Paper:Terrorism & Aesthetics

Introduction
In 2014 a series of iconic beheading videos surfaced on YouTube. Viewed by millions, these videos became quickly identifiable for their rolling desert landscapes piercing blue sky, orange-clad kneeling victim, and an articulate host nicknamed Jihadi John. I cannot think of any image more associated with our vague notion of ISIS and its undefined territory than the balaclava-clad face of Jihadi John pointing his knife at us, standing somewhere in the dunes of the middle east. His interchangeable Western victims (James Foley, Steven Sotloff, David Haines, Alan Henning, Peter Kassig) are his bright orange prop as he recites in a London accent threats and issues demands to his audience on our side of the screen. These videos have been endlessly analyzed, deconstructed and parodied, instantaneously repackaged by the media, and have found a comfortable home in the world of art.

Return of the Real The representation and outright recreation of terroristic images in Western culture suggests their seductive power. They are at once captivating and horrible and often discussed in terms of the sublime. There is a longstanding complicity between war-making and picture taking [Mroue] dating back as early as Matthew Brady's extensive cataloguing of the American Civil War. As with most early photographers, they understood the picture as a medium for capturing reality and providing a faithful image of the world. The naiveté of this line of reasoning would come to be challenged in the 1970s, where photography and film would be deconstructed as mere representations of the world; a framed distortion of the real at best, and an outright manipulation by the image-maker at worst. But the emergence of terrorism and terroristic images has given rise to the notion of the Real once more. Here is our inability to look away; our direct confrontation with the sublime in a society permeated by simulation. In Welcome to the Desert of the Real, Slavoj Zizek describes The Trueman Show as the ultimate Western neurotic fantasy. In this 90s film, the main character unknowingly lives inside a giant bubble, populated entirely with actors, props and a fake town. He is the unwitting star of a reality TV show, where everything in his world exists only to provide television drama. This solipsistic story taps into the peculiar sensation that is all too familiar for Westerners; the sensation that the safe, suburban world of plastic products, faux-materials, and artificial flavouring cannot possibly be "Real". In Hypernormalization, Adam Curtis edits together a series of clips from other 90s films where citizens of western cities gaze upward toward an incoming disaster. Mouths open, they stand paralyzed before an off-screen spectre on the verge of annihilating them. These are followed by clips of buildings being destroyed, Manhattan in flames, etc. The implication is evident: the desire for the Real is palpable in our media and thus the terrorism of the 21st Century (particularly that of 9-11) was already inscribed in our desire for the return of the Real. Terrorism finally breaks the fantasy bubble of the uneventful Western life and imposes itself through the "ultraviolent" Real as an unspeakable wish fulfillment.

Ernst Junger celebrated the violence of WWI combat as the authentic Lacanian Real. 100 years later, with the Real having been safely relegated to the non-Western "other", terrorists emerge as passionate actors delivering what Alain Badiou calls the "passion for the Real" (Zizek, 2002, p. 5). The artificiality of Western life is broken as the interjection of the Real is ushered in. For Zizek, this experience of the real became the ultimate and defining moment for our new century (Zizek, 2002, p.5). But what are the consequences of the Real for a society that, as Curtis showed, primarly understands itself through constructed (or media-produced) images? The packaged delivery of our reality though media is not missed by terrorists. Zizek rightly points out that the attacks on the twin towers were made for the spectacle of the destruction, rather than for their unpredictable material destruction. Our experience of the Real through media (VR as an experience of place, social media as an experience of interpersonal communication, scripted reality TV as an experience of empathy) sets up the preconditions for any intrusion of the Real to be neutralized. Zizek argues that that while the empirical reality of terrorism is Real, it is neutralized by the West in its image-based reception. Like Curtis' collection of Hollwood films of urban desctruction, terrorism becomes the "semblance of the real" that appeals to our desire for the Real (Zizek, 2002, p.16). The terrorists do not in fact deliver any desert o the real since it is merely a desert containing only signifiers and images. The reality that intruded into our culture through violent acts of terrorism is quickly captured by aesthetic representations we produce. Here, "our pursuit of the Real through images remains our avoidance of it" (Zizek, 2002, p. 24). But Zizek's argument that terroristic images area semblance of the real relate to Western society. What can be said of terrorists and their own understanding or relation to the Real? Do they consciously manufacture this semblance, which has its roots in our entertainment?

Re-enactment of the Semblance of the Real
If the violence of terrorism was ever a fantasy, it found its constant reenactment and ritualization in gaming culture. Since 2001, games have increasingly allowed users to play as terrorists. Initially, these games failed to deliver meaningful opportunities to play as a terrorist, often anesthetizing the player's roleplaying by characterizing their characters as 'double-agents' or 'infiltrators' (Schulzke, 2013). But progressively, games like Insurgency: Sandstorm, ARMA 3: Takistan, and SQUAD provide for surprisingly subjective explorations of terrorist role-playing, where "the video game avatar, presented as a human player's double, merges spectatorship and participation in ways that fundamentally transform both activities" (Rehak, 2003: 103). In numerous videos uploaded by players to YouTube, historical acts of terrorism are re-enacted, from specific events like 9-11, London's 2005 metro bombing, and the 2015 Thalys train attack, to more general events like airport shootings, plane hijakings, and vehicle-pedestrian attacks that now form part of our general images of terrorism. As a participant in an FPS game, it is tempting to say this is the Real as entertainment. The constant replaying of these videos (including the performative replaying of actual events in videogames) ritualizes it - we affirm it as Real. Similarly, this obsession with reenactment and role-playing may offer an enormous cirtical potential to offer a radical change in perspective and a challenge to the simple good vs evil binary of the War on Terror (Schulzke, 2013, p. 208). However, its attention to graphic realism and aesthetic gameplay underlines the seductive qualities of terroristic images. The concern is not with the substance but rather the visual aesthetics (beyond the entertainment of the gameplay germane to all games). The role-playing of terrorism becomes a method of image-making, or of iconic simulation. It is the most explicit denial of the Real; a turning away from it by providing for its semblance in a high definition virtual reality where its performance can be endlessly recorded in search of its most spectacular representation.

While terrorism found its way into gaming culture, gaming culture was finding its way into terrorism. Head-cam videos of jihadi soldiers going into battle began to appear, borrowing heavily from FPS visual language. It is not merely the first-person perspective that they share; jihadi soldiers pick up and cycle through weapons as a gamer online, kill-shots are slowed down and replayed, and voice overs mimic 'kill-count' praise typical of gaming culture. Our familiarity with FPS games allows these gopro uloaders to tap into our established videogame sebsibility and connects both iconically. Notably, the framed camera perspective is exactly the same in both. In this bizarre physical manifestation of western digital culture, jihadists participate knowinglu in entertainment as the Real. That is, to create the most exciting video for their audience, they must intervene in the Real in its most heightened moment: when its negation is confronted. But the aestheticization through the appeal to video game language only blurs these two opposing realities. We are not quite watching the Real: it is too performative, too reliant by video game imagery.

In some cases, these jihadists succeed in capturing their death. A loud pop is hear accompanied by the camera suddenly spinning, and coming to a final rest on the ground. But what can be said about the real death of the video's author? While the emperical death is obvious, their symbolic death is circumspect. Perhaps in his symbolic death, he is rendered dead by the frame that steals his life from him in the act of representation. Barthes. The repeated playing of these videos is the eternal return of the dead, of the living martyr, where martyrdom is a performative condition Birrell, p. 3. Or perhaps, like in gaming, the endless replaying of these videos becomes the endless spawning of gamers, rather than the holy immortality of a would-be martyr.

Point: the difference is erased between VG and gopro. If VG was a turning away from the real, and an easthetic exercise, then so must the terroristic imagery.

The aesthetic and performative aspects of terroristic images and footage is not ony limited to these FPS videos. Khory and Morue's 3 posters: A performance video (2000) takes jihadi Jamal Satti's martyr video, playing his three attempts to deliver his scripted message. Khory and Mroeu understand this as a performance, like an actor preparing for a role. Here, partydom becomes a performative condition Ross Birell - the gift of terror: suicide bombings as potlach - check this reference! or as Ross Birell argues, "all suicide-bombers explode three times: in the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real" (Birell, 2xxx, p. 38[in the reader])

Sean Snyder's detailed study of resolution sizes of footage produced by Al Qaida concludes that the intentional downgrading of vieo quality, coupled with the typical shaky handheld camera style is consciously performed by their authors to align their films with a visual language that signifies the real for us. The handheld footage, already reinforced as 'authetntic' through our media, signifies real presence. Their appeal to the real stems less from what is portrayed by the image, but rather through the means by which reality is portrayed Jordan Crandall reader p. 71.

Note: Junger's celebration of combat as the Real is itself withdrawn back to the framed screen.

Groys aesthetics
Jordan Crandall writes that the media, through its history of portraying 'real feelings' and 'real people' have laid the groundwork or mise-en-scene that has allowed terrorist videoes to constitute a language that signifies the Real, and allows us to identify with the image. The handheld camera significies real presence! "Authenticity now arises less from the authenticity of reality than the authenticity of the means by which reality is portrayed" (Crandall, p.71).
Fascination with aesthetics of it
In the case of FPS terrorism the aesthetics are:
-over the gun perspective
-slow down and replays of direct shots
-scope zoom ins
-even the narrator recalls the encouraging voice overs heard while playing an RPG. "Enemy eliminated!" becomes "The infidel has been killed!"
That we can speak of aesthetics and its recreation suggests Groys argument

-has all the appearance of objectivity but is carefully crafted into an edge-of-your seats action flic. Scrolling through comments posted underneath the video we see comments like "the most exciting war footage I have ever seen" "The most realistic depiction of close combat out there". The last comment, however, is quite revealing. It identifies the footage as a realistic depiction, rather than the real itself.
Groy's argument is further supported by highly cinematic ISIS videos (note they do not mention religion)
the grainy handheld video quality that signified the Real is beginning to give way to very professional shots that further borrow languages of aesthetics from Hollywood's cinematic shots.
Describe execution - does not show execution but the gun , the low camera angle - this is cinema

terrorist videos then deserve the same treatment as any aesthetic or artistic work by presenting it as art. It recognizes that the symbolic power of these videos is not as Real, holy or sacred but merely art.
As Frans Kellendork states, reality is not automatically represented by the images we make of it. Instead, the mystery or complexity of that reality is lost when an image is thought to represent or replace it. (Kennendork p. 84).
In my work, I Select images that are similar to media representations, and confirm our aesthetic understanding. Note they are made by designers but then the gamers take over and do it for us

Blurring of realities
Over a decade after the publication of Groys/Zizek article what has changed?
The popular recreation and entertainment
Videogames presents an interesting problem - roleplaying is the desire for the Real, it moves beyond aesthetics into subjective experience. There is an active search beyond the image.
The participation is the entertainment, and that's always going to be problematic.
Videogames as a liminal state of bringing aesthetics into reality while reinforcing reality as aesthetics.
Highly compromised position that had not been there with Zizek and Groys at the time of their writing. Nor was the extreme complicity between drone footage as removed spectatorship and active hand-of-God intervener. Drone warfare is similarly characterized by a bizarre liminal state for the operator leading to PTSD.
As we move deeper into representation (VR) and subjective experience (immersion, connectivity, participation) we are bringing about a unique moment in historical iconography.
We are all extreme iconophiles (like the terrorists of now). But we are trying to revive the Realness of these images as iconos. Like religious icons that act as mediators, now aesthetics become mediators.
Seduction leads to subjectification.
What is the reality of the gaming world

co-exchange/ potlach?
terrorists fulfull a dark fantasy for us, then they engage in a mutually beneficial potlatch.

-the externalization of the digital into the real
This videogame act sees no difference between entertainment and reality. The gopro footage is the exetrnalization of a language established first in videogames. We know how PS games operate; the footage taps into our established videogame sensibility and connects iconically both. Notably, the gramed camera perspective is exactly the same in both.
When mass shootings first became a media favorite, it was standard to see the usual fingers point at videogames as the cause of voilence. It was a claim unbacked by any evidence and one that rang hollow for all those of us that had ever played videogames. But to the great vindiction of these wagging fingers, we finally have mass shooters role playing in their very own videogame footage. The evidence is in the very perpsective of the camera itself.
Here we have the idea of potlach - a bizarre exchange between terrorism image-making and popular culture where the latter is aware of its compromised complicity.

If

Conclusion
Terrorism is the blackest of screens through which we begin this process. It's spectacle is so grand, that as Groys says, it is hard for artists to compete.
Perhaps as artists it is too difficult to compete in aesthetic representation, perhaps it is time for us to come from the other end and be the Real, rather than the representator.

REFERENCES
Slavoj Zizek: Welcome to the Desert of the Real (2002)
Boris Groys: The Fate of Art in the Age of Terror
Sean Snyder: Some Byproducts. Thoughts on the Visual Rhetoric of PSYOP (2006)
Arnold Berleant: Art, Terrorism and the Negative Sublime (2009)
Robert Kaplan: Terrorism as Theatre (2014)
Jen Bartlett: Cultivated Tragedy: Art, Aesthetics, And Terrorism In Don Delillo's Falling Man

Ahmed Al-Rawi: Video games, terrorism and ISIS' Jihad 3.0 (2016)
Javier Lesaca: On social media, ISIS uses modern cultural images to spread anti-modern values (2015)
Marcus Schulzke: Being a terrorist: Video game simulations of the other side of the War on Terror (2013)

Refer to reddit discussions: https://www.reddit.com/r/insurgency/

Relevant Artists:
Sean Snyder - Casio, Seiko, Sheraton, Toyota, Mars
Rabih Mroue - Three Posters
Rabih Mroue - The Pixelated Revolution
Don Ritter - Vested
Don DeLillo - Falling Man
Tom DeLillo: "News of political terror is beginning to move into a narrative that used to be the stronghold of the novelist," he said then. "Not long ago, a novelist could believe he could have an effect on our consciousness of terror … Today, the men who shape and influence human consciousness are the terrorists."

https://www.thedailybeast.com/syrian-war-footage-has-become-a-video-game