The Aesthetics of Disappearance: A Land Without People

In my presentation for the panel A Fluid Resilience I will introduce some of the rich visual and theoretical material that has influenced and inspired my latest body of photographic and moving image work. In addition to other contemporary artists and filmmakers, I will refer to a range of historic and archival material that has informed the work from the earliest experiments in photographic reconnaissance to the prominent role digital technology, aerial photography and satellite imagery now occupy in modern warfare. I will touch on the related disciplines of forensic anthropology and archaeology and showed documentation from a number of site visits to locations in the US and the Middle East carried out during the development of the work.

"A Fluid Resilience", a panel of the Iraq Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale, convenes artists, scientists and other public intellectuals to discuss the possibilities of artistic and scientific practices as a means of social resilience and of sustainable regeneration through innovative knowledge production. This panel, presented by the Arizona State University Art Museum and ECHO (Sadda) for Contemporary Iraqi Art, builds on the exploration of water as the theme of the Iraq Pavilion. The Panel will be chaired by Rijin Sahakian, founding Director of ECHO and committee of the Iraq pavilion.

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