On September 11th 2001 two abhorrent acts of terrorism resulted in the greatest loss of life from any terrorist action ever on American soil. Within weeks America and its allies, which included Britain, were at war with the Taleban and therefore with Afghanistan. The West was standing up to terrorism conducting a war on the soil of one of world’s poorest nations under the quiescent gaze of the United Nations.

Broadcast media, face different challenges during this war. They risked the accusation of undermining their country’s forces: care was taken to minimise the horror War footage is subject to the ‘third effect’, which, means care has to be taken in terms of what juxtapositions happen between images and programmes in the schedule. In the end the war become so embedded and its presentation so formulaic and constant that viewers become effected by a kind of intellectual persistence of vision, with the war becoming a programme like any other, there was curiosity but little emotional detachment Dadaist Marcel Duchamp said, ‘The onlooker is as important as the artist. In spite of what the artist thinks they are doing, something stays on that is completely independent of what was intended and that something is grabbed by society’. I was listed as a possible war artist and I produced images based on a number of different information sources. I then tested this work in a gallery contrasting the approach taken by the broadcaster media, the outcome are presented in this paper.

Keywords

• Contrasting War Artist with broadcast media- its effect on the viewer

(30 min. Conference Paper, English)