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Hyenas of the Battlefield, Machines in the Garden

Hyenas of the Battlefield, Machines in the Garden

by Lisa Barnard

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Hyenas of the Battlefield, Machines in the Garden by Lisa Barnard, is a study into the ‘unholy alliance’ between the military, the entertainment industry and technology and the role of the screen in these relationships.

More about this book

The book shifts from screen to landscape and incorporates imagery from disparate yet indelibly connected areas; from Las Vegas to Pakistan and Waziristan to Hollywood. Utilizing a range of material - black and white photographs of spent missiles, blueprints of conferences, computer-generated imagery, transcripts of interviews with military Clinical Psychologists – the book aims to question photojournalism's 'truth claims' and the indecipherable, all-consuming nature of the industrial-military complex.

All materials in the publication have been researched, filmed, and photographed by Lisa Barnard. The interviews with the military Clinical Psychologists and the US Air Force pilots were recorded in person, and all the images are taken in either the USA or Pakistan.

In the title of the book 'machines in the garden' refers to the tension between the American pastoral ideal and machine technology; and 'hyenas of the battlefield' are the technological-driven corporations that keep the US soldiers 'in the loop' but off the ground – a goal of the US administration, to create a model of warfare where no further American soldiers die on the battlefield.

The screen is integrated in aspects of training and delivery of warfare, and as a conduit to the healing effects of images of war in therapy for the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The project explores how the screen is pivotal to the emerging relationship between war, media, and industry, both the virtual and the real.

Published January 2015
216 x 280 mm
192 pages
Silkscreen printing soft cover
Essays by Julian Stallabras and Eugénie Shinkle
ISBN 978-0-9574272-9-7

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The author

  • Lisa Barnard is a photographic artist who lives and works in Lewes, East Sussex, UK. Of particular interest to Barnard are current debates concerning psychological and post-Marxist aesthetic theories, the political climate and Revolutions in Military affairs.

    Her work has been included in several exhibitions and she was the winner of the Albert Renger-Patzsch European Book Award 2012 and was shortlisted for the New Discovery Award, Arles, 2015. Her 2nd monograph, ‘Hyenas of the Battlefield’ was published by GOST in 2015. In 2013 GOST published Barnard’s project Chateau Despair, photographs taken inside the abandoned Conservative Party headquarters at 32 Smith Square, London.