COSMOPOLEMOS

COSMOPOLEMOS: An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of the United States Department of Defense Contract Spending from 2001/9/11 to 2021/8/30

This project presents an interplay of photographs and commercial transaction data reflecting the US military’s activities around the globe from the attacks on 9/11 to the last day of the evacuation from Kabul in 2021 – two events that symbolically bookend America’s role in the geopolitics of the current century. It is the military-industrial-technical complex made granular – an analysis of scale from billions for global destruction to cents for pretzels and an exploration of knowledge and meaning in relation to the overwhelming edifice of power that is the budget and image of the Department of Defense. To present this universe in published form, we have repurposed the form of the alphabetised encyclopaedia – the dominant form of knowledge representation from the “Enlightenment”, through the era of American hegemony, up until the introduction of the hyperlink. Our encyclopaedia uses this now redundant form to make visible the hierarchy of power implicit in DoD’s spending, a budget that amounts to the next ten countries’ defense budgets combined. The photographic element at the heart of the project is provided by the DoD’s photo gallery – the images it chooses to represent itself. We provide these images in two contexts, a Gazetteer focussing on countries where activities take place, and a Glossary of words found in both the descriptive field of a transaction and the caption field of an image file. Coincidental relationships in the visualisation and understanding of the hierarchy of American military power.

To see more of Edmund’s work, including his current work on show, browse his portfolio or other projects below.

Books:

White Cliffs, Blue Channel, Yellowhammer – Here Press

My Shadow’s Reflection – Here Press/Ikon Gallery

In Place of Hate – Ikon Gallery

Negative Publicity: Artefacts of Extraordinary Rendition – 2nd edition, Aperture/Magnum Foundation

Control Order House – 2nd edition, Here Press

The Mountains of Majeed – Here Press

Guantanamo: If the Light Goes Out – Dewi Lewis Publishing

Still Life Killing Time – Dewi Lewis Publishing