This is part of a series of articles for the upcoming exhibition, The Greatest Emergency at the Circulo de Bellas Artes of Madrid. The exhibition is based on Santiago Zabala’s book, Why Only Art Can Save Us: Aesthetics and the Absence of Emergency. In this exhibition, ten contemporary artists rescue us into our greatest emergencies, that is, those we do not confront as we should. Each article in the series will contextualize these artists’ practices and explore how they are linked to Zabala’s aesthetic theory and the exhibition’s themes. The fourth article in this series highlights the work of kennardphillipps.
Although former prime minister Tony Blair won three general elections, becoming the longest-serving Labour prime minister in British history, kennardphillipps Photo Op says in a nutshell what protesters claimed at the time and what has become a more generally accepted version of history: that Blair was storming into Iraq without hesitations. If images partly make history, this one melds into a luridly believable scene of Blair taking advantage of a good photo opportunity, waning once and for all any hope that history might vindicate him one day. If we don’t need anyone telling us he did not pose for a selfie in front of a blazing oilfield in Iraq – the selfie was originally taken with a group of naval cadets during an election campaign in 2005 – it’s because this is how we will remember the mayhem he created with his allies George W. Bush’s and Jose M. Aznar.
Kennard Phillipps’s Photo Op, first popularized by street artist Banksy when he included it in a Christmas grotto installation on Oxford Street in London, was described by The Guardian as “the definitive work of art about the Iraq war.” This description is accurate despite many other artists’ fascinating works during this illegal and unjust war, but also a paradigmatic example that our greatest emergencies are those we ignore, overlook, and discard as insignificant. This is the only work of the exhibition (opening next month) in Madrid, which is also included in the book at the exhibition’s origin. Although there are many other and newer photomontages Peter Kennard and Cat Phillipps created to campaign against war and capitalism since they began working together in 2002, it has become a classic in Hans-Georg Gadamer’s meaning of the term.
According to the German philosopher, what makes a classic is not the source, origin, or success of a work–their image has been shown at Tate Britain, bought by the National Galleries Scotland, the Imperial War Museum for their collections, and printed full-page in the Daily Telegraph, the Times, and the Independent – but rather the “the effects and consequences it continues to have… The duration of a work’s power to speak directly is fundamentally unlimited.” Despite the historical distance Photo-Op still maintains its significance and continues to make a claim upon the present. What is this work claiming today? Could others take the place of Tony Blair in this work?
To respond to these questions, it is first necessary to remember that Kennard and Phillipps’ political photomontages, installations, and paintings – similar to Hannah Höch’s political art – are not only created for galleries and museums but also for protesters, campaigns, and public workshops in collaboration with the International Solidarity Movement and Stop the War Coalition among other organizations. As expected, kennardphillipps do not see their work as separate from social and political movements confronting established political and economic systems; they see it as their visual arm. This is why their work can be downloaded free of charge so activists and protesters can make their own versions of Photo Op: “It’s available. It was used by Stop the War. It’s been on book covers; it was even used by the British Medical Journal” they tell us.
Photo Op does not simply claim that Blair’s illegal invasion of Iraq was carried out in the name of freedom and justified by accusations over Saddam Hussein’s WMD, but also how liberalism unfolds indefinitely despite world opposition to the invasion. Liberalism is not simply a political theory, among others, but an imperial worldview that integrates politics, economics, and even science to promote and impose its universal values regardless of its violent consequences. After 9/11, liberalism has been incapable of assuring a peaceful world order but also to justify its interventions. This is not only evident in the Iraq war – the protests before and during the Iraq War were the most extensive global peace protests to occur since the 20th-century protest of the Vietnam War – but also in recent military interventions.
The new context of the images that constitute their collages allows us to acknowledge what those images had concealed and marginalized in the first place: the truth behind the hypocrisy of Blair’s liberal interventionism. This truth, in the form of an alteration of the original photographs, discloses how the absent emergency that the invasion was meant to achieve was, in fact, the actual emergency – as we can see from Blair’s smile. He is pleased with the explosion behind him and is satisfied and confident with his actions. Instead of rescuing us from an emergency, this photo montage has rescued us into the great emergency concerning liberalism’s ability to unfold indefinitely despite world opposition to the invasion. This is also evident in the other works of kennardphillipps from the same epoch, such as Time Difference, Know Your Enemy, and Business as Usual.
The fact that many other politicians today could replace Blair in this classic indicates that its “power to speak directly is fundamentally unlimited,” and little has changed since 2003. When Turkish President Erdogan was portrayed following Photo Op in the 2015 cover image of Nokta magazine, kennardphillipps were contacted because the editor-in-chief was arrested, the magazine’s offices were raided, and all copies of the edition confiscated. In their statement condemning the Turkish authorities, they also recalled that there had been ongoing censorship of their image in the corporate sector, even though it wasn’t enough to censor it. This censorship demonstrates that Blair, Erdogan, and many other contemporary politicians know they are considered maniacal sufficient for people to believe they actually would take selfies smiling at an oil explosion or funeral parades. The great emergency these smiles imply is the absence of an emergency; in other words, how many other prime ministers continue to smile despite most of us opposing their actions.
All photo courtesy of the artists.
Santiago Zabala is ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He is the author of many books, including Being at Large: Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020), Why Only Art Can Save Us: Aesthetics and the Absence of Emergency (Columbia University Press, 2017), and Signs from the Future. A Philosophy of Warnings (forthcoming in 2025). His opinion articles have appeared in The New York Times, E-Flux, and The Los Angeles Review of Books among other international media outlets.