Stefaan Decostere, author of the installation arena WARUM 2.0, explains his work.
WARUM 2.0 is an installation
arena, an installation of installations, where nothing is limited to
what is, but is constantly doubled into something else. It is a tragic
space, in which no event can stand for real, in which nobody can merge
with for longer than the time it takes to escape, in which words,
sounds, things and images happen in a constant state of suspense.
The
starting idea of WARUM 2.0 was ambitious from the start, as it wanted
to create an environment in which viewers would spend more time and
start thinking about technology and relate to the documentary images
processed by it. The installation wanted to make possible personal
experience with media, instead of just offer presentation, information
and interpretation. Ultimately, it wanted to invite the visitors to
experience and deal with the phenomenon of impact, and not just create
it.
In this environment, technological per se, Paul Virilio
was invited with some of his warnings against 'impact', against the
makers of it, against their techniques of 'storytelling' and against
the very renewed possibility of 'synchronizing affects' on a massive,
if not global scale.
So there it is, WARUM 2.0, a complex of
projection screens installed on four centrifugal curves spreading out
in a dark space of two hundred square meters around a suspended 360°
panorama, all transparent. Many visitors walk through it. They take in
viewing positions and try to relate to the projected images,
discovering the many look-throughs and superpositions. The installation
employs and displays the interface of an automatic scanning system that
translates their movements into parameters, instantly changing the
positions of the projected pictures. There is a dynamic sensor round
sound system of shooting, bombing and crying. At one instance the voice
of Paul Virilio can be heard; at another, the shrieks and shouts of
battle of assaulting marines on some exercise mission in a real desert.
Visitors handle the joystick of a networked surveillance camera and
grab views and pictures of their friends, unaware or waving back and
smiling in the camera lens attached high up to the ceiling. Three
cutouts in a huge human Tetris wall sculpture invite visitors to take
in and mimic positions of falling victims or shooting soldiers while
activating sensors, interacting and playing with the footage of more
training soldiers in combat. Other visitors teleport their hand live
into a double of WARUM 2.0 on Second Life, while a robot hand steers an
avatar around and about falling pictures of war victims, also on
display in the physical arena. With laptops on a long access point to
the Web, more visitors add the YouTube video of their own choice to the
overall projection. From every side faces of war victims stare at the
public. They were all personally shot by cameraman Daniel Demoustier at
Darfur, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Kosovo and Haïti, again and again, during
his missions for Doctors without Borders and ITN news.
As for
war and technology, nothing really changed in essence. One could say,
there is just more war, more technology and there are more victims. But
what changed really, because of technology, is the way we relate to war
and to pictures of victims, and to the documentary image as such. New
media changed all that. Precisely for this reason, Warum is called
WARUM 2.0 because it reflects on and challenges the notion of 2.0. Over
the years it has become clear to me that 2.0 is kind of a fraud, at
least if one understands it as I did as a situation of 'user made
content', instead of what it is: 'user driven impact'.
With
WARUM 2.0 and possibly along its further installments and developments
in the future, I hope to facilitate and help focus critical reflection
on media and the techniques of impact. A horizon for public experiment,
with technology, where there is no need to hide.
Paul Virilio:
"Today, faced with what's happening in science and knowledge in
general, not only science but philosophy too, political philosophy, we
need people who are not afraid of tragedy but who interpret, analyze,
dissect, talk about things. It's the opposite of story telling. It's
something much more modest and in my opinion more useful today than
grand spectacles".