Shock and Awe: the politics of production
It has been six years since 9/11 and ten since the publication of the right-wing thesis ‘Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance’. This is the book that acted as a conceptual sound-bite for framing the technique and technology needed for bombing people – a lot. In the aftermath of 9/11, the off-the-peg response in design consumption was a proliferation of Khaki, camouflage and an upturn in the sale of Humvees and SUV’s in general. Now, the shock and awe mantra has fed into an ‘age of anxiety’ and a ‘culture of fear’ in the psyche of much of the West.
Design’s response has been the creation of an aesthetic of shock and awe – witnessed in a wide range of design from Philip Stark’s machine gun lamp, through Front Design’s bomb blast chair, to advertising like the ad for Audi in which a car explodes in a western financial district. As the fragments of the blast hit the side of the skyscapers they reform into the words Vorsprung durch Technik (progress through technology)- a tag line as relevant to the advert’s creation by CGI as the zeitgeist of shock and awe. (This add had its darker doppelganger in the viral advertisement depicting a ‘terrorist’ detonating a bomb whilst sitting inside a Volkeswagon Polo).
Clearly, design and designers have had time to reflect and synthesis the cultural maelstrome since 9/11. CGI, Rapid Prototyping and ingenuity have allowed designers to quickly respond to any cultural situation. The original Shock and Awe essay states four characteristics are needed for its implication: ‘total knowledge, control of the environment, rapidity, and brilliance in execution.’ An example of this, in its most corporate form, is the mp3 phenomena and design’s response – an invasion spearheaded by the hardware of the ipod but backed up by an infantry of advertising, graphic design and moving image whilst co-ordinated with itunes software. It was a classic shock and awe scenario.
There are, however, other examples that might sit more comfortably with a traditional leftist cultural critique. Philippe Stark created a range of lighting for Flos based around gold plated guns. The most oft cited is the one which uses a Kalashnikov as its up-stand but the fall range includes a Beretta bedside lamp and a M16 table lamp. The lighting range can be seen as a bizarre Stark media event until you understand the inspiration for his idea – a cache of arms found in a Saddam Hussein Palace where each weapon was gold plated. In this context Stark’s lamps, with their black lampshades representing death, reflect the world back to us - now through the prism of the commodified object. Front Design, a product design practice based in Stockholm, in Design made in 0.4 seconds have produced a soft lounge chair: cast from a crater created by a literal explosion orchestrated by the designers themselves. Based at the Sandburg Institute, Remco Swart has designed wall tiles which perform a simple decorative function whilst their kaleidoscopic motif is made up of war imagery; men in gas masks, a woman holding a baby – itself a stock image that could be from Iraq, Palestine or any other war-torn news event. Dutch design partnership Viktor & Rolf have, in conjunction with l’Oréal, produced the perfume Flowerbomb which is presented in a bottle shaped like a hand grenade, replete with PIN. The duo have been quoted as saying their intention was to produce a scent both ‘romantic and aggressive’ whilst remaining ‘explosive but also kind of innocent’.
Suck:UK have made a gun-shaped white vase with the barrel acting as a flute, complete with red rose. However irreverent, this can’t be separated from the anti-war photograph of a young woman confronting a Home Guard soldier during the Vietnam protests by inserting a flower into the barrel of his gun. The original image is now either on museum walls or in coffee-table books and has arguably lost its critical power. What the gun vase might do is re-invigorate some of the issues the gun/flower image raises, but in a personal context. In contrast to the more didactic dialogues of, say, a political poster that simplifies things to right and wrong, Suck:UK’s design leaves the emphasis on the individual’s interpretation. For instance, in America, most people buying it are parents with children who are rediscovering Guns’n’Roses music. This illustrates how prescriptive readings of the vase’s ‘meaning’ are of limited use for understanding design in a live environment. So, shock and awe can manifest itself in the pimped Humvee and in designer eulogies to the sixties. These may be consumed politically and not.
A world of designs inspired by shock and awe may, to some, appear to reinforce the message of irreverent, sanitised, glamorised violence or muscular right-wing thinking. It’s assumed that this ‘criticality’ would need to come from a position outside (and a bit to the left) of consumer culture. We argue that when designers reflect our culture back to us like this, this visual re-interpretation allows discussion – not in the Oval office, but starting in the consumer’s living room.
Colin + Monika
Originally published in Blueprint Magazine 2005
What has all this got to do with design? Have you considered joining the Socialist Workers’party? It all sounds a bit 1970s. Do try to see the major exhibition at the Pearson Gallery: Breaking the rules: the printed face of the European Avant Garde 1900-1937. British Library 9 Nov 07 to Mar 30 08. There have been some very good ‘right-wing’ artists and designers even if you do not like their politics. Can’t think of any more to make up the 200 words.
/Alan Beardmore 24/09/2007