ROTTERDAM, NETHERLANDS.- The Under Fire discussion forum has begun again for another 12-week period. As before, periodically guests are invited to introduce topics for discussion. Ryan Bishop, Gregory Clancey, and John William Phillips initiate the discussions with a focus on "the city as target", including issues around the militarization of urban space, from the concrete to the imaginary, and the rhetorics of tracking and targeting.

Other topics of discussion include a close analysis of the images of Abu Ghraib and the circulation of images of violence online, the rise of "operational images," and the state of the western military-industrial-media complex. With the rapidly deteriorating situation in Iraq and the looming US presidential election, many other urgent lines of discussion will also be introduced.

Under Fire is a year-long project consisting of a series of presentations and discussions that occur online and in Rotterdam, throughout 2004. The project explores the organization and representation of contemporary armed conflicts. It looks at the forms of militarized agencies that are emerging today, including Western defense industries and decentralized militant organizations. It explores the forces that contribute to their emergence, whether operating at the level of economy, technology, politics, or ideology. It looks at the ways that armed violence materializes as act and image, searching for new insight into its mechanisms and effects.

The Under Fire discussions involve participation from individuals working in politics, theory, criticism, the arts, and journalism from both the West and the Middle East. Rather than relying on discourses based upon Western conceptions of modernity, the project is dedicated to opening up new historical perspectives, exploring the potential of Islamist discourse as a source of critical and political debate.