saddam Hussein,
and the murder of journalists by U.S. troops would all be globally televised. The
circulation of overwhelmingly affective images of violence by the mass media in this
context was what Boris Groys would retrospectively term the ‘political sublime’, a state in
which Western governments and terrorists compete to produce the most terrifying and
violent image. 1
Amid this torrent of images were messages, which were not reducible to any one source.
These messages were formed through an accumulation of congruencies, which
communicated a crude but clear ideology. Across a variety of mass media sources, Islam
was constructed as synonymous with fundamentalism, oppression of women and brutal
terrorist violence. The Middle East was figured as synonymous with Islam and thus all of
the above. The U.S. and its allies were counter-posed as doing the hard, dirty (but
necessary) work of cleaning up, democratising and stabilising the volatile Middle East. 2
This ideological message was made convincing by reducing the Middle East to terms
which positioned it as inferior to the West and thus legitimated its economic exploitation.
By 2003, despite the biggest anti-war demonstrations in the history of Australia, our
1
Boris Groys, Art Power. (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2008), 126.
2
Anadam P. Kavoorie and Todd Frayley, Media Terrorism and Theory. (Rowman and Littlefield: Oxford,
2006), 6.
5
country had followed the U.S. to war.
My own personal background has significantly coloured my experience of this divisive,
media driven phenomenon. I grew up with an atheist, Afghan Stepfather (now
estranged) and two younger brothers who are half-Afghan. I am a mix of Anglo ancestry
on my Mother’s side and Balinese ancestry on my Father’s. Growing up in the Blue
Mountains, 100km West of Sydney, my brothers and I all attended Lithgow High School in
an insular, inner regional coal mining town where our Afghan surname of ‘Adelpour‘
often aroused curiosity. This was uniformly fairly benign with the odd exception.
However post 9-11, particularly when Afghanistan became the target of U.S. led military
retribution, I began to feel anxiety about my brothers and I being labelled as ‘the enemy’.
I had noticed an increase in the amount of jokes at school, and in society in general,
which expressed disdain or hostility towards Middle Eastern people. The ‘rightness’ of
this hostility seemed to be confirmed by the potent mythic narratives circulating in the
media and the cooperation of Australia with aggressive U.S. foreign policy. When the
2003 Bali Bombings took place in my final year of high school a classmate patronisingly
reassured me that it was ‘not my fault’. This comment positioned my white classmate as
being the one whose right it was to excuse or condemn me, a microcosm of the
arrogance and assumed superiority through which the U.S. government appointed itself
to the position world ‘sheriff’ with Australia as ‘deputy’. 3
Introduction
I have not gone over my personal background to claim that my experience is exceptional
but to introduce and contextualise this paper, which is an analysis and discussion of my
major Honours studio-project, Alakazam (2010), and minor studio project Guided by the
Beauty of Our Weapons (2010). I see this paper as complementing my studio work
3
Suvendrini Perera, Our Patch: Domains of Whiteness, Geographies of Lack and Australia's Racial
Horizons in the War on Terror. (Perth: Network Books, 2007), 121.
6
through clarifying the key intentions, ideas and theories which have shaped my practical
projects. Moreover, during my studio projects I have pursued a dialogue between
research, writing and artistic production and this paper represents a formalisation and
intensification of this reflective, critical process.
The scope of this paper is confined to a discussion of two of my works, Alakazam and
Guided by the Beauty of Our Weapons, and the contemporary social, political and art
contexts which inform them and to which they respond. These works are a continuation
and refinement of the themes of authority and violence within my past art practice.
However, as my first major performative pieces that engage with specific contemporary
social and political phenomena, Alakazam and Guided by the Beauty of Our Weapons
mark a departure from my past practice, which has been primarily object-based and has
only related to such phenomena through allusion.
In this paper I discuss the three main capacities in which Alakazam is a response to the
social conditions that have characterised the era of counter-terror, an umbrella term that
will henceforth refer to the post 9-11 period of heightened national security and
xenophobia in Western countries, including Australia. 4 Broadly, Alakazam is a response
to these conditions through demonstration, critical parody, and through parody as a
psychologically restorative practice. This discussion is followed by a classification of my
work within the schema of a broad historical opposition between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’
artistic responses to contemporary political conditions. Michel Foucault’s understanding
of the role of freedom in liberal governance is used to theoretically contextualise my
discussion of Guided by the Beauty of Our Weapons, which is a response to the
ideological use of discourses of emancipatory freedom since 9-11.
To establish an overall context for my analysis of Alakazam and my discussion of Guided
by the Beauty of Our Weapons, the post 9-11 race politics in the era of counter-terror are
sketched in terms of the broad and divisive myths circulated in the global English
4
Liz Fekete, “Anti-Muslim Racism and the European Security State,” Race and Class, Vol 46, No. 1 (2004):
3.
7
language media. Specific examples are given from the Australian context in the form of
the post 9-11 National Security campaigns. Divisive and dominative constructions of the
Middle East are in operation in both cases. This is consistent with literary theorist Edward
Said’s conception of Orientalism as a discursive practice through which the West
produces ‘truths’ about, and exercises control over, the Orient. 5 Within this theoretical
framework, I explicate my work as a calling to account of the Western gaze through a
contextualised visual analysis of my figure as it appears in public space in Alakazam,
supported by a comparison with the sculpture Dave (2004) by Stephen Birch. The parodic
element of Alakazam is discussed as a representational criticism of dominative
constructions of the Middle East. This is done through a comparison with Hugo Ball’s
performance Karawane (1916) as interpreted by art writer Hal Foster, as well as through
a contextualised analysis of the visual movement from misrecognition of my figure as a
‘suicide bomber’ to the subsequent recognition of my figure as an exaggerated ‘tourist’.
This visual analysis makes use of Dean MacCannel’s structuralist conception of tourism in
order to show that this visual trajectory represents a revelation of the dominative
mechanism of the Western gaze. 6
Drawing on Lea Vergine’s understanding of parody in performance art 7, which draws on
Freud’s psychoanalytic concept of ‘externalisation’ from Totem and Taboo (1913), I
suggest the role of parody in Alakazam as a psychological mechanism that restores the
integrity of my mixed identity as problematised by divisive racial narratives post 9-11.
Moreover, this emphasis on the link between the artist and the work demonstrates the
extent to which Alakazam references the artistic mode of Romanticism.
Finally, Alakazam and Guided by the Beauty of Our Weapons are located in a broad
5
Edward Said, “Orientalism.” In The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, edited by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffith
and Helen Triffin (London: Routledge, 1997), 87 -91.
6
Dean MacCannel, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. (New York: Shoken Books, 1976), 2-8.
7
Lea Vergine, Body Art and Performance: The Body as Language. (Milan: Skira, 2000), 24.
8
historical schematic that opposes ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ engagements with lamentable
social and political conditions. The contextualisation of my work is achieved through a
comparison with Concrete Shock (2006) by Thomas Hirschhorn and a contrast with resist:
the right to revolution (2006) by PVI Collective. The negativity of the political engagement
in my work will be elucidated further through reference to French writer Phillipe Sollers’
scepticism about the political role of art.
Islamophobic National Security and the Media Post 9-11
The racial hostility I worried about at school was formed in a specific set of circumstances
relating to the post 9-11 political environment, which warrant discussion in order to
establish a social and political context for discussing my works, Alakazam and Guided by
the Beauty of Our Weapons.
The events of 9-11 signalled a political change around the world in relation to national
security, particularly in Western countries. An era of counter-terrorism was ushered in
with new legislation and extraordinary police powers which threatened basic civil
liberties and unfairly targeted Muslims whose loyalty was considered suspect. 8 One
example among many was the Muslim Community Reference Group (MCRG), a forum set
up by the Australian Government under the guise of hearing and addressing the
problems and concerns of the Australian Muslim community. In contrast to its ostensible
intentions, the mandate of the MCRG was actually to ‘identify, isolate and detain Muslim
community members who are also seen to be ‘extremists’, ‘terrorists’ or potential
8
Alice Aslan, Islamophobia in Australia. (Agora Press: Sydney, 2009), 69.
9
terrorists.’ 9
These changes were underpinned by a ‘good guys’/‘bad guys’ dichotomy. This was
espoused particularly by the neo-conservative U.S. government who positioned militant
Islam as a threat to modern, rational and secular market democracy. This ‘clash of
civilisations’ was formally theorised by right wing political scientist Samuel Huntington,
who argued that the new era of global conflicts would stem primarily from cultural
oppositions rather than economics or ideology. His broad and generalised cultural
categories, including the West and Islam as the most deeply opposed, echo the myths
circulated in the global English-language television news networks such as CNN and BBC
World post 9-11. 10 In these narratives Islam is considered so irrational it cannot be
reasoned with and can only be dealt with by a force encompassing pre-emptive strikes
and regime change. 11
The generalised hostility towards Arabs and Islam that was circulated in the mass media
informed the public response to the counter-terrorism crusade in Western countries. The
threat being defended against was Arab and Islamic and, as such, the loyalty of Arabs and
Muslims was publicly questioned as they were figured as the ‘enemy within’. 12 In
Australia, this Islamophobia implicitly informed government anti-terrorism campaigns
that were not overtly racist and explicitly legitimated those that were. One example was
the 2003 National Security Public Information Campaign, part of which entailed ‘terror
kits’ being mailed out to households. These kits contained the number for the National
Security Hotline and encouraged recipients to report any ‘suspicious individuals’. 13
9
ibid., 78.
10
ibid., 15.
11
P. Kavoorie and Todd Frayley, Media Terrorism and Theory. (Rowman and Littlefield: Oxford, 2006), 6.
12
Alice Aslan, Islamophobia in Australia. (Agora Press: Sydney, 2009), 69.
13
ibid., 77.
10
Another example was the ‘If you see something, say something’ poster campaign
introduced by state governments on public transport in 2003 and still running today.
(figure 1.) These posters also urged the public to report anything ‘suspicious’ to the
National Security Hotline. As mass media discourse had homogenised militant Islam into
a single threatening entity while conflating Arabs in general into this category, these
campaigns encouraged divisive racial profiling in Australian society. A ‘suspicious
individual’ seemed to mean a suspicious person of ‘Middle Eastern appearance’.
These constructions are consistent with Said’s definition of Orientalism as a ‘strategy of
positional superiority which puts the Westerner in a whole series of relationships with
the Orient without ever losing him the upper hand.’ 14 For Said, Orientalism refers to three
interdependent facets: academic discourses about the Orient, the ontological and
epistemological distinction between the Occident and Orient, and the corporate
institutions by which the Orient is governed and controlled. 15 Orientalism is part of a
material relationship of power and domination, and while denser in European history,
going back to antiquity, Orientalism remains part of the contemporary American role in
the Middle East. Moreover, Said clarifies that his is not a study of the correspondence
between Orientalism and the ‘real’ Orient, arguing that Orientalism ’has less to do with
the Orient than it does with ‘our’ world.’ 16 Thus, following Said, Arabs, Islam and the
Middle East have been constructed as synonymous with terrorism through popular,
academic and political discourses post 9-11. This has been materially reinforced through
concerted Western presence and intervention in the Middle East, thereby consolidating
Western economic and political domination.
14
Edward Said, “Orientalism.” In The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, edited by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth
Griffith and Helen Triffin (London: Routledge, 1997), 87 -91.
15
ibid., 88.
16
ibid., 91.
11
A Description of Alakazam
My artwork Alakazam is a prop-based, site-specific action that directly responds to these
conditions. Both the prop and documentation of the action are exhibited as a gallery
installation. The prop used is a specially constructed camera-vest made out of five
disposable cameras and a rudimentary support of thin medium density fibre board (MDF)
and black strapping. (figure 2.) The cameras are attached with Velcro and gaffer tape to
five MDF plates arranged in a rough pentagon around the torso. The plates have
mechanics mounted on them which wind the cameras and depress the shutters. These
mechanics are activated by hand-held buttons which allow the cameras to be wound and
discharged simultaneously. The power source consists of batteries attached to the two
front supports with black gaffer tape. The immediate visual impression of the vest is one
of menace because the intentionally exposed red and black wiring, as well as the
improvised look of the electrical tape, evokes the stereotypical visual profile of a suicide
bomber with a bomb strapped to their body. The clusters of batteries also evoke ‘ammo
belts’ with their shining metal cylinders visible from under the tape.
My action Alakazam took place at the Sydney Opera House at around 8pm on July 24,
2010. (figure 3.) In the semi-darkness, I strapped on the specially made camera vest as I
stood between the Concert Hall and the restaurant (above the colonnade entry to the
Studio and Playhouse) where tourists usually stand to look at and photograph the Sydney
Harbour Bridge. (figure 4.) I then switched the flashes on all the cameras to ‘on’ and
proceeded to press the button which winds the cameras simultaneously. When the
cameras had all ‘clicked’, I depressed the button which activates the solenoids that press
the shutters, simultaneously causing the flashes to discharge in a fashion emphasised by
the darkness of the evening. I repeated the winding and discharging for all 25 shots of
film without stopping. I stayed in the same place, sometimes turning or moving a few
steps out of restlessness and a desire to capture varied images. I then took off the vest.
The whole action lasted about ten minutes.
Prior to the action I felt very anxious, sweaty and experienced an increased heart rate. I
was afraid that the temperamental device would malfunction. I was also concerned
12
about confrontations with security and apprehensive about the response of any
bystanders. As the action got underway the device seemed to be working well and my
anxiety dissipated. While my apprehensiveness about the response of any bystanders or
security remained, I drew almost no overt attention. At one stage a man took out a
wheelie bin nearby without batting an eyelid. When all the film was exhausted I felt my
body flooded with a sense of elation and relief, as well as surprise that no one had
reacted.
The action was documented with a single digital video camera operated by assistants
from a distance of around 30 metres. A tripod was used and filming was discreet in order
to minimise the effect on the aura of the action. The camera was set to ‘night-vision’ in
order to allow better visibility in the low-light conditions and to dramatise the effect of
the flash discharge.
In the gallery, the installation of Alakazam consists of the camera-vest, photos and video
from the action. The vest is displayed on a minimal, custom made aluminium frame
which is mounted on a white plinth. The video footage is on a ten minute loop and shown
on a seven inch monitor above head height. The 125 photos developed from the cameras
are arranged in a chaotic collage on the wall.
Calling to Account the Western Gaze: A Demonstrative Deception
This section focuses on the way visual deception is used in Alakazam to demonstrate the
extent to which our understanding of the visual field has been informed by racially
divisive mass media narratives. Moreover, the implications of this work in relation to a
site subject to the ‘vigilance’ of the public will be explored. It will be argued that this
visual deception highlights the fear and moral alignment fostered through calls to
vigilance in the name of National Security. Moreover, a comparison with the resin
sculpture, Dave, by Stephen Birch will be used to clarify the politically invested visual
13
reflex being discussed. This analysis, which considers Alakazam as a demonstrative
criticism, contrasts with and reiterates the hyperbolic parody which can be read into
Alakazam, to be discussed in the next section. The meaning of the location of this
deception onto my specific body will also be discussed in a later section and as such my
embodied subjectivity will be reduced to a cipher or a means to an end in this analysis.
The vest used in the performance has been constructed so the wearer initially registers as
a stereotypical suicide-bomber through the mobilisation of familiar visual cues such as
black strapping and exposed wiring. However, on closer inspection, it is presumed that it
would become clear that the vest is not a bomb but an eccentric photographic device.
The anxiety engendered by the initial misrecognition of the vest is due to its use in a
context where the fear of a homogenised militant Islam has been heightened by mass
media discourse and Government National Security campaigns. The suicide bomber is the
distillation of fear in the West of a fanatical militant Islam which has been constructed in
the media since 9-11. According to cultural theorist Andrew Feffer, since 9-11 the West,
and particularly the U.S., has been positioned as a ‘culture of life’ in fundamental
opposition to an Islamic ‘culture of death’. 17 In this narrative, echoing Huntington’s ‘clash
of civilisations’ theory, the self-destroying suicide-bomber not only physically assaults the
West, but also represents the ultimate state of immorality which legitimates violent
Western interventions in the Middle East. In the disparity between the initial registration
of a threat, and the consequent recognition that the vest is a photographic device, the
audience is made to account for the extent to which their understanding of the visual
field is invested in the racially divisive narratives circulated in the media since 9-11.
The politically invested understanding of the visual field which is demonstrated in
Alakazam is also the proxy surveillance of the state due to the enlistment of the public
for the purposes of national security since 9-11. National and state level public security
17
Andrew Feffer, “W’s masculine pseudo-democracy: brothers in arms, suicide bombers, and the
culture of life. “In W Stands for Women: how the George W. Bush presidency shaped a new politics of
gender, ed. Michaele Ferguson and Lori Jo Marso (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 87.
14
campaigns such as the ‘If you see something say something’ campaign, introduced in
2003, urge the public to employ knowledge mainly received from the television news
media in order to visually identify potential threats to National Security in public spaces. 18
As such, the tenuous integrity of the public understanding of the visual field and its
investment in mythic media narratives based on half-truth, as demonstrated in
Alakazam, implicitly calls into doubt the value of public vigilance as a security measure. In
light of this doubt, the extent to which the moral alignment and fear engendered through
such campaigns is an end it itself is highlighted. Calls for vigilance legitimate the pursuit
of economic interests and geo-strategic power in the Middle East, by the U.S.
Government and its allies, by urging their citizens to identify with ‘us’, in an ‘us and them’
dichotomy. This is instituted through creating the sense of an omnipresent Islamic threat
which mobilises the powerful instincts of self-preservation within the population of
Western countries.
In his work, Dave (2004), Stephen Birch (figure 5.) also uses visual deception to call to
account our internalisation of mythic media narratives post 9-11. 19 Dave is a freestanding,
life-size, naked male figure cast in resin with a long black beard and a turban. The figure
at first glance registers as a naked Osama Bin Laden. However, on closer inspection his
facial features reveal themselves to be those of a Caucasian man. This misrecognition
demonstrates the extent to which the generic combination of a beard and a turban has
become synonymous with Osama Bin Laden. This demonised figure, whose declaration of
war on the West was globally televised, has become the primary image associated with
nondescript Muslim features through their circulation in the news-media in relation to
stories about terrorism since 9-11. 20 This conflation of ‘Muslim’ with ‘evil’ testifies to the
extent to which our readings of the visual field are invested in black and white,
18
Anadam P. Kavoorie and Todd Frayley, Media Terrorism and Theory. (Rowman and Littlefield: Oxford,
2006), 4.
19
Alex Gawronski, “Did Someone Say ‘Politically Correct‘?,” Broadsheet vol 36, no. 2 (June, 2007): 91.
20
Alice Aslan, Islamophobia in Australia. (Agora Press: Sydney, 2009), 135.
15
oversimplified ‘us and them’ narratives which legitimate the recent military incursions in
the Middle East.
A Parody of the Dominative Mechanism
The demonstrative action in Alakazam coincides with a representational, parodic
element. A comparison with the Dadaist figure of the ‘traumatic mime’, as practiced in
Hugo Ball’s performance Karawane, is useful as it points to Alakazam as a form of parody
criticising the dominative Western gaze at an emblematic level, as opposed to through a
conventional narrative.
The ‘traumatic mime’ is a Dada persona which was particularly prominent in the Cologne
and Zurich centres of the movement. In this persona the Dadaist takes on the calamitous
conditions of their time through mimetic adaptation. This was the case in Hugo Ball’s
1916 premier of his Karawane sound poems at the Cabaret Voltaire captured in a famous
film still (figure 6.). In Karawane, Ball becomes a vessel for the historical upheavals of his
time in a mediumistic process of over-identification. 21
In 1916, Ball had recently returned from the front to a Europe torn by the forces of WWI
and his experience of the military violence there had exacerbated his already pronounced
mental instability. In the performance he dressed as a ‘magical bishop’ in an absurd
costume of stiff blue cardboard which evokes the strange combination of a religious
figure and an industrial tin-man. After being carried on stage, Ball proceeded to
ritualistically intone gibberish in a priestly cadence before falling unconscious in a fit.
According to Hal Foster, in this mime the alienated fragmentation of the industrial
worker, the armouring of the military body, and the commodification of the capitalist
subject are emblematically assumed and exaggerated to the point of Ball’s psychic
21
Hal Foster, “Dada Mime,” October Vol. 105 (Summer 2003): 166-170.
16
dissolution. 22 Therefore, Ball’s mental failure and physical incapacitation critically mirrors
the failure of a society and culture which had allowed WWI to transpire.
In both Alakazam and Karawane, costume is used to render the artist as an exaggerated
personification of corrupt contemporary social conditions in order to level a criticism at
them. In Alakazam the mutual existence of the ‘terrorist’ and ‘tourist’ readings of my
figure renders me a personification of socio-economic disparity on a historical scale.
Touristic leisure implies an abundance of time and money as well as physical and social
mobility and this starkly contrasts with the living conditions and socio-economic origins of
the suicide bomber. The U.S. supported economic embargoes implemented in Iraq and
Gaza have recently been the locus of Islamic discontent and have strengthened the
appeal of Islamic extremism as a legitimate local resistance in a struggle for regional
autonomy. Furthermore, the limitations of mobility for Arab refugees as well as Arab
airline customers have been pronounced since 9-11. 23 These mutually referential figures
thus constitute an exaggerated antagonism which is manifest visually in their doubleimage relation, as transposed onto my body.
Equally interesting is the reading of these two figurations in Alakazam as an even broader
emblematic personification of the relation between the modern West and the cultural
Other. According to Dean MacCannel, through tourism and the discourses that surround
it, the cultural Other is constructed and consumed for the benefit of the Western self. He
argues that historically tourism has constructed a division between modern and nonmodern which renders the cultural Other an escape into a world of simple and direct
meaning. For the modern, urban, middle-class tourist, the flux and contingency of the
modern city are pleasurably contrasted with what is perceived to be a simpler way of life
in a rural or exotic location. The redemptive modern/non-modern division inscribed
through tourism and the discourses surrounding it is not only pleasurable, but it also
positions the cultural Other as deficient and thus validates exploitative economic and
22
ibid., 169.
23
Alice Aslan, Islamophobia in Australia. (Agora Press: Sydney, 2009), 71.
17
political enterprises perpetrated by the West. As such tourism is not a separate leisure
activity, outside politics and economics, but is crucial to producing a sense that these
more confronting forms of domination are culturally acceptable. This, according to
MacCannel, is congruent with the historical dependence of tourism on the
communicative and transportational infrastructure through which imperial and colonial
power was and is exercised. 24
Although it is arguably reductive, MacCannel’s understanding of tourism is useful for
elucidating the parodic element of my work as it mobilises exaggerated figurations. The
visual displacement of the terrorist interpretation of my figure by an exaggerated tourist
in Alakazam, emblematically positions contemporary fears of Islam as part of this process
of dominative consumption of the Other by the West. In Alakazam, there is a movement
of recognition where the ideological figure of the suicide bomber, who is the distillation
of the mythic Islamic threat to the West, is visually supplanted by the figure of the
exaggerated tourist. In this movement, the suicide bomber figure is revealed to be
imagined and relegated to a secondary, connotative order of existence. In inverse
proportion, the exaggerated tourist is rendered concrete through the evidently authentic
articulation of the photographic process realised by means of the camera-vest. The
Western gaze is thus denied the terrorist figure, which reflects Western civility and
superiority, and confronted with an exaggerated figuration of its own dominative
mechanism.
Consistent with this critical parody, the Sydney Opera House is both a site of hierarchic
racial narrative and a ‘soft’ terrorist target. The Opera House is spatially juxtaposed to
tourist stores on the nearby board-walk which are conspicuously filled with Aboriginal
and pseudo-Aboriginal art, artefacts and souvenirs. All of these products are of a style in
which Aboriginality is represented strictly in terms of pre-modern tribalism. Western
desert dot painting, red desert imagery, boomerangs and didgeridoos all contribute to
24
Dean MacCannel, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. (New York: Shoken Books, 1976), 2-
8.
18
this familiar stereotype creating a contrast with the white, shiny, scalloped, selfconsciously modern Opera House. The Opera House represents coastal, shiny, modern,
urban, Europeanised Australia while Aboriginality is confined to the remote past. This
‘tourist package’ image of Australian history is important to Alakazam given that the wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq are mythologized as civilising missions. As quests of betterment
these outward military extensions are understood within the scope of previous colonial
exploits. The ‘clash of civilisations’ narrative to which Alakazam is a response likewise
hinges on an advantageous positioning of the West as superior to an irrational
homogenised Islam. Stark and simplistic divisions form the base of racialised hierarchies
which legitimate economic exploitation in both cases, and both are communicated
through powerful, iconic images of various configurations of civilisation and savagery. 25
The ‘terrorist threat’ aspect of the work is also made more legible by the specific site. The
post 9-11 era of national security has been defined by a fortification of ‘hard’ terrorist
targets such as embassies, important political buildings and critical infrastructure. In the
past, Islamic terrorists have overwhelmingly favoured these politically symbolic locations
for attacks. This fortification has led to an increased threat to less symbolic ‘soft’ targets
such as tourist destinations. The 2003 Bali bombings, which killed many Australians, were
a result of this change in dynamic, whereby the ‘war on terror’ paradoxically exposes
civilians to increased risk because there are too many ‘soft’ targets to protect. 26
Problematising Emancipatory Freedom
In the post 9-11 context, ideas of freedom have been a salient political tool of the U.S.
and its allies and this has influenced my performative work, Guided by the Beauty of Our
25
Suvendrini Perera, Our Patch: Domains of Whiteness, Geographies of Lack and Australia's Racial
Horizons in the War on Terror. (Perth: Network Books, 2007), 121.
26
Rahul Mahajan, Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S Power In Iraq and Beyond. (New York: Seven Stories
Press, 2003), 40.
19
Weapons. In the era of counter-terror, the construction of the Middle East as Islamic and
oppressive has been counter-posed with the discourse of Western freedom in order to
justify war and occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is particularly evident in the case
in Iraq: when the charges that the Iraqi government possessed weapons of mass
destruction were proven false, the Bush administration and its allies claimed invasion was
necessary to bring ‘democracy and human rights’ to the country. The U.S. government’s
code name for the invasion of Iraq, Operation Iraqi Freedom, encapsulates this
ideological construction of the U.S. as libratory saviours. Moreover, the configuration of
9-11 and its aftermath in terms of ‘good’ versus ‘evil’ reiterates the myth of the U.S. as
the land of liberty and democracy that is under attack from an external ‘evil’. This
foundational myth has informed the ideological opposition of the ‘West vs. the Rest’,
common to both the Cold War and contemporary politics. 27 Thus, ‘freedom’ has been
used to justify external violence and warfare abroad, as well as the internal denial of civil
liberties in the name of protecting citizens from the threat of so-called ‘freedom hating
terrorists’. 28
The mistrust engendered through witnessing this problematic discourse of emancipatory
freedom in the era of counter-terror has led me to examine its contradictions and
limitations. My work Guided by the Beauty of Our Weapons (2010) is a re-construction of
the public intervention I-R.A.S.C. (2008) by the U.R.A./ Filoart collective. Through this
work I attempt to complicate the dichotomy between emancipatory freedom and
coercive power mobilised in I-R.A.S.C.. Through the production and testing of a camerajamming headband, I-R.A.S.C. aims to interrupt oppressive mechanisms of surveillance
deployed by the state. This device blocks the wearer’s visibility on the CCTV surveillance
systems that are ubiquitous in urban environments. The infra-red (IR) light emanating
27
Edward Said, “The Clash of Ignorance,” The Nation 4 October (2001),
http://www.thenation.com/article/clash-ignorance?page=0,0 (accessed October, 2010).
28
Matthew Sharpe, “The Sociopolitical Limits of Fantasy: September 11 and Slavoj Zizek’s Theory of
Ideology,” Cultural Logic: An Electronic Journal of Marxist Theory and Practice, (2004),
http://eserver.org/clogic/2002/sharpe.html (accessed October 2010).
20
from the headband is invisible to the human eye but blinds the newer generation of
surveillance cameras, which are sensitive to IR light. (figure 7., figure8.) This allows the
wearer to retain their individual identity in face-to-face contact while disrupting the
mechanisms of governmental regulation and control. The headband was worn by the
artists around Stuttgart and the surveillance camera footage was obtained and shown
with the headband in a gallery. In the project brief it is stated that this intervention
‘reveals the discrepancy in power between the state and the individual’. 29
In Guided by the Beauty of Our Weapons, I imitate this intervention in an altered form.
The infra-red camera-jammer from I-R.A.S.C. is transposed onto a Liberty Cap and used to
simulate a similar kind of public intervention. Having set up my own elevated video
camera in several different transient urban spaces, I then walked through the frame of
this simulated surveillance camera while wearing the Liberty Cap. The footage is then
shown with the hat in a gallery as documentation of a pseudo-intervention. (figure 9.,
figure 10., figure 11., figure 12.)
The Liberty Cap or Phrygian Cap is a conical, red, knitted cap, which was a symbol of the
freed slave in ancient Greece. In contemporary liberal democracies such as the U.S. and
France it appears on official insignia as a symbol of the values of ‘liberty, fraternity,
democracy’ enshrined in these governmental systems. 30 In the context of post 9-11, in
which ‘freedom’ has been a key ideological tool of the U.S. and its allies, the conservative
contemporary colouring of the Liberty Cap is at odds with the anti-establishment
sentiment of the original work. This disjuncture is emphasised through the propagandistic
visual qualities of the cap with its bright, outlandish style, tacky ostentation and
advertisement of ‘Liberty or Death’ across the front of the cap. At the same time there is
congruence between the disruption of authority enacted through camera-jamming, and
29
U.R.A/Filoart. “I-R.A.S.C..” (project brief, 2008),
http://www.oberwelt.de/projects/2008/Filo%20art.htm (accessed August, 2010).
30
Yvonne Korshak, “The Liberty Cap as a Revolutionary Symbol in America and France,” Smithsonian
Studies in American Art Vol. 1, No. 2 (Autumn 1987), 53.
21
the Liberty Cap as a symbol of historical revolt against arbitrary monarchic rule. This
intentional complication of what was originally a clear opposition of oppressor and
oppressed is an ambivalent response to the original work in which it is both carefully reconstructed while at the same time undermined.
Michel Foucault’s understanding of contemporary liberal governance theoretically
articulates my more intuitive unease about the concept of emancipatory freedom as
addressed in Guided by the Beauty of Our Weapons. As Nikolas Rose explains, for
Foucault, governance in contemporary liberal societies depends on, rather than
undermines, resistance and freedom. For Foucault, liberal political power is exercised
over subjects only so long as they are free. 31 Rose articulates this as follows:
Mechanisms and devices operating according to a disciplinary logic, from the
school to the prison, seek to produce the subjective conditions, the forms of selfmastery, self-regulation and self-control, necessary to govern a nation now made
up of free and ‘civilised’ citizens. 32
This form of governance is a ‘flexible equilibrium’ between techniques of coercion and
techniques which ensure self-discipline. Liberty is therefore not opposed to power but is
rather an instrument in governance, using the participation of the governed to achieve
the most effective form of political economy. 33
The operation of disciplinary power is evident in my embodied response during my other
performance piece Alakazam. Throughout the performance I feared the punitive
response of either a member of the public or security staff, resulting in a noticeably
increased heart rate and physical anxiety. This resonates with philosopher Cressida
Heyes’ discussion of phenomenologist Drew Leder’s concept of ‘dys-appearance‘. As
31
Nikolas Rose, “Governing “Advanced” liberal democracies.” In Foucault and Political Reason:
liberalism, neo-liberalism and rationalities of government, ed. Andrew Barry, Thomas Osbourne and Nikolas
Rose (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 40 -44.
32
33
ibid., 44.
ibid.
22
Heyes elaborates, dys-appearance, according to Leder, is the phenomenon of
experiencing our bodies as separate from our internal selves in times of stress,
breakdown or problematic performance. Leder understands dys-appearance as a loss of
sovereign power whereby the essential self is hindered in its natural physical expression
by the oppressive gaze of an external arbiter. However Heyes, following Foucault, refutes
this reading, arguing that dys-appearance is the quintessential experience of our bodies
in the disciplinary society. 34 Rather than a deviation from our ‘natural’ relationship with
our bodies, resulting from the sovereign power of an external agent, the disruptive dysappearance of our bodies evidences our own role as the disciplinary agent responsible for
our own self-correction. During my performance of Alakazam, my fear of a punitive
reaction resulted in the dys-appearance of my body. However, following Heyes, the
failure of any external penalising agent to materialise testifies to my own embodied selfregulation and conditioned compulsion to maintain a normalised comportment.
Alakazam as ‘Externalisation’
Alakazam is not just a criticism of cultural constructions created by powerful institutions,
but also evidences an internal struggle which harks back to the tropes of the Romantic
artistic mode. This is negotiated in a fashion that has parallels with Sigmund Freud’s
theory of externalisation, as elaborated by Lea Vergine, as a mechanism whereby internal
contradictions and limitations that compromise the integrity of the subject are attributed
to external causes. Freud defined ‘externalisation’ as the usually unconscious process
whereby the subject avoids conscious awareness of threatening internal conflicts by
attributing their own feelings or qualities to an external source. His primary pathological
example is paranoia, in which the subject displaces their unconscious aggression onto an
imagined external threat such as a demonic spirit. 35 Drawing on the work of Ernst Kris,
34
Cressida Heyes, Self Transformations: Foucault, ethics and normalized bodies. (Oxford, New York:
Oxford University Press, 2007), 24-25.
35
Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo (trans. James Strachey). (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950.
23
Vergine applies this theory more broadly to her discussion of the parodic tendencies of
performance art. As parody is characterised by an unclear correspondence between the
expression and the views of the author, the ‘fake’ persona of the performer becomes the
‘external source’ onto which unwanted feelings or qualities are projected. Thus,
behaviour that is usually censored but nonetheless psychologically necessary, is
permitted through installing a distance between the ‘real’ artist and their performative
persona. 36 This is often achieved through a physical prop such as a mask. This is the case
in the work of Joan Jonas, who assumes a persona named ‘Organic Honey’ through the
use of a plastic doll-like mask in performances such as Organic Honey’s Visual Telepathy
(1972). (Figure 13.) Wearing this plastic doll mask, Jonas howls, hums, and grooms herself
in a mirror. 37 By feverishly repeating these practices of hegemonic femininity while
wearing a mask, Jonas enacts this gender role as external to herself, and perhaps
temporarily alleviates the internal pressure created by performing this role.
Parallels between Alakazam and Vergine’s theory suggest the operation of the work as an
attempt to resolve internal conflict. Post 9-11, there was an increased and generalised
hostility towards Muslims and those from the Middle East, as can be seen from the
government response in Australia. In my particular case, this led not only to an anxiety
regarding the racist behaviour of others, but a sense of internal conflict. I experienced a
crisis of coherence, in which to be Western and ‘good’, and to identify with my family
who were Afghan and ‘bad’, was paradoxical within the dominant system of
understanding. Speculatively, the relation between Alakazam and these feelings
resonates with Vergine’s understanding of parody as a mechanism of externalisation. In
Alakazam, externalisation is achieved through a physical prop, comparable in function to
Originally published 1913), 63.
36
Lea Vergine, Body Art and Performance: The Body as Language. (Milan: Skira, 2000), 24.
37
Constance de Jong, “A Work by Joan Jonas: Organic Honey's Visual Telepathy,” The Drama Review:
TDR, Vol. 16, No. 2, Directing Issue (Jun., 1972), 66-74, in The MIT Press,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1144715 (accessed October, 2010).
24
Jonas’ mask, which enables me to assume a usually unacceptable persona. The cameravest announces me as a terrorist but on closer inspection, when the photographic
operation of the vest is recognised, this announcement is withdrawn. Thus, the illusory
nature of the ‘terrorist’ reading of my figure allows me to externalise a real fear of being
seen as the enemy, by others or myself, which was most pronounced immediately after
9-11 but is still residual. The problem of my subjectivity becomes a problem of the
camera-vest and its visual qualities, thus restoring the integrity of my mixed identity.
This aspect of Alakazam refers to the artistic tradition of Romanticism, and Romantic
criticism, whereby the relation between the individual artist and the work is privileged
above all else. Emerging in European nineteenth century fine arts, literature, music and
criticism, the Romantic mode privileged the artwork as an expression of the artist’s inner
being and its conflicts. This gave rise to the cults and myths of the artist as mad, hypersensitive and possessed that still inform much discussion of art today. 38 Moreover, the
idea that works of art were externalisations of psychic conditions influenced a host of
artistic styles from Symbolism to Surrealism, Expressionism and Abstract Expressionism.
In much performance art, the literal use of the artist as the material for the work
heightens this reference to the Romantic mode. 39 This goes back to the earliest
performance pieces such as Karawane, which has been discussed, in which the personal
trauma of Hugo Ball is self-consciously figured as the trauma of modern society during
WWI. Furthermore, through the mobilisation of the lone figure standing against the
horizon, Alakazam visually recalls iconic Romantic paintings such Monk by the Sea (180810) by Caspar David Friedrich. This reiterates the Romantic dimension of Alakazam by
evoking another work in which individual subjective experience is a central theme. (figure
14.)
This reading of Alakazam has a relevant analogy with Slavoj Zizek’s understanding of the
38
Ellen Handler Spitz, Art and Psyche. (London, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 26-28.
39
Adam Geczy, “Here, There, Nowhere, Dead : Performance art and the Cybernetic Involution.” Mike
Parr : Blood Box. (Woolloomooloo, N.S.W. : Artspace Visual Arts Centre, 2006), 19.
25
hegemonic ideological response to 9-11. In both cases, externalisation is a key
mechanism: operating at an individual level in Alakazam and operating at a collective
level in the hegemonic ideological response to 9-11. Matthew Sharpe articulates Zizek’s
Lacanian, psychoanalytic understanding of the function of ideological fantasy, whereby
‘ideology is never merely a deceptive misrepresentation of social reality’, but is also
‘ontologically constitutive for a collective’s way of seeing the socio-political world. It
furnishes subjects with the interpretative frame which makes it possible for them to
experience the socio political world as a meaningful totality. ’ 40 Such ideological fantasies
require an obstacle to explain their unattainability, prototypically posited as the external
Other ‘supposed to enjoy the failings of the current system’. 41 Hence, when George Bush
asked ‘why do they hate America?’ and responded only with ‘they hate our freedom’, he
consolidated the ideological response of the U.S. which thoroughly externalised the cause
of the trauma of 9-11. 42 Thus, the source of trauma was located as the purely ‘evil’
threatening Outside, foreclosing any acknowledgement that ‘the (relative) prosperity of
the “civilized” West was bought by the export of ruthless violence and destruction into
the “barbarian” Outside’. 43
A Negative Political Tendency
The opposition between the artist as a figure either actively changing a dysfunctional
society or merely criticising it can be used to position Alakazam in the contemporary
40
Matthew Sharpe, “The Sociopolitical Limits of Fantasy: September 11 and Slavoj Zizek’s Theory of
Ideology,” Cultural Logic: An Electronic Journal of Marxist Theory and Practice, (2004), 11,
http://eserver.org/clogic/2002/sharpe.html (accessed October 2010).
41
ibid., 13.
42
ibid., 14.
43
Slavoj Zizek, “Welcome to the Desert of the Real (original response),” available at:
http://web.mit.edu/cms/interpretations/desertreal.html (accessed October, 2010).
26
context. In his diary Flight Out of Time, Hugo Ball muses on whether the figures of the
Bolshevik and the Dadaist are oppositional responses to the same crisis. 44 Hal Foster
remarks that this opposition is true in that while the Constructivist artist was an
‘engineer’, an individual whose rationality moves outward to society at large, the Dadaist
is one who is possessed by the dire conditions of their time through a mediumistic
internalisation. 45 Writer Brian Holmes theorises a form of contemporary Constructivism
which he calls ‘Informationalism’, whereby immersion in the infrastructure of the postFordist globalised capitalist system can lead society to ‘face the conditions of the present,
and to reach the core level at which they might ultimately be transformed.’ 46 Like the
twentieth century Constructivist, a rational understanding of socio-political structures
putatively emanates outward from the artist to transform society. This sensibility is
evident in the practice of the Perth PVI collective, whose broad leftist politics inform
performative and participatory projects which are often couched in terms of a future
social transformation. For example, according to the project-brief, the collective’s touring
performance project resist: the right to revolution (2006) ‘aims to test the notion of
people power in contemporary society and investigates how different modes of collective
behaviour can generate social change.’ 47
In contrast, Alakazam operates in a negative, iconoclastic capacity as a demonstrative
criticism, emblematic parody and psychological mechanism. Corrupt contemporary social
conditions are emblematically located onto my body through parody in order to direct a
criticism at them. However, this criticism is not made with a view to a broader social
44
Hugo Ball, Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary (1927), trans Anne Raimes. (New York: Viking Press, 1974)
May 23, 1917.
45
Hal Foster, “Dada Mime,” October Vol. 105 (Summer 2003): 168-169.
46
Brian Holmes, “Into Information: Reversing History for the Present.” (unpublished paper, 2009),
http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/into-information/ (accessed August 2010).
47
PVI Collective, “resit: the right to revolution.” (project brief, 2006),
http://www.pvicollective.com/art/resist10.asp (accessed September 2010).
27
transformation and is much more individualistic than the work of the PVI collective.
Alakazam can be broadly compared to the work of Thomas Hirschhorn given that it
separates artistic criticism from collective social transformation. In Concrete Shock
(2006), Hirschhorn creates an overwhelming and dense collage of pornographic and
militaristic imagery which serve as icons of reification, through which human beings are
reduced to objects circulating within a global capitalist system. (figure 15.) As suggested
by the ambivalent title of the exhibition in which the work was shown, Superficial
Engagement, he offers no solution. Rather, he uses exaggeration through concentration
to expose the madness of the capitalist consumption of people and images that is an
everyday experience.
This negativity is not political resignation per se, but an artistic strategy that is consistent
with the statements made by writer Phillipe Sollers on the relation between art and
politics. In 1970, writing for the literary journal Tel Quel in Paris, Sollers saw himself and
his circle of artists, writers and intellectuals as a cultural avant-garde which was part of,
and necessary to, a broader social revolution. His group had strong links with the
Situationists who helped instigate the May 1968 political uprising in Paris. In 1981, he
dismissed his previous position, saying that the illusion that revolution in language and
revolution in action absolutely go hand in hand, characteristic of the 20th century
European avant-gardes, was a misconception that must be abandoned. 48 Hirschhorn’s
exhibition title, Superficial Engagement, signals a similar renunciation of this avantgardist mythology. The phrase Superficial Engagement uses the metaphor of depth to
signal the artist’s self-conscious severance of the links between the deep economic
reorganisation of society and shallow artistic innovation. Given that the artistic criticism
in Alakazam is made without the pretence of affecting collective social change, the work
performs a similar form of political engagement. This is a position that contrasts with the
‘art and revolution going hand in hand’ approach theorised by Brian Holmes and
mobilised by PVI Collective.
48
Susan Rubin Suleiman, Subversive Intent: Gender, Politics, and the Avant-Garde. (London: Harvard
University Press, 1990), XIV.
28
Conclusion
A consideration of the dominative construction of the Middle East circulated in Western
mass-media since 9-11 reveals how the political and racial dichotomy between ‘us’ and
‘them’, echoing Huntington’s ‘class of civilisations’ political theory, both informs and
legitimises National Security campaigns which target Arabs and Muslims. In this context,
my prop-based performance, Alakazam, encompasses a visual mechanism whereby a
visual trajectory from ‘terrorist’ to ‘tourist’ calls to account racially invested ways of
seeing. In light of Government calls for public vigilance, the doubt cast on the security
value of this vigilance, as implied by the visual device mobilised in Alakazam, highlights
the function of National Security campaigns as mechanisms of moral alignment used to
justify aggressive and repressive foreign and domestic policy.
Alakazam also consists of a representational parody in which the Western gaze is denied
the figure of the suicide-bomber, through which Western civility and superiority is
oppositionally constructed, and is confronted with a hyperbolic figuration of its own
dominative mechanism in the exaggerated tourist. Furthermore, this parody is a
restorative process in relation to my internalisation of the Western gaze, the divisive
operation of which rendered my mixed identity, invested in that of my Afghan family
members, problematic. Through the displacement of racialised misrecognition onto other
people, objects and a falsified ego, as produced through the deception of the cameravest in Alakazam, the integrity of my mixed identity is restored. The psychological
response of the U.S. and its allies to the 9-11 attacks was to completely externalise
responsibility and evade self-reflection. As such, the blame I felt directed at me post 9-11
is turned outwards in Alakazam in a reversal of this dynamic.
This collective externalisation by the U.S. and its allies perpetuates and consolidates a
discourse of freedom through which the West is constructed as the ’good’ libratory
saviour with the mandate to export freedom and democracy to the Middle East ridden
with ’evil’, ’freedom hating terrorists’. In my piece Guided by the Beauty of Our Weapons,
29
I deal with the mistrust engendered by this ideological use of freedom. The transposition
of a camera-jammer onto a Liberty Cap, which in the post 9-11 context has ambivalent
political connotations, complicates a counter-discourse that hinges on the opposition
between coercive power and emancipatory freedom. This intuitive mistrust is
theoretically articulated in Foucault’s understanding of liberal governance as operating
through the self-government of free individuals produced in a disciplinary society. In this
model liberty is a means through which the participation of the governed is used to
achieve the most efficient political economy.
Finally, within the contemporary art context the exhaustion of the dream of an artistic
avant-garde necessarily tied to a broader social transformation gives greater significance
to the discussion of Alakazam as both a rational critique and an irrational psychological
mechanism. A compensatory temporal dynamic exists in the work, whereby its value is
not primarily deferred to a future revolution. The psychological function is immediate
and self-sufficient, while the rational criticism with which it coincides presupposes the
possibility of a future political change.
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34
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Ball, Hugo, reciting Karawane, Cabaret Volraire, Zurich, 1916. Reproduced from Hal
Foster, “Dada Mime,” October Vol. 105 (Summer 2003): 166-176.
Birch, Stephen. Dave, 2004. Fibreglass and paint, 2m x 20cm x 50cm. MCA Sydney.
Reproduced from http://www.cacsa.org.au/archives/index_frames.html (August 2010).
Friedrich, Caspar David. The Monk by the Sea, 1808-10. oil on canvas, 110 cm × 171.5 cm.
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Hirschhorn, Thomas. Concrete Shock, 2006. Mixed media installation. Gladstone Gallery.
35
Reproduced from http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/saltz/saltz1-3106_detail.asp?picnum=10 (August 2010).
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Smith, Alison. Phrygian Cap, 2006. Wool, linen, silk. Reproduced from artists craft
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36
Illustrations
Figure 1.
“If you see something, say something.” N.S.W state government public transport antiterror campaign poster. (2003- present).
37
Figure 2.
Adam Adelpour. Alakazam, 2010 (Camera-vest gallery display). Five disposable cameras,
electronics, gaffer tape, MDF, aluminium stand, 50cm x 40cm x 40cm.
38
Figure 3.
Adam Adelpour. Alakazam, 2010 (Video still. documentation of performance).
Adam Adelpour. Alakazam, 2010 (Video still. documentation of performance).
39
Figure 4.
Map of Sydney Opera House with location of Alakazam performance marked.
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Figure 5.
Stephen Birch. Dave, 2004. Fibreglass and paint, 2m x 20cm x 50cm. MCA Sydney.
Figure 6.
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Hugo Ball, reciting Karawane, Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, 1916.
Figure 7.
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U.R.A/ Filoart Collective. I-R.A.S.C., 2008. (head-band, Infra-red leds, batteries.)
Figure 8.
U.R.A/ Filoart Collective. I-R.A.S.C., 2008. (film still from Stuttgart surveillance camera.)
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Figure 9.
U.S. Senate, coat of arms. (see Liberty Cap at top of frame.)
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Figure 10.
Alison Smith. Phrygian Cap, 2006. Wool, linen, silk. Reproduced from artists craft website.
Photo by Cathy Carver.
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Figure 11.
Adam Adelpour. Liberty Cap from Blinded by the Beauty of Our Weapons, 2010. Infra-Red
LEDS, fabric, batteries. (see infra-red light emitting diodes on front in circular formation)
Figure 12.
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Adam Adelpour. video still from Blinded by the Beauty of Our Weapons, 2010.
Adam Adelpour. video still from Blinded by the Beauty of Our Weapons, 2010.
Figure 13.
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Joan Jonas. Organic Honey’s Visual Telepathy, 1972. Video still from performance of same
name.17:24 min, b&w, sound.
Figure 14.
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Caspar David Friedrich. The Monk by the Sea, 1808-10. oil on canvas, 110 cm × 171.5 cm.
Adam Adelpour. Alakazam, 2010 (Video still. documentation of performance).
Figure 15.
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Thomas Hirschhorn. Concrete Shock, 2006. Mixed media installation. Gladstone Gallery.
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