Envisioning the homefront: militarization, tracking and security culture: Jordan Crandal in conversation with John Armitage.

In this output, Crandall (discussed in output 3) was interviewed by Armitage in relation to his recent installation, ‘Homefront’. Their discussion focussed on the confluence of media technologies and computerised military programmes that track and target the body. The interview arose in the context of Armitage’s interest in the role of contemporary art in unearthing the incursion of the military into everyday life. Armitage saw the interview as a curatorial act, giving tangible presence to Virilio’s thinking as it is currently actualised within Crandall’s work as an artist. As a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Visual Culture, Armitage decided to realise the project as a refereed article, in this publication which is distributed across the humanities and social sciences. Armitage’s ideas complement a parallel discourse established by theorists such as Latour, Massumi and Haraway. In addition, the output’s emphasis on control-technologies adds intellectual definition to the site-specific and interventionist activities of artists such as Louise K. Wilson (Northumbria graduate) and Kirkup (Category B researcher). This output also led to invitations to give associated papers: ‘War and Peace: Lectures on the Spatiality of Extreme Phenomena’, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna (2005); ‘Art: War’ Symposium, Tate Modern, London (2006); ‘V is for Virilio: Culture, Theory, Speed’ (in ‘Slowness,’ a series of lectures at the Royal College of Art, March 2007). As a further development of the output, Armitage established (with Dorsett and McIntyre) the Featherstone Castle Prisoner of War Camp studio, a new residency facility that will provide opportunities for CARcentre researchers to engage with spaces, locations and environmental conditions that have been shaped and formed by political and military conflict.