Transactional seeing and becoming flesh: Repurposing militarised vision in Jordan Crandall’s heatseeking

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This article looks at the relationship between militarised vision and cinematic aesthetics in Jordan Crandall’s moving image installation, Heatseeking (2000-2001), commissioned for InSITE, a series of site-specific art exhibitions at the US-Mexico border. Repurposing border surveillance technologies, Crandall’s project interrogates the domestication of militarised vision and the production of racialised bodies as conditions of legality in the post-NAFTA borderlands. Drawing on theories of flesh and embodiment to theorise Crandall’s moving image poetics, the author demonstrates that Crandall’s project offers insights not only into the logics of militarised vision, but also modes by which visualisation at the border can become fugitive. Disrupting militarised vision through interventions into moving image grammars afforded by performance, spatialised montage, kinesthetics and sound, Heatseeking produces a mode of transactional seeing that emphasises spectatorial embodiment rather than visual legibility. Bringing kinesthetic embodiment to bear on repurposed military technologies Heatseeking produces sensations that make visible the flesh of movement, rather than racialised bodies.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)420-436
Number of pages17
JournalThird Text
Volume30
Issue number5-6
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 1 2016
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Aesthetics
  • China medel
  • Cinematic
  • Flesh
  • Heatseeking
  • InSITE 2000
  • Jordan Crandall
  • Kinesthetic
  • Militarised vision
  • Racial visibility
  • US-Mexico border

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Cultural Studies
  • Visual Arts and Performing Arts

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