Contesting Images of Political Conflict
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Whitney Independent Study Program is setting up Image War, an exhibition of artistic works that remix, transform, or mimic images from the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, the U.S. internment of Japanese-Americans, hijackings, popular uprisings, recent American military interventions, and other violent political events. Among the works featured in the show: In his Afghan Dialogs series, Rainer Ganahl took taglines from the bottom of cable news channels during the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan. He embroidered them into silk banners, and sent then to Afghanistan, where residents were given the opportunity to stitch their own responses to these taglines.
Joy Garnett’s painting Kill Box (part of the Night Vision series) appropriates a night-vision image of a tank from the First Gulf War as made iconic by TV news coverage. In Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1995-7), Johan Grimonprez mines archives of televised
Beyond Manzanar: An American Internment Camp: Between Fears and Realities, by Tamiko Thiel and Zara Houshmand, uses navigable 3-D game technology to immerse viewers in an historical and cultural space and engage them as participants in history. "The piece explores media scapegoating of immigrant groups in times of crisis," said Thiel, who compared the internment of Japanese Americans at Manzanar, Calif., during World War II to the threatened internment of Iranian-Americans during the 1979-80 hostage crisis. "The installation also finds echoes in post-9/11 discrimination against people of Middle Eastern extraction today," Thiel added. (via) Other participating artists: Willie Doherty, Claire Fontaine, Coco Fusco, Jon Haddock, Amar Kanwar, An-My Le, Din Q. Lê, Radical Software Group (RSG). Image War, at The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, May 19 - June 25, 2006. |
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This subject has become such a cliche !!!
It is turning into a real self referential idea. The so called artist milieu, refering to their own political position, and building the Spectacle of contestation. I would argue that the loop is perfect, the commodifiying of anti-war protest, into a Spectacle. In other words the narrative of an emotional response to a political mean.
Well, yes, war is a drama, mankind knows that since its beginning. Is it necessary to say that the first technique, the first tool made by human was a weapon ? It would be useful to read Deleuze about weapon, art, jewel. all Are linked and are part of a same strategy, the imposition of cultural and political means.
Another direction would be to read the Beaubourg Effect by Jean Beaudriallard, or any of Paul Virilio text about contemporary art.
Personnaly I think that all these artist shave no sense of humour. I am still waiting to see any artist showing us what is the totalitarism ideology behind the idea of Jihad. I am still waiting to see any artist talking about the condition of gays and women in Palestine, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, or other countries where the war is raging.
"I am still waiting to see any artist showing us what is the totalitarism ideology behind the idea of Jihad. I am still waiting to see any artist talking about the condition of gays and women in Palestine, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, or other countries where the war is raging."
what does that any of that have to do with what artists do? I'm afraid you've missed the point.
(you think you have a sense of humor?)