It also reminded me to the fashion campaign that the brand Zara launched this year and few months afterwards they withdrew it and apologised. In this case would it could be called "the meta-choreography of war".
Thoughts from Pierre
Very interesting analysis! It makes me think about the "staged event" in relation to "the waltz of content", as we are being submerged with content, and so I wonder what the conditions under which the staging can be recognized? What's the role of public/reception/users in giving a status to that staging?
Thoughts from Bilyana
There's so much here!
Firstly, it really resonates with me on a broader plane of circulation of war images on social media because lately I've been thinking a lot about the ethics of this (for clear reasons). But beyond ethics of representation, when I started reading, I immediately started thinking about documentary practices in art (and visual culture) and it felt so natural to get to a Martha Rosler reference (and made me think also of Oliver Ressler and Harun Farocki). I guess this performativity of a staged media image, immediately clashing with a war reality, and widely circulated online, is somehow exemplifying a different relationship to visual documentation - mediated by publishing technologies and ultimately rendered as content? I mean different in comparison to earlier ways in which the lens was dominating documentary discourse (in art, activism, performance etc.)
Secondly, questions: what is the role of this media choreography in the image as a document? How does the performativity of a staged, scripted reality impact the "exhibition value" of war? And how does it impact the image's status as a document? I think a reading through a Benjamin lens is interesting along the lines of the massification of images but problematised by the instrumentalisation of war images in the media. I think other than poor image, Steyerl's "Documentary Uncertainty" might be relevant? (I tried linking but the wiki doesn't like my link) (Bilyana)