Civic Aesthetics: Militarism, Israeli Art and Visual Culture (Radical Aesthetics-Radical Art)

"This book explores the politics of the image in the context of Israeli militarized visual culture. It unpacks the way in which art and visual culture contend, not with the military itself, but with its foundational impact on Israeli identity, culture, and society: its influence on bodily images and national affiliations; its impression on landscape; its authority as a coercive glue that encompasses collective memories; and, most importantly, the acceptance of those numerous militarized aspects as unproblematic parts of civilian life. Analyzing a range of artworks and art-related objects with the help of cutting-edge theory, it touches on various fields, including memory studies, gender studies, political geography and landscape theory, in search of a civic aesthetics that is able to submit a taken-for-granted military excess to the renewed scrutiny of its viewers. What the images do and how they work is of interest in this book, not what they show: this study discusses the complexities of visuality, arguing for art's capacity to expose the scopic regimes that construct its own visibility. Images and artworks are often read either out of context, on purely aesthetic or art-historical ground, or as cultural artefacts whose aesthetics play a minor role in their significance. This book breaks with both traditions as it approaches all art as an active participant in the surrounding visual culture in which it is created and presented. This innovative approach builds on the specific sociological concerns of the chosen cases to allow a new theory of the image to come forth, where the relation between the political and the aesthetic is one of exchange, rather than exclusion."--Bloomsbury Publishing. Awarded an Honourable Mention by the Association for Israeli Studies. Exploring the politics of the image in the context of Israeli militarized visual culture, Civic Aesthetics examines both the omnipresence of militarism in Israeli culture and society and the way in which this omnipresence is articulated, enhanced, and contested within local contemporary visual art. Looking at a range of contemporary artworks through the lens of "civilian militarism", Roei employs the theory of various fields, including memory studies, gender studies, landscape theory, and aesthetics, to explore the potential of visual art to communicate military excesses to its viewers. This study builds on the specific sociological concerns of the chosen cases to discuss the complexities of visuality, the visible and non-visible, arguing for art's capacity to expose the scopic regimes that construct their visibility. Images and artworks are often read either out of context, on purely aesthetic or art-historical ground, or as cultural artefacts whose aesthetics play a minor role in their significance. This book breaks with both traditions as it approaches all art, both high and popular art, as part of the surrounding visual culture in which it is created and presented. This approach allows a new theory of the image to come forth, where the relation between the political and the aesthetic is one of exchange, rather than exclusion. Cover page Halftitle page Series page Title page Copyright page Dedication CONTENTS ILLUSTRATIONS PREFACE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Introduction In search of a civic aesthetics Between critique and complicity Showing seeing: the critical image CHAPTER ONE Can(n)ons of Israeli society Frames and set-ups Soldier figures, civilian militarism and Israeli art Taking sides: exhibitions as framing agents Visual performatives Critical frictions CHAPTER TWO Bodies of the nation Serial quotations National bodies Rewriting the Jewish body, again Women soldiers Queer dreams of the nation CHAPTER THREE Looking through landscape The landscape way of seeing Tracing erasure: tso ̆ob ́ä and Zionist scopic regimes The ‘stifling of the gaze’ Israeli mindscapes CHAPTER FOUR Kebab in theory Zooming in on the thinking image Contesting mis/interpretations The archaeology of the still life: bringing back the anti- image Distortion and desire: the mapping impulse Seeing green: shaping emplacement CHAPTER FIVE Greetings to the soldier-citizen Peace, security and sparkles From guns to cream cheese The politics of nostalgia Preposterous postcards The limits of critical discourse CHAPTER SIX Fence art Bil’in and beyond: aesthetics of disagreement Redistributing visibility Changing contexts, shifting frames Conclusion The work, the world and the critical image NOTES REFERENCES INDEX