The ‘Global War on Terror’ has been a war of ideology, played out in our increasingly visual culture as a war of images and spectacle. Orange Screen (2017, ongoing) examines the visual language of the conflict by describing images of key events seen on our screens. The short texts are ekphrastic readings of images presented as calligrams in the rectangular frame of a photograph. The absence of the image removes it from its ideological context. The texts trigger visual memories of images and the impressions of the events recorded.
The colour orange became iconic through media images of the first detainees at Guantanamo Bay in 2002 wearing orange jumpsuits, standard US prison issue. Since 2014 this imagery has been referenced and inverted by ISIS propaganda videos showing their captives also wearing orange.
This film continues to be updated as new spectacles of war and terror appear on our screens.
Developed in collaboration with Max Houghton.