Re: <nettime> War profiteers in art (Biennale di Venezia, 2007)

[Ana Peraica <ana.peraica@st.htnet.hr>]

Good if they have the electricity! Not quite common for war zones.

> Some people apparently have electricity often enough to make scathing
> comments about what they see on TV; blogger Riverbend is an example:
>
> http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

good one! I actually believe more can be done with personal not the 
institutional insight (see bellow)

>> reporting within a war serves for the immediate civilian function, but war
>> reporting for people that do not "do" anything about the war - but only
>> watch it on a daily base (see Sontag: Regarding the pain of others) actually
>> turns out only into an adrenaline provoking to the society of the spectacle.
> But,
>
> OK, but how do you know which viewers are going to do something and which
> one's aren't?  

By the time that is passing after something had happened as an event and 
years after that things haven't changed. There are "media exhausted" 
topics...
Then you can count those topics and what is the real impact factor. 
Someone must have done it.

> Don't you think what people see on the news sometimes inspires them to act?  

Rarely, it more "inspires" (rather; makes them) those that feel close to 
victims - starting with close/distant relatives, friends... So - 
networks of friends / colleagues are rather more efficient than those of 
unknown to the unknown.

> Or at the very least, makes it possible for them to consider doing so?  

Compassion. But one should have it without images of destruction, death 
and corpses which only shock (that actually stops any action). Or it may 
be the world is arrived to the state victim needs to give harder and 
harder evidence of not lying? There were wars before that amount of 
images of death and destruction and people were helping each other, 
seems even more...

> It seems to me that before you can act, you have to be aware that there's
> some reason to act.  

When you are normal person you don't need a day by day argument people 
are in need. This tells something else... If you need 100 days report to 
say something and nothing had happened... Or you need more people to get 
killed for someone to understand? I am sorry but how do you judge the 
public that doesn't get the clue after 100 days? Idiots or indolent 
people? Or they are not important at all?

> If there were no news about the war, nobody outside Iraq would even be aware
> that there's a war going on.  

One may give the opposite argument: if there would be no report on war 
on Iraq it would never been used in different campaigns so - less evil 
would happen.

> This has indeed happened in the case of wars waged secretly by the CIA: by
> the time Americans found out what their country had done, it was too late to
> take action; the war was over, the victims were dead.

And did reports on war in Iraq reports stopped them?

>> you save immediately or to those that will just browse channels / or walk
>> through an exhibition.
> So the difference is TO WHOM you are reporting: to people
>
> Unfortunately the people who can end the war are not in Iraq; they're in the
> US.  

And they live out of media reports, campaigns (they or their opponents) 
Put them less on TV and they will loose the campaign.

> So the media aren't saving anyone immediately.  But global public opinion
> does affect the outcome of wars, and the media do affect public opinion.  

Opinion on victims? that is really really cold. It is not a game you 
play and then you change sides - being media intoxicated and then 
detoxicated suddenly (or re-intoxicated) 

>> of the owner of the media for whom you are reporting as it can also make
>> much more of damage, becoming a propaganda for getting new elections of a
>> single person, for example. As as most of the media is owned by interested
>> owners they turn out to propaganda, which is the question FOR WHAT purpose.
> And it is indeed a difference
>
> Here it seems to me that you're contradicting yourself.  On the one hand, you
> say that people who watch TV news don't take any action about what they see.
> On the other hand, you say that TV news propaganda is effective in making
> people act, e.g. by voting for a certain candidate in elections.

That is not in the contradiction: victims are USED when interpreted in 
any sense. To amuse, to illustrate, to whatever.

>> killed over there that would stay anonymous.
> Yes, it is sad for any person, but in the amount of people getting
>
> I simply meant that war correspondents are not as safe as you seemed to
> believe.

well, there are different ones, actually, some are provided with more 
safety and others are sent almost to be killed. Depends for whom they 
are working. Some people do get kill for others for 10 dollars and then 
"famous reporters" sign them as their own.

>> I am sorry for enforcing this issue but it happens now and the media seems
>> to be interesting only when the massacre was going on: media has abandoned
>> them.
>
> That's not an argument for the uselessness of the media; it's an argument for
> making better media.

again the argument? it is not about arguments, it is about Srebrenica.

Do correct me if I am wrong - send your reporters to help those people 
to regain pride for their victims

*AND I WILL GLADLY ACKNOWLEDGE I AM WRONG!*

but do correct me in practice not by emails.

best,

Ana


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