aesthetics and politics in the age of ambient spectacles

After reading Nikos Papastergiadis' "aesthetics and politics in the age of ambient spectacles" i gained an understanding of the relationship between the political and aesthetical spheres.
Papastergiadis leads with an introduction outlining historical events such as 9/11 and the Vietnam war and how they are represented politically in society - what this representation becomes, "the act of war coincides with its documentation, with its representation"
The imagery in the representation of these events become historical signifers, meaning because of the media and coverage (the Vietnam war being the first war documented by tv) everyone together have the same historical memory. We knew it happened live and we remember where we were when we first saw these images, we all feel it. These images immediately are what we associate with that event. They bring the war to us.
The government however was able to filter the information given and editing and manipulation was used to create an effect on the audience. The recreating and creating of this expeirence for the world throughout the use of repetition of imagery achieved emotional reactions. This "enhanced the experience of trauma" and was able to be used to their full advantage such as justifying to its audiences reasons for going to war - push positive imagery to support their actions. Art is used here to promote goals such as propaganda, the use of simple imagery in politically wanting to make a point and get it across.
I had a quick look at PublixTheatreCaravan. They target social control such as racism, borders migration etc these all being political and means of sensorship. This very much relates to the work shown in "aesthetics and politics in the age of ambient spectacles" by Lucy and jorge Orta, "Fallujah- In the Name of God" 2007, depicting ambulance doors half opened and photo montages inside barricaded behind metal bars. Here we are being shown the event of a war but only selected snapshots carefully chosen for us to see. With the open doors the media is claiming that it is free but really behind that it is all filtered and sensored.


We then move into Ranciere and how he defines aesthetics "as the reconfiuration of perceptual order through the imaginitive recoding of everyday objects and relations that leads to the creation of new modes of political subjectivity". Here we are looking only at the object and how it is percieved by the public space.
Ranciere outlines three modes of representation, "naked" = the depiction of the original"
"ostensive" = transforms against the original image -the interpretation/meaning changes and "metaphoric" = manipulated being broken down and re-arranged.
-manipulated by media (which is heavily influenced by politics) and the translation becomes lost; the original interpretation & meaning. For example the context becomes lost..
Art requires interpretation, it is not art until it has been interpreted by an audience. Ranciere says it is not artist's intention but a process "distribution of the sensible": transformation that arises from the active involvement of the excluded. Basically it is anything that his described"articulation of the common" (meaning how people articulated what happened) is not.
Aesthetics and politics can exist on their own, they can operate in their own systems - they can be separate yet relate, there is a connection there.