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"Questioning the Frame"

Coco Fusco fears we're abandoning history (and reality) in favor of matrixes and maps. [Link]

Viewing the world as a map eliminates time, focuses disproportionately on space and dehumanizes life. In the name of a politics of global connectedness, artists and activists too often substitute an abstract “connectedness” for any real engagement with people in other places or even in their own locale.

What gets lost in this focus on mapping is the view of the world from the ground: lived experience. What is ignored is the pervasiveness of the well-orchestrated and highly selective visual culture that the majority of Americans consume during most of their waking hours. Most people are not looking through microscopes and telescopes and digital mapping systems to find truth about the world. They are watching reality TV, sitcoms, the Super Bowl, MTV and Fox News, all of which also offer maps of a completely different kind: conspiracy theories that pit innocent Americans against the Axis of Evil, embedded journalists’ hallucinatory misreadings of foreign conflicts, allegories of empowerment through consumption and endlessly recycled, biblically inspired narratives of sin and redemption.

jon posted this at 12:26 PM
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