Killing Fields: Concepts and Processes

This is an accompaniment to the multi-channel video installation Killing Fields, for Visual Studies Senior Seminar. Images of violence are perhaps the most dramatically divisive and manipulative subset of consumed visuals. We refuse to condone "real" violence, and act appropriately shocked when violent images are labeled "real," but when they are "fake," we devour them with an insatiable appetite. Engaging this issue requires examination of the process by which images are perceived as violent — those particular components which make up a "violent image" and how visual definitions of violence are constructed, as well as issues of responsibility. What cues do image consumers use to identify what they may enjoy, versus what they must show empathy for? As image consumers, do we play of perpetrator, victim, or something else?