Invisibilities and Histories

As stripped-down, archetypal binaries of political leaders emerge, those in the region who have historically existed at the margins (and who may be considered stateless as a result) are pushed further into the “surround.” The architecture of sovereignty, here, is affirmed via the disturbing congealing of erasure and fantasy—without access to nuanced histories of internal displacement and forced migration in the region (particularly as they have been forced upon minority groups), media depicting the violence and suffering currently unfolding in Ukraine are essentially excavated from the complex histories which they are inherently connected to. Cultural figurations of the current crisis in Ukraine are largely decontextualized and sensationalized, and are viewed through the lens of an increasing global desensitization to digital figurations of violence. This module aims to evoke a sense of overstimulation (and the desensitization which results from it) through the layering of several pieces of news media covering the war in Ukraine. These clips are cut up with “glitches” which reference Elon Musk's initial offer to provide internet access to the country through his Starlink satellites—and his incredibly harmful choice to later rescind this offer. In 2023, digital media potently figures and arbitrates cultural understandings of war and crisis, and these cultural figurations are also largely dependent on what type of digital media one is allowed access to. Ukrainians, for instance, have been sometimes incapable of reading global reports on their day-to-day living conditions as a result of Elon Musk's bizarre move to stop providing internet access to Ukrainians—a phenomenon similarly found in Russia through mass censorship of social media during the early months of the war (particularly via the outright banning of Instagram). Americans, however, are near constantly barraged with digital iterations and (re)enactments of wartime in Ukraine, and as a result are both misinformed about the crisis and desensitized to the suffering of the Ukrainian people as a whole and the many Russian citizens who are staunchly against the occupation. Tracing war in Ukraine, today, necessitates the tracing of media representations of the crisis. This module ultimately engages with the reductive spectacles of violence in Ukraine produced via news media.