the spectacle

So, what is the spectacle they speak of (These Situationists)? I promise to come back to playgrounds, but I think this inquiry is important before I can move to figured worlds juxtaposed on physical space.

"All that once was lived has become mere representation."
Debord

Its hard to argue that we now live in a reality that is far more mediated than even five years ago. The technology that allows us to communicate en mass using the "interweb", also brings to us the grand illusion of a world that is seamlessly connected and vibrantly generative. Poverty and environmental desecration are one mouse click away, and yet the shock and moral repulsion that they generate quickly fall away when we navigate to safer and more comfortable pages. We consume everything, images, text; in large gulps we take in the global spectacle without the capacity to process the largess or import of what is being ingested. What does this do to our consciousness? How does it change the way we relate to our immediate physical reality? What do we create and project from this smorgasbord of information? The ideas that Debord and his contemporaries played with in the late 60's are even more relevant now, as we have become the ultimate consumers of the spectacle, no event too small to sit back and watch in the comfort of our homes, amongst friends and family.

A few years back I went to party in Queens. A rare visit to the borough of my youth after spending the day walking in a Iraq War protest on Fifth Avenue; I walked in on a group of men who were watching "war" on CNN. Literally. A live feed of bombs and machine guns, four men huddled close the radiation of the screen reflecting on their glasses filled with liquor, their eyes vacant. Famine. CNN. Pandemics, BBC. Gang violence. The History Channel.