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War and Terror

From CT4CT: Creative Tools for Critical Times

War and Terror: Contemporary Art and Conflict

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Contents

Artistic Projects

The $3 Trillion Shopping Spree

The $3 Trillion Shopping Spree, 2008

The $3 Trillion Shopping Spree is a website created by Brave New Films that allows visitors to virtually spend three trillion dollars - the estimated cost of the Iraq war.

The occupation of Iraq will cost $3 trillion, America's most expensive conflict since WWII. Can YOU spend that money better? Here's your chance to go on a virtual $3 trillion shopping spree and prove it!

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Bechtel Predator Drones

Bechtel Predator Drones

The Center for Tactical Magic and Trevor Paglen's Bechtel Predator Drones are remote controlled vehicles designed to distribute educational materials pertaining to the Bechtel Corporation's activities as a military contractor. The Center for Tactical Magic claims that Bechtel was responsible for building chemical production facilities in Iraq prior to the second U.S. invasion of Iraq and has been listed among 24 U.S. companies that supplied Iraq with weapons and/or weapon-making capabilities during the 1980's.

According to the Center for Tactical Magic:

"Bechtel Predator Drones" successfully targeted the Bechtel* corporate headquarters in San Francisco where employees and pedestrians alike experienced first-hand the effects of leafletting and unmanned predator drones. The combined forces of Trevor Paglen and the Center for Tactical Magic led to the development and deployment of two remote-controlled drones, each of which distributed three payloads: 1) short pamphlets detailing Bechtel's history of unsavory activities; 2) CD-ROMs designed to assist workers in installing viruses on their workstations; and 3) copies of the CIA Sabotage Manual - a small, government-authored comic book containing a series of useful sabotage techniques, the majority of which can be done in the workplace with simple objects. Over the course of the operation, the drones' pilots met resistance both by Bechtel security forces and by an undercover, camera-toting cop. Despite these minor imperial entanglements, the mission was successful.

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Big Brother State

Big Brother State, 2007

Big Brother State (2007) is a short animated film that challenges the notion that citizens must give up privacy and civil liberties in exchange for security.

According to Big Brother State:

The Big Brother State is an educational film about what politicians claim to be protection of our freedom, but what we refer to as repressive legislation. Since terrorism has become a global threat, especially after 9/11, governments all over the world have started enforcing laws which, so the governments say, should increase national security. These laws obviously aim at another goal: the states gaining more and more control of their citizens at the cost of our privacy and freedom.

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The Cellist of Sarajevo

Vedran Sailovic in the National Library, 2008

In 1992, Vedran Smailovic (the Cellist of Sarajevo), braved sniper fire to play his cello in commemoration of fellow citizens who were killed by mortar explosions while waiting in a bread line. Mr. Smailovic returned to play in the same spot for 22 consecutive days - one for each person killed. He chose Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor, a composition reconstructed from a manuscript found in the ashes of Dresden after the Second World War. In so doing, this brave cello player showed the world that the sounds of humanity and peace could still be heard. This courageous and creative act of compassion inspired hope in thousands of people within and beyond the battle-sieged streets of Sarajevo and served as a poignant and shocking reminder for many around the world of the insanity and absurdity of war.

According to the Times Online:

For 16 years Vedran Smailovic has been feted as the Cellist of Sarajevo, a musician who defied the city’s snipers by playing for 22 successive days in the rubble of an explosion that claimed the lives of 22 of his fellow Bosnians as they queued to buy bread. Dressed in evening tails and perching on a fire-scorched chair, the photographs of his grieving face became a searing global image that made artists such as David Bowie, U2, Pavarotti and Sir Paul McCartney clamour to perform with him.

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Cherry Blossoms

Cherry Blossoms, 2006

Alyssa Wright's Cherry Blossoms is designed to raise awareness about civilian deaths in Iraq. It consists of a backpack that utilizes a microcontroller and a GPS unit that is regularly updated with news of bombings in Iraq.

According to Wright:

Cherry Blossoms addresses the disparity between human suffering and perception of that suffering. The project starts in a backpack outfitted with a small microcontroller and a GPS unit. Recent news of bombings in Iraq are downloaded to the unit every night, and their relative location, to the center of the city, are superimposed on a map of Boston. If the wearer walks in a space in Boston that correlates to a site of violence in Baghdad, the backpack detonates and releases a compressed air cloud of confetti, looking like a mixture between smoke and shrapnel and the white blossoms of a cherry tree, completely engulfing the wearer. Each piece of confetti is inscribed with the name of a civilian who died in the war, and the circumstances of their death. With Cherry Blossoms human loss resonates beyond the boundary of conflict.

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Collateral

Collateral, 2005

Jean-Christian Bourcart’s Collateral (2005) is a series of projections of ghostly images displayed on American houses, supermarkets, churches, etc. Provoked by the gruesome images of dead Iraqis posted online as objects of ridicule by US soldiers, Bourcart appropriated some of these photographs and preserved them as an embalmer would, literally “re-membering” the Iraqi bodies in the process. Serving as memorials to the fallen, Bourcart’s projected apparitions also have haunted American sensibilities and perceptions of the war by disturbing the sterile government and mainstream media representations.

According to Bourcart:

I projected photographs of mutilated and dead Iraqis on American houses, supermarkets, churches, and parking lots. I was thinking of this new generation of kids who will be traumatized for life by growing up during wartime. It was a desperate gesture: My personal protest for the lack of interest for the non-american victims. I found the images on the web. Some American soldiers post their own pictures on a website. They would show a cut leg with the caption: “Where's da rest of my shit?” Or a blown up head with the caption: “Needs a hair cut." I could not help thinking of those images as some kind of restless ghosts that endlessly wander in the intermediate level of the web. I took care of them like a embalmer would; downloading, revamping, printing, rephotographiing, then projecting them as if I was looking for a place where they would rest in peace and at the same time haunt those who pretend not to know what was going on.

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dead-in-iraq

dead-in-iraq

Joseph DeLappe's dead-in-iraq is an online performance, memorial and protest. DeLappe has been frequenting the US Army’s online recruitment game and propaganda tool, America's Army America’s Army, since March of 2006. Using the login name “dead-in-iraq,” he has refused to play the game, opting instead to access the system’s chat interface — a communication device intended for gamers to strategize with one another. By methodically typing out all of the names of U.S. service personnel who have been killed in Iraq, DeLappe has co-opted the Army’s own technology to undermine official representations of soldiers and military service, thus reminding players about the very real consequences of war.

According to DeLappe:

This work commenced in March of 2006, to roughly coincide with the 3rd anniversary of the start of the Iraq conflict. I enter the online US Army recruiting game, "America's Army", in order to manually type the name, age, service branch and date of death of each service person who has died to date in Iraq. The work is essentially a fleeting, online memorial to those military personnel who have been killed in this ongoing conflict. My actions are also intended as a cautionary gesture. I enter the game using as my login name, "dead-in-iraq" and proceed to type the names using the game's text messaging system. As is my usual practice when creating such an intervention, I am a neutral visitor as I do not participate in the proscribed mayhem. Rather, I stand in position and type until I am killed. After death, I hover over my dead avatar's body and continue to type. Upon being re-incarnated in the next round, I continue the cycle.

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Domestic Tension

Domestic Tension, 2007

Wafaa Bilal's (2007) Domestic Tension was an installation and performance at Flatfile Gallery in Chicago, IL. Over the course of 30 days in May, 2007, Bilal lived inside a room in the back of the gallery. The defining feature of Bilal’s sparsely furnished room was an ominous paint gun, which was connected to the Internet via direct feed. Anyone who visited the exhibit’s website could take control of the gun and fire at will. The piece can be described as an artistic rumination on the interconnections between technology, killing, entertainment, morality, and the global war on terror.

Motivated by a television report about a soldier remotely firing missiles in Iraq while sitting comfortably in Colorado, Bilal devised this piece as a response to the abstractness of contemporary war and its consequences—consequences that are intensely personal to him, having lost both his father and brother in Iraq as a result of the ongoing U.S. military campaign. By the end of the installation, more than 60,000 people from 130 countries shot at him.

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The Hidden Cost of War

The Hidden Cost of War, 2008

The Hidden Cost of War is a data visualization that provides a detailed accounting of the price tag for the Iraq war. The visualization is based on data from Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz's and Harvard economist Linda J. Blimes' book The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.

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Outlawed: Extraordinary Rendition, Torture, and Disappearances in the War on Terror

Outlawed, 2008

Witness' Outlawed is a documentary film (27:00) about people who have survived extraordinary rendition and torture in America's War on Terror. Witness is a human rights/video organization founded by Peter Gabriel. The film was created in partnership with more than a dozen other human rights groups including the ACLU.

According to Witness.org:

Human rights groups and several public inquiries in Europe have found the U.S. government, with the complicity of numerous governments worldwide, to be engaged in the illegal practice of extraordinary rendition, secret detention, and torture. The U.S. government-sponsored program of renditions is an unlawful practice in which numerous persons have been illegally detained and secretly flown to third countries, where they have suffered additional human rights abuses including torture and enforced disappearance. No one knows the exact number of persons affected, due to the secrecy under which the operations are carried out. Outlawed: Extraordinary Rendition, Torture and Disappearances in the 'War on Terror' corroborates these findings through the harrowing stories of Khaled El-Masri and Binyam Mohamed, two men who have suffered as a result of the U.S. government's disregard of the international legal instruments dealing with respect for fundamental rights. The film features commentary from Louise Arbour, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michael Scheuer, the chief architect of the rendition program and former head of the Osama Bin Laden unit at the CIA, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and U.S. President George W. Bush.

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Redaction Paintings

Jenny Holzer, "AT THE MIDTOWN MASSACRE pink white", 2006
Jenny Holzer, "SMALL FORMICA 2850 yellow white", 2006

Jenny Holzer's Redaction Paintings are a series of silkscreen prints on linen. Working with declassified government documents, Holzer replicated and magnified them to shed light on the manipulation and censorship of information that takes place during war.

According to the Whitney Museum:

For these paintings, Holzer worked with materials from the National Security Archive, a nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization that collects declassified government documents and makes them available to the public, and from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which makes formerly classified information available to the public on its website. Subject matter deemed too sensitive for the public eye was blacked out, or redacted, by government censors during the declassification process. Under the landmark Freedom of Information Act passed in 1966, all are now public record, though some remain heavily redacted. When Holzer reproduces these materials, she includes them whole and verbatim. The various styles of marking and redacting give evidence to the number of individuals involved in both the execution of the war and the management of its information, lending a human presence to the blank face of bureaucracy.

Robert Storr describes Holzers Redaction Paintings as:

Beautiful in their own right, the works are also haunting reminders of what really goes on behind the scenes in the American military/political power system. Documents address counter-terrorism, prisoner abuse, and even the threat of Osama Bin Laden. Some of the documents are almost completely inked out, like Colin Powell's memo on Defense Intelligence Agency reorganization. Others are spotty enough to allow readers to try to fill in the blanks.

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Soldier Billboard Project

Soldier Billboard Project, 2008

Suzanne Option's Soldier Billboard Project consists of a series of nine American soldiers photographed at Fort Drum, NY between tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Each picture depicts a soldier facing the viewer with his head on a table which creates a sense of vulnerability that challenges public perceptions of soldiers. The images were to be placed on billboards in five cities during the 2008 US presidential election but CBS Outdoor pulled the billboards amid concerns that drivers might misinterpret their message.

According to a Press Release for the project:

Thousands of American soldiers are returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We may wonder what they saw, what they did and how their war experience has affected them as they return to civilian life. These are the questions posed by a series of powerful artist billboards appearing in five cities during this election season. Artist Suzanne Opton has photographed soldiers between tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Her portraits afford the viewer a very intimate and serious look at the young men and women who have put their lives at risk serving in the military. The results are haunting and when they appear on forty-eight foot billboards floating above the freeway in the light of day or eerily illuminated at night, they are compelling and mysterious.

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The Rwanda Project

The Rwanda Project, 1994-2000

Alfredo Jaar's The Rwanda Project (1994-2000) is a series of photographic installations that document the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. During and in the aftermath of the genocide, Jaar visited Rwanda and took thousands of photographs though most remain unpublished. For those that have been exhibited, Jaar has developed novel approaches in an ongoing artistic effort to responsibly represent mass death. For an exhibition of 60 of the images, for instance, Jaar rendered the pictures invisible by placing them in sealed black boxes. For another exhibit, Jaar took a powerful image - a close-up of the eyes of a Rwandan woman who had witnessed a Hutu death squad massacre her husband and children - and reproduced it 1 million times. This figure represents the estimated number of people killed during the genocide.

According to open Democracy:

Alfredo Jaar's Rwanda Project: 1994–2000 is a series of photography-based installation works derived from his experiences in Rwanda. He first travelled there in the summer of 1994 while the genocide was still ongoing and overwhelmingly ignored by the international community. It is estimated that almost one million people were killed over a period of three months, from April–July 1994. The Rwanda Project attempts to counter and transform the conventions of photojournalism, which frequently objectifies violence through unmediated images of victimization. Alternatively, Jaar reverses the lens' eye to focus on the eyes of the witnesses and the hauntingly beautiful landscape in which this massacre was enacted as a means of eliciting an emotional response from the viewer.

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