Disarm you with a smile

In peaceful Western countries our experience of war is filtered through media. The images available to us shape our understanding of conflict, and all of the images tell us what to see and what to think about, either overtly through voiceover and titling, or subtly through framing and editing.

Often the things we see are disturbing. We may yearn to empathise, to break through the wall of passive media consumption and gain real understanding of these events. We desire, perhaps subconsciously, an intimacy with war. Art and artists can play a role in this. Artist Paul Chan’s experiences in Iraq form the basis of some compelling work. From December 2002 to January 2003, amidst growing worldwide opposition to the planned American-led invasion of Iraq, Chan travelled to Baghdad. From footage collected during this trip, he made the video ‘Baghdad in No Particular Order’. In stark contrast to conventional news images, Chan set out to notice the unnoticed. Though Chan doesn’t appear, the video speaks of his experiences, and conveys an intimacy with its subjects. This intimacy becomes a powerful tool for understanding what is really under threat from war.

Yet the media landscape is changing. Chan’s piece was made at a time before YouTube, which has propagated the kind of amateur and unedited footage that his piece is built on – his piece would arguably not have the same effect now as it did then. The rise of Web 2.0 has enabled more participation in, rather than just consumption of, the media. The technological possibilities of networked media (peer-to-peer, crowdsourcing, citizen journalism broadcast on Twitter, Flickr and YouTube) have come to shape our evaluation of truth and importance. We look not to a single authority to determine authenticity and gravity of events, but to the masses.

Social media have had some impact on recent events in the Middle East and North Africa, helping activists organise against autocratic regimes. The ‘domino effect’ of protests across the region could be attributed, in part, to the extent to which digital networks carried news of the uprisings very quickly. In turn, onlookers have joined these networks to track and voice support for these activists, and understand from first hand accounts what is happening. But there is a danger in this kind of ‘armchair activism’: a retweet can act as a stand-in for real engagement or action.

Emily Jacir’s work ‘Where We Come From’, is a quiet contrast to the use of social media in understanding conflict. She seeks out geographically-dispersed strangers to help her accomplish a task around a particular niche interest: she asks Palestinians living in exile, “If I could do anything for you, anywhere in Palestine, what would it be?” Taking advantage of her Palestinian/American citizenship, she documents herself granting these wishes. They range from “Visit Haifa and play soccer with the first Palestinian boy you see on the street”, to “Drink the water in my parents’ village”, to the more practical, “Go to the Israeli post office in Jerusalem and pay my phone bill”. Her piece is not activism per se, but what writer Brian Holmes calls “affectivism”: in a society operating on auto-pilot from the constant flow of information, it recognises the capacity of emotion and sentiment to open up a space of possibility.

The figurative usage of the word ‘disarm’ exists in English alongside the literal. It is used to mean “to overcome or allay the suspicion, hostility, or antagonism of”, or even “to win the confidence or affection of”. It is revealing that in this other sense of the word, one disarms by charming. When we experience war exclusively through the media, what we are missing is intimacy with those who are affected by war, and even those who are orchestrating it. This intimacy is a powerful force for disarmament.

Intimacy is defined at equipping us with “a close association with, or detailed knowledge or deep understanding of, a place, subject, period of history”. With this intimate knowledge, beyond the limited understanding we are fed through filtered media, we can start to unravel how we are implicated in these distant wars, and what action we can take to change the course of events we do not agree with. In this way, intimacy is a powerful war weapon.