Acies

historian T. J. Demos put it, ‘there is no conflict without war of images’. 12
In light of this, there is, on the one hand, a rampant proliferation of images
that undermines our apprehension and shapes our fears and desires;
and on the other, due to the increasing so-called democratisation of the
pictorial archive, an opportunity to intervene in hegemonic representations,
the knowledge they produce and legitimise, and the ethics and politics of
fear they sustain. In a short essay title ‘Documentary Uncertainty’, artist
and theorist Hito Steyerl, discussing the affects of an uncertainty resulting
from mainstream broadcasting, called artists to organise the inundation of
images and disclose the politics that inform their imagery and circulation.
She posited, ‘[f]inding a critical position with respect to these images [...]
means replacing the set of affects which is connected to this uncertainty –
namely stress, exposure, threat and a general sense of loss and confusion
– with another one’. 13 Alessandro’s decision to use peripheral imagery to
refer to war, such us the camouflage pattern that appears predominantly
within the exhibition, not only adds to the abundance of different images
that can be created or chosen to speak about warfare but also partakes
into the history of various artists whose work negates the fear and paranoia
resulting by the ubiquitous representations of blood, bodies, battlefields,
guns, coffins etc. Artists like Thomson & Craighead have chosen to reveal
the ideologies that underline representations. Some like Thomas Hirschhorn
have chosen to show the sheer brutality of war – bodies entirely shattered,
both black and white – and thus shake the ethical illusion that excuses socalled
western intervention and the death of the Other.
Acies tells us a story about war, a story about representations of war and
a story about how representations tell us the story that we tell about war.
Anastasia Philimonos
12 T. J. Demos, Zones of Conflict (New York: Pratt Manhattan Galley, 2009), p.3
For a succinct discussion about ‘the war of images’ that uses examples such as the photographs
of Sadam’s dental examination, the leaked Abu Ghraib photos and the Fallujah photographs, see
W. J. T. Mitchell, ‘Cloning: The War of Image 2001-2004’ in Diarmuid Costello and Dominic Willsdon
(eds), The Life and Death of Images (London: Tate Publishing, 2008), 179-207.
13 Hito Steyerl, ‘Documentary Uncertainty’, 2007, available online at journal Re-visiones, http: /
www.re-visiones.net/spip.php%3Farticle37.html