I’m really not sure where this blog is headed, as my interests continue to be focused elsewhere. But I’m not quite ready to pull the plug just yet. Who knows, maybe blog-spiration will strike an any moment!

In the meantime, here’s an image of a new painting/drawing/collage of mine. Regardless of the fact that victims sometimes do suffer death from waterboarding, Senator Lieberman feels that the technique does not amount to torture. Unlike real torture, waterboarding only inflicts psychological damage, he argues. It’s a disgusting attempt to justify a despicable act, even if he feels it should only be used in the most extreme circumstances.

First, there is nothing simulated about waterboarding. Its victims are actually drowning. The only difference between “being drowned” and waterboarding is that the waterboarding process is stopped before the victim dies.

Second, Lieberman’s logic belies the fact that the whole point of torture — even in the case of techniques that leave permanent visible signs of physical damage — is to inflict psychological damage. That is, the threat of pain or death is used to create such an intense psychological fear in the mind of the victim, that they are willing to do or say almost anything.

That’s the reason why so many experts say that torture doesn’t even work. Since its victims are forced into such a psychologically damaged state — that they’ll say or do almost anything to avoid more torture — they often give false confessions or misinformation.

So why then do so many members of the U.S. government continue to support the use of techniques that are not only widely condemned by every standard of international human decency, but don’t even result in accurate information?

Because torture does work, just not in the way that most people think it does. The intense psychological fear exacted by torture is intended for a much wider audience than just the prisoners facing the prospect of being waterboarded. It’s intended for anyone who would even consider disobeying our government, even you and me — to let people know what happens to people who fuck with The Big, Bad, Torturing, United States of America.

It’s the same reason why hundreds of innocent people were rounded up and placed in Guantanamo along with actual terrorists. The majority of them weren’t there because they had any useful information, or because they posed any kind of actual threat. They were there to serve as a constant, visible warning of the kind of abusive inhumanity our government is capable of when it gets pissed off.

So, torture, secret prisons, the suspension of Habeas Corpus, and even wiretapping, are as much about deterrence as they are about anything else. I realized this on a more meaningful level while I was spending the night in DC jail last January, getting my own small taste of what happens to people who disobey. And it all works quite effectively, in fact, because it’s as scary as hell.

// top image: Not Like Putting (Lieberman), ink, gouache, and collage on paper, 10 x 11.5 inches, 2008.

// Courtesy of my favorite Greenpoint blog, New York Shitty, as seen on a mailbox on Willoughby Avenue (for non-New Yorkers, Bed-Stuy is a neighborhood here in Brooklyn).

There are a group of students at Columbia University that are participating in a hunger strike. They are pissed off about the ongoing problem of racism there, as reflected in recent symbolic attacks directed towards faculty (nooses and swastikas), an ethnocentric curriculum, and the university’s planned expansion into Harlem (which would displace thousands). From their online petition, where I’ve added my name in solidarity with their efforts:

We demand a Core Curriculum that is inclusive not only of the canon of Western European thought, but that seeks to build a deep understanding of the multicultural society that we live in and the power relations that constitute it.

We demand a sustainable expansion that does not displace 5,000 people and bulldoze a neighborhood in Harlem, one of the most important communities in the United States.

We demand an administration that is responsive to institutional racism, supports its students, and proactively works to create a climate in which nooses and swastikas are not the order of the day.

We demand support and autonomy for the Ethnic Studies program, which is crucial to a critical intellectual experience in a progressive university.

We are concerned for both the well-being of the strikers and the campus community, which has been so starved by the indifference of the administration. We express our solidarity with the hunger strikers and urge the university administration to fulfill these demands as soon as possible.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

You can keep updated on all things Hunger Strike at their informative blog. Also, a curious political art installation popped up on the Columbia campus yesterday. I’m not sure if it’s explicitly associated with the hunger strike, but it’s one of the more thoughtful and provocative pieces I’ve seen there.

The piece appeared to be a contemplation on Mexican immigration into the U.S., especially highlighting the horrible conditions that Mexican workers face both in their native country, and as illegal workers here. There were [maybe a hundred or more?] newspapered headstones attached to the chained borders around the grassy areas in the quad, each containing a fact or story about Mexican immigrants. To my knowledge it was only up for a day. I snapped some hurried pics as my camera battery died:

>> UPDATE: Ok, geesh, I just noticed that the bottom picture mentions a town in El Salvador, so the installation was obviously about more than just Mexican immigrants.

A recent exhibition of work by photographer Nina Berman focuses attention on the shocking circumstances of many Iraq War veterans who, upon returning home, now find themselves with disfigured, mutilated bodies — in some cases lacking not only limbs, but recognizable facial features. A few are pure horror, and one can’t help but empathize with the pain and suffering of the wounded and their families, regardless of the part they’ve played in visiting even greater amounts of pain and suffering on Iraqi families.

But what, if any, stance do these images take in position to the war in Iraq? In his review for the NY Times, critic Holland Carter speculates:

No matter what the viewer’s political position, the images add up to a complex and desolating anti-war statement.

I disagree. While certainly shocking, these images are at best politically neutral. Yes, it’s important that we see the real life consequences of what happens to soldiers when they are sent to war, and the Bush administration has done its best to deemphasize any information about American wounded and casualties that might harm pro-war sentiment at home. But aren’t we already very painfully aware that our people die, or are disabled, in war? I realize that many of these veterans were lied to, or otherwise coerced, into military service, but I’m much more concerned about the thousands of dead Iraqis that they helped to murder.

It’s not hard to imagine how pro-war zealouts might easily interpret these photos as a kind of memorial to national heroism, a monument to selfless patriotism. They’re fond of saying: “All gave some, but some gave all!” But such an interpretation only furthers the sentiments that make such atrocities possible. In fact, it’s telling that the experience of disfigurement for most of the veterans pictured here hasn’t even affected their own views on war, with only one of the soldiers photographed now expressing an anti-war viewpoint. Cotter observes:

Mr. Acosta’s interview has the only overt anti-war sentiment in the Bekman show, and there are few words of bitterness or recrimination. Mr. Ross calls combat in Iraq the best time of his life. Randall Clunen of Ohio remembers the excitement of search missions in Iraqi homes as a peak experience. Sgt. Joseph Mosner, at 35 the oldest in this group, was 19 when he enlisted. “There was no good jobs,” he said, “so I figured this would have been a good thing.” He still thinks so, despite his severe facial scarring from a bomb explosion.

Sgt. Jeremy Feldbusch, left brain-damaged and blind by an artillery attack, once had plans for medical school. but says: “I don’t have any regrets. I had some fun over there. I don’t want to talk about the military anymore.” He claims, as do others, that he has no political opinions.

Time of his life? Peak experience? Fun?!! If the horrible consequences of their own experiences haven’t even convinced most of these soldiers that war is a bad idea, then how can we expect that the photographs documenting the result of their experience will add up to a “desolating anti-war statement,” as Cotter suggests?

Perhaps the problem is the false assumption that by empathizing with these soldiers we take a step towards preventing another Iraq War from happening again — that these photographs are in opposition to the war effort, because people will see what happens to U.S. soldiers in war, and will therefore want to avoid it. They are not. Most families are well aware of what can happen to their sons and daughters when they are sent off to war, and yet they still readily comply in patriotic fashion (although the coercive and deceitful methods of military recruiters are not to be underestimated, and our so-called “volunteer” army more closely resembles an economic draft).

The Iraq War was not enabled by a failure to empathize with U.S. soldiers. It was enabled, among other things, by a collective failure to empathize with the Iraqis — Iraqis whose society would come to be violently shaped by a foreign, invading U.S. army, and whose thousands of deaths would come to be seen by many as mere “collateral damage.”

This seems like an interesting project, but I have a few questions. The flyers themselves look great, but I’m wondering about the way the project was executed — specifically, the context of the piece as a video document shown in an art exhibition setting. First, were any of these flyers actually dropped on the unsuspecting, representative-democracy-loving U.S. public? My reading of his text is that they were not. So, if not, is Ressler really intending to advocate for direct or participatory forms of democracy, or does he mean to demonstrate the futile inanity of U.S. methods of propaganda dissemination in Iraq? If so, what are the actual political consequences of this kind of clever maneuvering for an art audience that is already (one would guess) near-unanimously opposed to anything that Mr. Bush has executed?

Maybe I’m being too harsh. I actually like the idea behind the project, but it seems like such a waste to restrict the audience so much. I guess the same complaint could be directed towards almost any political artwork that never makes it beyond the confines of the white cube. I mean, wouldn’t it be damn cool if some of these flyers were seen floating down into U.S. cities? [Also, why doesn’t Ressler make the flyers available to be downloaded and printed on his website by people who might like to distribute them?]

The text, from his website:

Fly Democracy
installation, 2007

Although the real stakes behind the attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan had to do primarily with geo-strategic interests and control of the oil deposits, the preferred official line to legitimize the wars in the eyes of the public spoke of their being waged to bring “democracy” to those countries. This political discourse was maintained as long as victory still seemed feasible to the armed forces of the United States and its allies. In the meantime, however, the emphasis has shifted more towards achieving “stability” in Iraq and “peace” in Afghanistan. At the start of the military campaign, the US jet fighters did not drop only bombs: they also showered down leaflets containing messages intended for the population. These called upon the enemy soldiers to desert, warned civilians to keep at a distance from military targets, defined the pattern of behavior in case of contact with the invaders, or else relayed a general political message explaining the alleged reasons and goals of the military attack.

The “Fly Democracy” installation represents a re-enactment of this shower of message-bearing flyers, but symbolically transfers the drop’s target point to the territory of the United States. Specially drawn up for the “Fly Democracy” piece, ten flyers set forth current political arguments on behalf of direct or participatory forms of democracy, all of which stand in contradiction to the model of formal democracy that – embedded in a neo-liberal, capitalistic State – is imposed by the United States. The stance that “Fly Democracy” adopts contrasts with that model by interpreting the term “democracy” more in its original sense, as it was understood in Ancient Greece. At that time, it meant – at least for full age male citizens – more direct involvement in the decision-making processes than what exists in today’s representative democracies. “Pseudo-democracies” is how the theorist Paul Cockshott would label the latter, as measured against the word’s original meaning.

The installation consists of a five-minute video loop showing the flyers on their downward trip from a shining blue sky to the ground, where they are read by people who pick them up. The original English-language flyers are strewn on the floor in front of the video screen, together with the exhibition-destined flyers in German, French or Romanian. Visitors are welcome to pick any of the flyers up, read them and take them home.

The project “Fly Democracy” is produced and will be presented in the framework of the following exhibitions:

“On the outside”, ACC Galerie, Weimar (D), 09.06. - 12.08.07
“Retracing Territories”, Fri-Art – Centre d’Art Contemporain, Fribourg (CH), 06.07. – 19.08.07
“Reality Crossings”, 2. International Photo Festival Mannheim, Ludwigshafen, Heidelberg 2007, 21.09. – 21.10.07
“Fly Democracy”, Protokoll Studio, Cluj (RO), from 23.10.07 on

Concept, Camera, Film Editing, Design, Production: Oliver Ressler
Image Editing and Sound: Rudi Gottsberger
Production assistants: Meghan Hartman, Brandon Ives, Gaby Ruzek

[both images were ripped from Oliver Ressler’s copyright-paranoid website]

The Justseeds website is back online as a beta site, which means there’s lots of cool stuff to peruse, but if you want to buy anything you have to contact them first.

From their about us page:

Justseeds/Visual Resistance Artists’ Cooperative is a decentralized community of artists who have banded together to both sell their work online in a central location and to collaborate with and support each other and social movements. Our website is not just a place to shop, but also a destination to find out about current events in radical art and culture. Our blog covers political printmaking, socially engaged street art, and culture related to social movements. We believe in the power of personal expression in concert with collective action to transform society.

History
Justseeds was originally started in 1998 by artist Josh MacPhee as a way to distribute his art and the Celebrate People’s History poster series. He slowly expanded Justseeds to include the work of like-minded artists. In 2004 it grew too large to hold in MacPhee’s apartment and order fulfillment was taken on by Clamor Magazine and their new online sales venture Infoshop Direct. Both Justseeds and Infoshop Direct continued to grow, but in late 2006, serious financial problems at Infoshop Direct caused it to unexpectedly and immediately shut down. Justseeds was left with no functioning website, no order fulfillment service, and over $8,000 in debt; things looked pretty bleak. Amazingly, a grassroots effort of hundreds of people donating relatively small amounts of money helped Justseeds pay off all it’s debt, and a couple of successful benefit art shows raised enough money to launch a new and improved website.

During this difficult time, MacPhee reached out to a dozen like-minded artists and previous collaborators as well as the political street art blog Visual Resistance in order to re-create Justseeds as a cooperative effort. Justseeds was transformed into Justseeds/Visual Resistance Artists’ Cooperative, an artist/worker owned and run cooperative, that launched in the summer of 2007.

Artist Elin O’Hara Slavick has had a long-running art project in which she combines research and artistic practice to create a series of paintings about the history of U.S. bombing campaigns. The result is a highly personalized, and humanized, revelation of U.S. militarism, the images of which have now been included in the forthcoming book Bomb After Bomb: A Violent Cartography:

Bomb After Bomb, by Elin O’Hara Slavick, with a foreword by radical historian Howard Zinn, includes 48 color plates of Slavick’s drawing series Protesting Cartography: Places The United States Has Bombed. Working from military surveillance imagery, aerial photographs, battle plans, maps and mass media sources, using gouache, ink, watercolor, graphite and other media on paper, Slavick renders bombed sites as bleeding, poisoned, and destroyed, and as ceaseless targets. Each piece is accompanied by a title text including historical information–a heartbreaking mini-history lesson. Art historian Carol Mavor’s poetic essay positions the project in a larger art historical, political, cinematic and photographic context, and Slavick’s conversation with anthropologist Catherine Lutz illuminates the formal and conceptual processes behind her work, along with issues of propaganda, activism, history, the ethics of representation and the toxic residue of war.

I have to admit, I’m much less interested in Carol Mavor’s efforts to “put the project in a larger art historical…context,” but I’m glad to see that the book will allow Slavick’s politically-explosive work (sorry, horrible pun) to reach a wider audience.

Be sure to check out Slavick’s website, where she has other projects of interest, including a photographic series of workers dreaming.

Two Thursdays ago I attended a benefit party (radical marching bands, silkscreening, booze, vegan treats, and friendly people!) for a group that has one of the most inspiring and exciting ideas for combining art and radical politics that I’ve ever come across — the Miss Rockaway Armada. The following video was made by someone from last summer’s expedition:

We are floating down the Mississippi River on a raft we built from trash.
The catch is that we don’t know much about boats or rivers, and we don’t have any money. We know we are blowing crazy hot air, but if the idea makes your eyes glow like coals then you understand what we’re doing. For the last 4 months we’ve been meeting, making phone calls, holding benefits, drawing blueprints and building like crazy. We collected scrap wood from all over the city and hammered it together piece by piece. We had benefit parties and socked away brown rice and dented cans. We organized mostly out of New York because that’s where we live, but we have folks from the West coast as well as the Midwest.

Here’s the plan:
We met in Minneapolis in late July with sections of our raft in tow. We pieced together our pontoons and filled them with salvaged blocks of foam. We made it beautiful and tied on anything that would float, adding it to our junk armada, our anarchist county fair, our fools ark. Our precious cargo is everything we hold dear: pieces and parts of the culture we are already creating. Our zines and puppets, sewing projects and poster campaigns. Mutant bicycles and punk rock marching bands. Plus our thoughts and dreams and irrepressible energy.

Together we’re floating down the Mississippi river, as far as we can, anchoring here and there to perform, give workshops, and create the big huge stinking spectacle we wished would have stopped in our hometowns. And at each place we’re inviting anyone to contribute performances or workshops of their own.

Our flotilla is built green with precycled materials, rainwater collection, solar ovens, and steam calliopes. If we make it right everything will run on sunshine and french fry grease. We want a floating garden, a bicycle-powered sound system, and wind-powered lights. We want to steal hippie technology from the hippies.

We are a small group of people with extensive experience making big insane projects. In the past we have taken 20-person bands to Mexico, pulled off town square-sized guerrilla theater in Berlin, and fed hundreds of people with garbage and love. We know this idea is ridiculous and impossible. That’s why we’re obsessed with it.

About Us
The Miss Rockaway Armada is a group of approximately 25 performers and artists from all over the country including members of the Toyshop Collective, Visual Resistance, The Amateurs, The Floating Neutrinos, The Infernal Noise Brigade, The Madagascar Institute and the Rude Mechanical Orchestra. This July we converged in Minneapolis to construct a flotilla of rafts that will journey down the Mississippi River. We’re stopping in towns along the way, hosting musical performances and vaudeville variety-theater in the evenings, along with workshops and skill-shares centered around arts and environmental issues during the day. In our travels we intend to share stories and to solicit dialogue around subversive and constructive ways of living. We are a group of intrepids who believe in a hands-on, live-by-example approach to creating change within our culture. We are taking cues from Johnny Appleseed, traveling medicine shows, nomadic jewel box theater, and of course that old radical Mark Twain.

Why are we doing this?
For a bunch of reasons. For the adventure. For the impossibility. But for more than this. We grew up in small towns. We remember the bookmobile and the punk rock band that seeded little pieces of something else. And now, even though we moved to big cities and found people like us, we still live in a country that fights wars so it can consume more. We are taking the urge to flee and heading for the center. We want to meet people who aren’t like us. We want to meet ourselves at age 16. We want to be a living, kicking model of an entirely different world — one that in this case happens to float. Plus we suspect that there is something wildish about seeing the stars night after night from the grand old Mississipi. Yeah sure, the Colorado is prettier, and the Rio Grande is its own divide, but the Mississippi has always been the main artery of this country. We want to start where the blood flows straight from the heart.

Ahoy! For models and pictures, please see our raft page.

As you may already know Jerry Fallwell died yesterday. He was a man who claimed to believe in love, but instead preached hate. The following Hustler parody (political art?) really pissed him off while he was alive, so I’m presenting it here in his memory (here’s a larger version if you can’t read the small print):

… as well as the four year anniversary of a certain world leader on a certain aircraft carrier displaying a certain infamous phrase. Pictured above is a painting I made in graduate school about 6 months or so after the event (2003). It’s rather large, if I remember correctly — 6ft x 7ft or so.