public space
War Zones
bill
poster series, Graz,
1999
A
contribution to the exhibition “Publi©Domain”,
Third Austrian Triennial on Photography, Graz (A) In cooperatin with Oliver Ressler
The five montages of
photographs and text which make up "War Zones" focus on wars that
are fought with military, economic, political and propaganda weapons in order
to consolidate and extend the power relationships of the capitalist world
economic order. In this process the ethnic and social boundaries that exist
-, not only within nation states and the supranational structures to which
they belong, but also outside them - are either secured or redrawn according
to strategic, economic and military criteria.
Underlying these
photomontages is the conception of a "war of a new kind" which uses
the discipline of political and military action within and outside the centres
of capitalism to drive the hegemonic neo-liberal economic system ever onward.
The term "disciplinary neoliberalism"
(Stephen Gill) has been applied to this system.
What is specific and new
about this "war of a new kind" is that it operates on two levels. On
the one level there is a military-technological apparatus of power, which
exerts total control over the flow of all information as it moves in on the
territory in question. On the other level there is a local operation within
the territory, and its aim is to create nationalist and racist identities. As
a result the power relationships within a society are militarized from two
sides, whose mutual massacres provide cover (or cover-up), for each other
(1).
These "wars of a new
kind" succeed in imposing control over the manifold political and social
relations within the territory and extend the capitalist sphere of influence.
The wars, transformed into "police actions" or "humanitarian
interventions", are no longer characterized in the western world by total
mobilisation but by a flexible combination of local concern and media staging
on a global scale.
However, these "War
Zones" do not merely represent theatres of military conflict but also
certain places which are of importance in relation to the exercise and
maintenance of geostrategic power. In many cases
the mere presence of the apparatus of military power is sufficient to ensure
that control is exercised over the economy and the people at the periphery. The
reciprocal relationship of military and economic power, or rather the
"military character of the global economy", is mirrored at the
personal level, as in the case, for example, of Robert McNamara, the former
U.S. Defence Secretary, who later became President of the World Bank.
Each of the five theatres of war considered in "War Zones" exemplifies a specific variant of warfare, which is illustrated by means of an image and commented on in a text.
