Jordan Crandall on 14 Mar 2001 20:14:48 -0000 |
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<nettime> Armor, Amour |
Warning: This text will not clear the metal detector. "We need missile defense!" a nearby passenger breathlessly exclaimed, with both pleasure and fear, as we placed our tray tables, bodies, and seats in an upright and locked position in preparation for landing at National Airport in Washington DC. One wonders what had ignited this remark. Hurling toward the ground at 500 miles per hour inside a shiny projectile, had she suddenly identified with a ballistic missile? Had she, in fear, invoked a shield, or had she, in elatement, fused with a warhead? I envisioned her as both a bomb-riding cowgirl of the Dr. Strangelove variety and as a brake-loving driver of an SUV consumer tank. Saddled with the legacy of the Gulf War and its aerial cameras, which seemed to place us in the pilot's seat, and now subject to a new sense of American vulnerability registered in the emerging obsession for missile defense, it's no wonder that she forgot which side of the projectile she was on. The rising figure of a defense shield - a prophylactic for the entire country - marks a shift in the architecture of combat. As the national discourse changes its orientation from that of targeting to that of being targeted, new visual formats arise alongside the antiseptic videogame images of the recent past: formats in which our status as viewers is reversed and our positions imperiled. Another effect of the perspectivization that is warfare. With America's obsession for safety reaching epidemic levels - fueled by the market's need to provoke interest in new technologies and the military's need to justify increased defense spending - a near-religious fervor for "protection" could well arise, as missiles appear to be potentially falling down on us from the skies. Would we then look ~up~, rather than primarily down or across? To look up in counterpoint to a potentially intrusive gaze that, when coming from satellites or surveillance cameras, has largely been perceived as benign. To look up no longer in a position of wonderment or contemplation (as in star-gazing) but with a kind of uneasy self-awareness as aerial-driven military apparatuses - of which we have for quite some time seen ourselves at the origin - gradually begin to locate us as objects. It is as if the chair at the computer screen or television were suddenly kicked back (WHAM!), causing us to face upwards while becoming acutely aware of our own physical vulnerability. Combined with a growing awareness of tracking systems that "see back" - reversing the direction of sight from the unique, personal point of view so reinforced in Renaissance perspectives - we may begin to internalize our capacities as targets. In many ways the site of the personal has become a kind of vanishing point in and of itself, with "sights" locked onto it, engaged in a process of primarily being identified before identifying. A formation of the self as subject-in-synchronization (the moving parts aligned in the viewfinder of an other), rather than based in subject-object relation. What are the ontological implications for such a shift? A blip on the radar, a database sweep, a streamed numerical sequence: the control tower clears an entryway for the pilot. The aircraft rapidly descends toward the runway. Images of clouds parting fill the cabin's projection screens, compliments of a camera mounted on the nose-cone, placing us in the eye of the plane-bomb. I glance over again at my airline companion. Her hands gripping the armrest and her head thrown back, eyes closed and mouth agape, she seems to be suspended within a fire of pleasurable danger, of the rollercoaster variety. Is it the erotic charge of death that surges through the body? A virtual obliteration, where one slips into a delirious exchanging of roles and positions - as when aggressor becomes victim? The gripping of the armrest, the position of the head, the trajectory of the plane: a triangulation that seems to encircle the surge. A machine of some kind, sailing through the sky, plummeting to earth, or shooting up like a rocket. An orientation device, in which one sits, immobile and transfixed. A sensation of movement, which streams by. A representation of movement, causing one to learn how to move. Backed by an armament, a little war machine. Backed by a tool, a little work machine. And then: the salvation of the shield. JC # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net