Sensitive Little Google Bunnies tut tut

When I set up this blog to promote my show I thought I would let google put some ads on just to mix things up a bit, but the poor bunnies at Google found that the content on this site was too sensitive for them (see below). Funny how these kinds of issues drive the sales and ad revenue of major global news media, perhaps it is the framing of them as fine art that is too complex for the folks at google.

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Hello Charles,

Thank you for your interest in Google AdSense. Unfortunately, after
reviewing your application, we're unable to accept you into Google AdSense
at this time.

We did not approve your application for the reasons listed below.

Issues:

- Sensitive content

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Further detail:

Sensitive content: We have reviewed your site and found that many of the
ads that would appear on your site would not be relevant to your site's
content. As the ads would not provide a valuable experience for your
site's users or our advertisers, we feel that your site isn't a good fit
for the AdSense program at this time.

Zombie

Introduction
Zombie showcases new video and print works by Charles Maggs. The show negotiates the mechanisms of contemporary society and some of its systems, with a particular interest in the accidental consequences, fear and pace have upon them. The results of these accidents are often, in equal parts, banal and horrific. The work is particularly concerned with the delivery mechanisms of this ‘globalised’ fear, the media, and how images from this system can be refigured to suggest alternate readings of these manufactured truths. Zombie is perhaps a reflection of a symptom rather that the condition itself.

The title
Zombie takes it’s title from the Fela Kuti and the Africa 70 song, Zombie that was released in 1977, the following extract from the lyrics talks about the condition of the citizens of the world afraid.

Zombie no go go, unless you tell am to go (Zombie)
Zombie no go stop, unless you tell am to stop (Zombie)
Zombie no go turn, unless you tell am to turn (Zombie)
Zombie no go think, unless you tell am to think (Zombie)
Fela Kuti 1977

The Context

In a world afraid there are fewer escape routes. The screen flickering in the corner of your lounge 24 hours a day, has been colonised to become the primary mechanism for delivering instantaneous and globalised fear. These screens are also the means for controlling vast geographic tracts in the most efficient manner, they cause a compression of this geography.


These geographic tracts are inhabited by disbursed and frightened individuals either contained within the perimeter or outside of it. Those within the perimeter, the citizens, have a strong need to feel safe and are protected by a myriad of systems. The ones who dwell beyond the perimeter either physically or theoretically are regarded as others. They are apart from the inclusiveness of the perimeter and they exist in a zone where everything has been outsourced or ‘EXCLUDED from multipolar internationality…’ (p109 Virilio, P. City Of Panic. 2007. Berg, New York)

The citizens are protected by one eyed cameras, 24 hours a day as they huddle in front of their screens. This pan-optic watching device has been calibrated to deliver instant and lethal force to the Others or those outside of the perimeter.

As an accidental result of geographic compression, local fears become globalised and islands of fear have begun to be woven into the fabric of civic mechanisms. These islands of fear result in unpredictable, questionable and sometimes even dangerous actions from those mechanisms that are designed to protect the citizens.


One key problem with instantaneous protection systems is that it is difficult to exclude, to 100% efficiency, the accident from them. With sufficient time, space for reflection and with measured and careful construction this accuracy can be increased and accidents avoided. However in the current supermodern context, time, reflection and methodical construction have become regarded as luxuries not to indulge if safety and control is to be guaranteed. Especially from the Others that dwell outside of the perimeter.

In order to maintain the perimeter the citizens must be perpetually productive. The performance of citizens is measured against that of machines and increasingly by machines. These machines are also in a constant state of acceleration, whereby according to Moore's law performance must double every 24 months. This pace of acceleration is imposed upon the citizens, failure to maintain the pace of performance results in banishment beyond the perimeter.

The machines speak in binary, the language of efficiency. And in order to keep up increasingly the citizens are turning toward binary communication. The machines logic circuits are designed to handle this kind of binary communication system, however this triggers distortions to the logic circuits of the citizens. These become fractured by binary communication, behaviors become infected by binary logic, relativity is quarantined. As fear is amplified in this context distortions and accidents increase wildly both in the behaviors of the citizens and the mechanisms that are designed to protect them.

Zombie focuses on these. While the work interrogates these structures in its own manner, it feeds off the distortions they throw up. Much as a disease manifests itself in a series of sometimes unrelated symptoms, the distortions that trigger the work manifest themselves in a series of states such as dislocation, detachment from time and space, logic interruptions and unexplained paranoia.

Zombie

THE AVA in partnership with Spier invites you to a solo exhibition by
Charles Maggs entitled Zombie

Zombie a digital video and print exhibition that negotiates fear and prejudice. Maggs distorts everyday media images rendering them in equal parts banal and horrific. 'Zombie' becomes a reflection of humanity, enmeshed in the 24 hour media machine.


at 6 pm Monday, 25 August 2008
25 Aug - 12 Sept weekdays 10am - 5pm Sat 10am - 1pm
or sites www.buz-co.com www.youtube.com/ronbeckinc

Association For Visual Arts (AVA), in partnership with Spier
35 Church Street, Cape Town 8001 Ph 021 424 7436 fax 021 423 2637
e-mail avaart@iafrica.com Website www.ava.co.za

Victim / Suspect

Jean Charles de Menezes at Home

On 22 July 2005 Jean Charles de Menezes was shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder at Stockwell tube station on the London underground. he had been mistakenly identified by London's Metropolitan Police as Osman Hussain who at the time was suspected to have been involved in the failed bombing attack in London on July 21, 2005. While no-one involved the killing of de Menezes has been charged, the Metropolitan Police were tried for 'failing to provide for the health, safety and welfare of Jean Charles de Menezes' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charles_de_Menezes) It was during this trial that a composite image was produced using the left hand side of Hussain's face and the right hand side of de Menezes face. The works you see here are created from the composite image and the original images used to create the composite. All the images have been heavily manipulated to produce the final four portraits.

The Metropolitan Police composite image

The image that the Metropolitan Police created to make de Menezes and Hussain look alike is a manipulation of visual reality. It was created using 3/8 of Hussain's face and 5/8ths of de Menezes face in order for them to appear to be more similar and for over the head shape to resolve itself and not look freakish or distorted. This can only be achieved using the left hand side of Hussain's face with the right hand side of de Menezes face, combining the other sides of the face produce a distorted image. Hussain's skin tone has been considerably lightened to make it look more like that of de Menezes, The tone of de Menezes face has been brightened making it look more generic and flat. When viewed separately they are not particularly similar looking.

Hussian and de Menezes portrait photos

The primary similarity is that they do not have typically western Caucasian features and as such look like the Other, in as much as the other tend to get classified as looking the same. The only notable similarity between de Menezes and Hussain is the rectangular shape of their forehead that is caused by the hairline. When I viewed this image I was struck by the fact the job was incomplete and unsatisfactory. In completing the task initiated by the London Metropolitan police I have created a series of images of a generic Other, in this case I have created two kinds of other's, the silenced other, that I have labeled victim 1 and victim 2 and the obliterated other, whose identity has been obscured and is labeled suspect. These generic Others could become so removed from the specific of self to truly matter. These Others are seemingly unattached and in constant motion. They are not touched by historic laws or structural justice, but rather an other that must be considered and acted upon at the speed of light, without reflection and without mercy. This is the kind of distortion that has appeared within the visual apparatus of the panoptican the mechanism of contemporary power that I have to ask has it not become myopic?

Victim#1

This piece fits into my exploration of effects that are incidental/accidental to those complex organised human systems (political, legal, civic commercial and so on) which exist as part of our supermodern lives. The works are triggered by distortions these mechanisms throw up, rather than the considered intentions of them. Much as a disease manifests itself in a series of sometimes unrelated symptoms, the distortions that trigger the work manifest themselves in a series of states such as dislocation, detachment from time and space, logic interruptions and unexplained paranoia.

Suspect#1

The specific focus in this case is on the accident of paranoia, when we are guided by fear and not reason we tend to operate in peculiar ways. This amplifies residual fears or prejudices we may have begun to regard as latent. The distortions throw up by this state of fear can tend to be in equal parts banal and horrific, their effect on our complex organized human systems is instantaneous and all pervasive particularly when you consider we operate in a globalised media state, which is locked into a state of a perpetual present.

Suspect#2

These works are not as much about the killing of de Menezes on the 22nd of July 2005 but rather about the obliteration of his specific identity two years after his death by those that had already killed him. The act of creating the composite image is an act both banal and horrific. Banal when you consider it was constructed as a piece of evidence in the context of the trial at the Old Bailey, where a piece of evidence once labeled as such and decontextualised is a functional legal device. Horrific when you consider that it amplifies his otherness and suggests that he looks much more like Hussain than he does. In doing this it obliterates the historic or specific identity of de Menezes after he been physically killed. A second attack on an innocent victim.

Victim#2

De Menezes death was the accident of justice. Not the justice that we understand as the process of the legal system, but rather a supermodern instantaneous justice engineered to maintain the appearance of safety in a world mad with fear.

Suspect#3

Thought Crimes ?

Victim #4

Satement

Zombie

In exploring this body of work I have focused specifically on some of the distortions thrown up by the convenience society in which we all partake. At the centre is an exploration of effects that are incidental/accidental to those complex organised human systems which exist as part of our supermodern lives. While the work interrogates these systems in its own manner, it ultimately delights in the distortions they throw up. Much as a disease manifests itself in a series of sometimes unrelated symptoms, the distortions that trigger the work manifest themselves in a series of states such as dislocation, detachment from time and space, logic interruptions and unexplained paranoia.


Zombie focuses in this case on the accident of paranoia, when we are guided by fear and not reason we tend to operate in peculiar ways. This amplifies residual fears or prejudices we may have begun to regard as latent. The distortions throw up by this state of fear can tend to be in equal parts banal and horrific, their effect on our complex organized human systems is instantaneous and all pervasive particularly when you consider we operate in a
media state, where significant events appear to happen in a 24 hour cycle.