Defence Mechanisms

Abstract

The research and accompanying studio practice Defence Mechanisms visually interrogates the Australian individual's distanced relationship to 21st-century warfare through an exploration of suburban defensive architecture, military technologies and camouflage design. This practice-based research utilises the photographic image alongside sculptural installation to explore notions of dread and anxiety stirred up in the modern day Australian. Influenced by contemporary art practice and critical theory surrounding paranoia, globalisation and fear, this research outlines the development of specific visual reactions to a land physically distanced from war.

In research, the effects of globalisation on the Australian individual are discussed, where the rapid flow of information and subsequent proliferation of fear are brought forth to understand this uniquely distanced experience of conflict. Drawing on what theorist Paul Virilio has termed, 'The Administration of Fear', the project explores fear as a global environment, where the impacts of conflict are not exclusively linked with the physical experience of them. In this context, geographical distance becomes a naive form of safety from war in a world becoming smaller. This theoretical framework gives way to an exploration of the photographic methodologies used to capture the trace of trauma and conflict, what theorist David Campany has deemed 'Late Photography'. Focusing the camera's lens on sites throughout the suburban Sydney landscape, the project documents locations where individual anxieties have materialised through makeshift architectural decisions. This observed militarism in the suburbs opens up a dialogue about the future of warfare and the impacts of using new technologies on the battlefield, namely the unmanned military combat drone (UAV). The research Presupposes that the use of this highly contentious weapon of war has become metaphorical of the fears and resulting methods the collective west employs when conducting war beyond its borders. In reaction, a new 'speculative' camouflage has been designed to combat, albeit naively, the invasive surveillance capabilities of the drone.

In exhibition, Defence Mechanisms contrasts the aesthetics and paraphernalia of warfare with domestic sites of residential conflict. An attempt to survey both real and imagined mechanisms put in place to resist external threats. Photographic and sculptural works become artefacts and omens of dread in a land relatively free from the perils of war.