In this talk, Bishop revisits the article “The City-as-Target, or Perpetuation and Death” (Bishop and Clancey, 2004) to determine its relevance/use for the current moment. The piece provides a means for considering the resurging of urban warfare post-9/11 that broke with geopolitical planning during the Cold War. Thus emerged the Yugoslavian civil war, numerous issues in Gaza and the West Bank, the long occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, the invasion of Ukraine and other urban-based conflicts. The training for urban warfare on the part of the US military entailed collaborations with Universal Studios, penal institutions, massive investment in remote sensing and drones, VR development and number of quotidian technologies operating in the present. The city-as-target heuristic can also be considered a pedagogical tool for us to think with collectively.
Ryan Bishop is Professor of Global Art and Politics at the Winchester School of Art, the University of Southampton. He is the main editor for Cultural Politics (Duke UP), the journal’s book series (also with Duke) and co-editor (with Jussi Parikka) of the book series “Technicities” (Edinburgh University Press).