Institutional Affect = video games engineering human sensation
The complete erasure of Jordanian SF pilot Kaseasbeh = the complete era use of Osama Bin Laden.
Bin Laden's videogame collection uncovered by CIA after his assassination.
The first fantasy medium to visualise US abasement – not via public projection or broadcast, but in personal headspaces of gameplay.
Institutional Fiction = Hollywood realism portraying human intervention
The unrepresentabilty of Bin Laden.
The theatre of tactical performance to capture Bin Laden.
The psycho-physical domain of the gameplay subject.
The staging of danger as back-drop.
Real explosions & super-slomo cameras.
Institutional Phantasm = Hollywood fantasy imagineering human transformation
Millennial offspring of 1980s ‘lone wolf’ infantry heroics.
From the macho with a flamethrower to "the girl on fire".
The affective dissonance of the ISIS videos are reversed into affective demystification in The Hunger Games.
Institutional Effects = special effect make-up & CGI-compositing imaging human death
The Promethean Impulse in SPFX.
The digital simulation of elemental FX.
Reality performance of illusory FX.
Grand Guignol theatre = theatrical lies.
Forensic proof of image fabrication = digital lies.
Hi-res reconstructions of fake gore-death lo-res mp4s.
Institutional Critique = contemporary art depicting human abuse
1990s formation of Institutional Critique.
2000s shift in the arts to critiquing the industrial military complex after 9/11 & Iraq War.
Impotency in 'real world change' in 'political art'.
Ignorance of pre-existing history of anti-military documentaries.
Problems in attributing 'real world change' to 'authors' in the creative industries.
Pop cultural forms of Institutional Critique not 'authored' so clearly
Starship Troopers movie - depicting the feeling of what it would be like to be thrilled by warfare.
Starship Troopers novel – required reading for US military 2002.
Military.com – Military & Veterans Benefits, News & Jobs – video section features uncensored videos shot by soldiers during tours of duty.
A reflective embedded form of Institutional Critique.
Special thanks to Helen Hughes (Discipline), Amita Kirpalani (The Wheeler Centre), Liang Luscombe (Westspace) & Anthony Kitchener.
Text © Philip Brophy 2015. Images © respective copyright holders