Cirrus@Austlit

'The spectacle is a hall of mirrors. It is an affirmation, a way of validating a reality that is unreal even as it evolves in real time. The clock ticks. Convex view. Conclave lens. It seems now almost trite to invoke Baudrillard and his simulacra, or Debord and his Societé, but their ideas endure because the challenges ahead are still waiting to be discovered, to be imagined into reality. Spectacle persists, in our real-life science fiction of living, where the president of the most powerful country in the world started out as a hammy businessman in a TV show, where his new sidekick is a alt-right edgelord who relishes jamming the culture with frenzied avarice. I won’t continue. I loathe to mention it. But continue and mention it I shall. After all, power equates to capital, and capitalism thrives on exponential growth. Upward mobility, return on investment, key performance indicators. And on and on. The developed world, versus the developing world. You get the gist. We could ignore the elaborate pageantry of the United States, but its many reproductions and representations trickle down to us in the Asia Pacific, in so-called Australia, where in front of Parliament in the nation-state's capital stands a monument dedicated to its glory. Further north, in Pine Gap, a top-secret military base operates out of sight, yet hypervisible in its architectural monstrosity. The tools we use too, from the various social media apps and even this CMS, now, have origins in Occupied Turtle Island. The spectacle spreads falsehoods and masquerades itself as propaganda. Meanwhile, the real gets swallowed up.' (Cher Tan : Introduction)