3. The ISIS Artefacts

Sites of Cultural Image-Making

4-part slide presentation, 2015
Parts 1+2 - Discipline lecture delivered at The Wheeler Centre, Melbourne & Westspace Gallery, Melbourne, 2015
Parts 3+4 - Discipline lecture continued at Westspace Gallery, Melbourne, 2015
Parts 1+2 - Keynote for the Artspace Finissage, Artspace, Sydney, 2015 Notes only

Institutional Affect

36. Healing The Believers’ Chests (2015)

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.

37-40. Post-9/11 military strategy/shooting videogames (2012-15)

The first fantasy medium to visualise US abasement – not via public projection or broadcast, but in personal headspaces of gameplay.

Institutional Fiction

Institutional Fiction = Hollywood realism portraying human intervention

41-43. Zero Dark 30 (2012)

The unrepresentabilty of Bin Laden.
The theatre of tactical performance to capture Bin Laden.

44, 45. The Hurt Locker (2008)

The psycho-physical domain of the gameplay subject.
The staging of danger as back-drop.
Real explosions & super-slomo cameras.

Institutional Phantasm

Institutional Phantasm = Hollywood fantasy imagineering human transformation

46. The Hunger Games (2012); The Hunger Games - Catching Fire (2013); The Hunger Games - Mocking Jay (2014/5)

47, 48. Katniss Everdeen as "the girl on fire" in The Hunger Games (2012)

Millennial offspring of 1980s ‘lone wolf’ infantry heroics.
From the macho with a flamethrower to "the girl on fire".

49. Frame grabs from But If You Return, We Shall Return (2015)

The affective dissonance of the ISIS videos are reversed into affective demystification in The Hunger Games.

Institutional Effects

Institutional Effects = special effect make-up & CGI-compositing imaging human death

The Promethean Impulse in SPFX.
The digital simulation of elemental FX.

50-52. The 7th Taurus World Stunt Awards (2007)

Reality performance of illusory FX.

53-55. Final Destination 3 (2006)

Grand Guignol theatre = theatrical lies.
Forensic proof of image fabrication = digital lies.
Hi-res reconstructions of fake gore-death lo-res mp4s.

Institutional Critique

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.

56-58. Serious Games (2009-10)

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.

59. Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers film (1997)
60. Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers novel (1958)

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.

61. Military.com - videos page

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.