let the atrocious images haunt us

-2020-

let the atrocious images haunt us – part I of Cycle II from synthetic fragments
electronic music
Instrumentation: electronic music
Premiere: 18 June 2021 – Malmö, Sweden
Duration: approximately 5 minutes

Program note:
Does shock have term limits? How disconnected are we? Or: Are we disconnected at all? – our supersaturated time may be hauling us inside death. With our senses and spirits fatigued, our incited souls nevertheless continue to reel from what we see. The cosmopolis of images thrives in our hiving minds. We are far from the realities of tanks, refugees, smart-bombs, bleeding. Yet we are engulfed by images that leave people (us, undone) bruised, ignited, hardly voyeurs, more like bewildered participants in a sensory conflict whose domain is also the psyche. We welcome clarity in speech yet still can’t sort out our confusions. War, rarely in our interest, yet sometimes necessary: but what is the necessity now?
Yet even after reverberations of disaster, the images repeating, we appear to know no other way except to start another war. National consensus means that tragic images “haunt,” but some priority compels us to override those impressions. Our lives are touched, and yet killing doesn’t stop.
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