Spectacle defeats politics

An article in Le Monde argues that the spectacle of victimhood in campaigns such as Make Poverty History distracts us from the real political issues:

Like Erner, Caroline Eliacheff and Daniel Soulez-Larivière (2) attribute the unprecedented prestige and credibility accorded to victims to the transformation of politics into spectacle. But they also relate it to the end of the cold war: it feels safer, they suggest, to sympathise with the victims of a catastrophe than to engage politically in a complex world. In Erner’s view: “With Marxism dead, all we can do is sanctify victims.”

Mona Chollet  'Recognition or sanctification? Victimhood’s hidden agenda'  mondediplo.com/2007/10/12victimhood (9/10/2007)

Glass TV

Now on show at the redoubtable Craft ACT is a collaborative exhibition by two glass artists - Luna Ryan from Canberra and Jock Puautjimi from Tiwi Island. The title of the exhibition Mamana Mamanta means 'gradual friendship'. Both Luna and Jock gathered much of their glass from old television screens. The image on the left is one of Luna's, titled 'Vision of a fragile Eden series' (2007, kiln cast recycled television screens).

Interesting how television, the window to the world of spectacle, can become a sculptural substance that freezes one particular scene.