TJADER-KNIGHT inc.s' three digital
hybrids, “Fugacity”, “Nothing U can DO !!”, and “Stratify”, work to eliminate
the contemporary viewpoints in the history of conflict
by removing any sense of a one-dimensional narrative.
TJADER-KNIGHT inc. breaks down the classical narrative
and instead, presents an antiauthoritarian one with
a stream of sounds, images and text devoid of any central
point of view. General points of view do exist however
within the jumbled sources of information. As this
name implies, “Fugacity” is an attempt
at portraying history in its transitory state by presenting
the forces that show history in a volatile manner. “Nothing U can DO !!” comments on history’s deficiency
in capturing 20th century sources of power through
the over simplification of historical atrocities. The
last work, “Stratify”, mirrors the problems
in trying to identify and escape an individual’s
placement in the organization of power within historical
documentation. All three pieces argue that the investigation
of power in 20th century conflict is less important
when compared to what one already knows about power
and why one knows only those power sources. By intentionally
arranging the mediums of history - sounds, images,
and text - on the Internet, TJADER-KNIGHT inc. emphasizes
a “perpetual ellipsis” of history and the
Internet.
In “Fugacity”, the artist presents the
audience with multiple viewing positions through the
juxtapositions of images, sound, and text. Documentary
footage of the malfunctioning nuclear power plants
and nuclear weapons testing on the Pacific by the Americans
is presented. The first superimposed image is the structure
of Tshernobyl.
Below these images, text from Hakim Bey’s The
Ontological Status of Conspiracy Theory begins to scroll
across a selected verse from the Bhagavad Gita. Selected
text from Hakim Bey’s work describes the displacement
of power through the multiple levels of history. The
citation from the Bhagavad Gita relates to a quotation
made by Robert Oppenheimer during his witnessing of
the first atomic explosion. While both Oppenheimer
and Bey’s quotations are important in what they
discuss, the intentional omission of the complete text
seems just as important. The deliberate omission of
the piece leads the audience to recognize TJADER-KNIGHT
inc.s' intentional manipulation. This manipulation
can be read in many ways. On one level, it parallels
a potential conspiracy theory of historical manipulation
noted in Bey’s work and the “conspiracies
of the former Soviet Union regarding their neighbouring
states” through the images of Tshernobyl (TJADER-KNIGHT
inc.). On another level, it parallels the power to
destroy information through the creation of new associations
within the web page. The viewer is led to investigate
how the sources relate to each other. They are also
led to investigate how these sources, working as a
whole, relate to the viewer. They are also poised to
explore how this piece relates to the artist and how
the sources take on new forms of information through
the conscious selections of the artist. “Fugacity” urges
the viewer into several paths at once - allowing many
transitory revelations to appear to the viewer.
Because of the barrage of information displayed to
the viewer, the viewer is only able to pick up specific
pieces of information. The perception of the whole
becomes a series of replays, in which the viewer replays
the artwork repeatedly to find different points of
viewing positions. In “Nothing U can DO !!”,
the artist demonstrates how this positioning of the
viewer parallels the inadequacies of historical documentation.
While viewers have the luxury of rereading or replaying
documents, viewers do not have this luxury in real
time and space. There are visual references to many
atrocities including the Holocaust, early 20th century
Japanese invasions of Asia, South American dictators'
drug wars, and Tibet. In relation to these war crimes
and atrocities, it is impossible to understand the
true experiences and suffering of the people under
brutal regimes unless one was actually there. This
is symbolized through the sliding photos of prisoners
and tortured captives. In “Nothing U can DO !!”,
the sliding images represent a microcosm in onto themselves.
The massive destruction in these events are shrunk
down and minimized into still photographs. The viewer’s
knowledge is not of the actually experience, but the
experience of the photograph. This temporal displacement
that the viewer experiences shows the viewer one of
history’s main flaw; although documentation can
capture sounds, images, and text, the emotions are
left to the subjectivity of the viewer. |