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A story for war, a story about war So, one way of posing the question of who “we” are in these times of war is by asking whose lives are considered valuable, whose lives are mourned, and whose lives are considered ungrievable. Judith Butler 1 Walking through <strong>Acies</strong>, we will be thinking about war, representations of war, and the politics that war sustains and is sustained by. Opening <strong>Acies</strong> is Battlefield, a sculptural installation that borrows its visual elements from two Roman objects: vexillum, a type of Roman standard, used during war to mark a troop’s assembly point or the location of the commander; and Vettweiss – Eroitzheim, a dice tower made in the 4th century AD. The bronze dice tower was created to allow the trustworthy throw of dice and was probably gifted to now unknown soldiers after winning a battle; it consisted of a horizontal tower, open on the top so as to allow the throw of one or more dice that would then exit from the below steps to land on the surface underneath. For Battlefield, Alessandro has reproduced the entire edifice of the vexillum, rendering it with wood and a military camouflage patterned fabric banner that reads ‘HOSTIS DELETA LUDITE SECURI’ [The enemy is defeated, play in safety] – part of the text that is carved on the dice tower. Next to the vexillum, two dice, somewhat resembling those that could have been used when playing with the tower, are placed on a grey plinth, the typical structure for exhibiting sculptures/ valuable objects within a gallery/museum. Battlefield reenacts the original purpose of the tower, inviting audiences to play with the dice, as the banner emphatically announces, in safety. However, in the case of Battlefield, the dice are plastic camouflage patterned; mass produced cheap objects, an ironic interpretation of the original hand-crafted bronze roman artifact. Given that an interaction occurs, spectators, who have now become participants, partake into a celebratory activity, during which what is celebrated is the 1 Judith Butler, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? (London; New York: Verso, 2009), p. 38
defeat of an enemy. Who is the enemy? Following the World Trade Centre attacks on 11 September 2001, the rhetoric of the dangerous Other, primarily the terrorist, replaced the rhetoric of the uncivilised other and in tandem, fear began shaping the contemporary subject. Capitalising on this fear, George W. Bush, on 16 September 2001, officially announced the ‘war on terror’, marking a new era of warfare which has materialised into various zones of conflict, fifteen years later still unfolding. Fear, whose presence requires the existence of an enemy, is well discussed in discourse pertaining to contemporary hegemonic politics. Indicatively, Marxist philosopher Slavoj Žižek in his book Violence acutely describes how contemporary politics is ‘post-political bio-politics’, a mode of politics that allegedly leaves behind the traditional ideological struggles to focus on citizens’ safety and well-being. In the realm of this politics, one succumbs to dominant apparatuses as long as her bios [life] is permeated by the need to be saved from the dangerous Other who, in one way or another, threatens her safety. As Žižek puts it, [...] at the zero level of politics, the only way to introduce passion into this field, to actively mobilise people, is through fear, a basic constituent of today’s subjectivity. [...] [F]ear of immigrants, fear of crime, fear of godless sexual depravity, fear of excessive state itself, with its burden of high taxation, fear of ecological catastrophe, fear of harassment’. 2 The enactment of the above dice-rolling celebrations within a gallery compels thinking on the difference and distance between, for instance, a battlefield in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or the battered borders between Syria and Turkey and an art context – and, therefore, the Western context – within which we are invited to celebrate our safety, namely, the distance between the West and the East. This distance is the one that underpins the ethical demand of a western intervention in the name of humanity’s comfort and prosperity, in the sense that dwelling on this distance can lead to a sense of insurmountable difference between the West and the East, and when this difference is taken with the added implication that the West is more favourable, we reach the conclusion is that the West must be protected. But isn’t this an ‘’ethical illusion’’, which is underlined by religious distance and the great narratives of modernity whose subject believed that he was universal and consequently compelled to level anything different to him, as anything different would be deemed wrong? Hence, Žižek wonders ‘why should Kissinger, when he 2 Slavoj Žižek, Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (New York: Profile, 2008), pp. 34-35
Page 3 and 4: Aciēs (/ˈa.ki.eːs/) 1 sharpness,
Page 5: Incipit In the early 90’s, I was
Page 9 and 10: and Antonio Negri’s words, a ‘p
Page 11 and 12: acknowledge the camera by waving to
Page 20: This publication accompanies: ACIES

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