> Apropos the importance of television election
> coverage, here's something from BLDG BLOG, a site
> Dwayne introduced here. This is a quote from an
> interview with "military sublime" photographer Simon Norfolk:
>
>
> Norfolk: Well, I cannot fucking believe that I go
> into an art gallery and people want to piss their
> lives away not talking about what's going on in
> the world. Have they not switched on their TV and
> seen what's going on out there? They have nothing
> to say about that? They'd rather look at pictures
> of their girlfriend's bottom, or at their top ten
> favorite arseholes? Switch on the telly and see
> what's going on in our world – particularly these last five years.
Now I know why I am so stupid about everything in the world! I don't own a television and therefore can't switch it on!
It must mean I am not in the world or not a citizen or only care about my favorite bottoms. And notice the heterosexist assumptions in this quote
oh well he is trying to annoy the artsy and fartsy....
>
>
>
> http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/warphotography-interview-with-simon.html
>
>
> Here he says what he means by military sublime:
>
> BLDGBLOG:.... Could you talk more about these
> overlaps between the military, computer
> technology, and what you think is "godlike" about the latter?
>
> Norfolk: Where weapons and supercomputers fit in
> for me is in a military-industrial complex. The
> problem is that that complex has drifted off so
> far above any idea of democratic control – even
> Eisenhower pointed this out – that I would call
> it godlike. It's beyond irrational, it's beyond
> any kind of comprehension in a scientific sense.
> It's designing nuclear weapons that can destroy
> the world more efficiently – when we already have
> nuclear weapons that can destroy the world many times over.
>
> People seem to think that I'm saying oh, they're
> full of gods, or look, this is where god lives...
> But obviously I don't think that. I don't think
> that those computers are somehow unprogrammed by
> humans, or supernatural. What I'm concerned about
> is that those humans, who have programmed them,
> aren't warm and fuzzy professors like The Nutty
> Professor. They're introverted people working in
> the basements of DynaCorp, and General Dynamics,
> and Raytheon, and they're so far beyond any kind
> of democratic control that you or I will ever have over what they do.
>
> It ends up being like a relationship with the
> sublime – a military sublime. All of the work I'm
> doing, I might even call it: "Toward a Military
> Sublime." Because these objects are beyond:
> they're inscrutable, uncontrollable, beyond democracy.
>
>
> ___________________________________
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>
-- Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/
His fiction, poetry, weblog is Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/
Notes, Quotes, Images - From some of my reading and browsing http://www.livejournal.com/community/jerry_quotes/