During ACAB Kino’s residency at Pilar, we explore the growing divide between security and care: how, in a climate of rising fascism, increasing investments are being made in “security”, which is granted ever-greater legitimacy, while care infrastructures such as healthcare, education, and social services are being dismantled. We want to unpack this tactic by distinguishing between safety, security, and control, and tracing it as a recurring political pattern. Each screening delves deeper into a specific subtopic. Images of war circulate in our everyday lives. Footage of war, captured by professional or citizen journalists, appears every few videos as we scroll through social media, alongside product reviews, “GRWM” videos, “a day in my life” content, or compilations of memes about social phenomena, depending on where the algorithmic regime directs our attention. For viewers safely watching from the other side of the world, what appears on screen is a visual representation of unfolding violence, a simulation of reality. For colonised people and those behind the lens, however, it is everyday life. This boundary between simulation and reality becomes visible in Les enfants de la guerre, a film by Jocelyne Saab in which children are filmed playing on a battlefield. As we delve deeper into the film, the line between reality and simulation begins to blur: the children’s play is constantly juxtaposed with the harsh reality that, in fact, they are not playing at all. When we watch images of war from a distance, through representation and simulation (or the internet), edited alongside everyday content, we risk becoming desensitised and losing our capacity for empathy. In Harun Farocki’s 2003 film War at a Distance, we encounter repetitive, synthetic images of war from the perspective of dominant power structures. We see how the “eye of the machine” erases the human element from the war zone, allowing the soldiers operating the machine to detach themselves from their empathy and making it easier for them to overlook the human lives on screen. By examining these films in relation to the way viewers consume war imagery so intensely, we can reflect on how images, empathy, and militarism are intertwined. Today, we can watch war from a distance, even in real time. This film programme seeks to dissect the visual representations of military violence we consume and connect them to our everyday lives. We welcome Anggraeni Widhiasih, a researcher, artist, and curator from Indonesia. Her practice explores the intersections of memory, media, archives, and digital culture, with a focus on how historical narratives are produced, contested, and circulated through film and social media. Anggra will offer an intervention to help us analyse these two films through the lenses of cinema and media literacy.
Acab Kino Residency 1#: War At A Distance
Location: Boulevard de la Plaine, 2, 1050 Ixelles
