Kids Scrambling for Candy, Baghdad
by Steve Mumford
On Tuesday I attended
SVA's panel discussion on their current exhibit
Testimony to War: Art from the Battlegrounds of Iraq. It was moderated by
Leonard Lopate of WNYC, and this being my first time to see LL in person, I was sort of shocked to find out how old he is!
That's him, Mr. LL on the right, but his hair is all white now. WNYC really needs to update their hosts's pictures.
Going back to the panel discussion...
Five artists made up the panel:
- Steve Mumford, embedded artist and MFA of SVA.
- Michael Fay, an official US Marine Corp combat aritst (link to his blog)
- It was surprising to find out that the US military hires "official artists".
- Brian Palmer, embedded photographer and film maker (I believe this is the same person)
- Army Staff Sergeant Ryan Roa
- Army Sergeant Aaron Hughes
Two other artists who are part of the SVA exhibit but could not be present are:
The discussion was decidedly apolitical, for obvious reasons. Aaron Hughes brought up a question of whether making art about war inevitably aids in glorifying it or objectifying the human experience (he didn't use those exact terms, but you get the idea). Other panelists disagreed, but I forget the exact discussion. Should've taken notes!
One of good questions from the audience was what they hoped the society would get out of their work.
Michael Fay brought up the idea of art as 'per se' vs. 'representation'. At the very least, he wanted his work to be piece of art. For Brian Palmer (the photographer), he felt a moral obligation to accurately document what's happening to the people and to the soldiers so that people in America, digesting the media in the comfort of their homes, would know about it.
The last point that Steve Mumford, the painter, made was that it's easy to fall in the cliche of viewing the soliders and the Iraqis as total victims of the big war machine (I guess the US government). He wasn't saying that they're not victims; he wanted to emphasize the fact that reality is very grey, because not all soldiers are victims but rather a part of the victimization machine, and not all Iraqi citizens are helpless victims being blown up but part of the blower-uppers.
During the bus ride home I couldn't help but wonder why this war is still going on, why there is no public outcry and outrage. While I was pondering this and looking at the handout, the bus seats filled up and people had to start standing. As the aisle was filling up, it was getting packed in the front and the bus driver asked people to move to the back to fit more people. At first people generally ignored it. They didn't care that other people couldn't get on the bus. The bus driver made more annoucements that unless people moved to the back and allowed room for more passengers, we weren't moving. Only then did people REALLY move to the back to fit a handful more people.
Sigh. This is the general mentality. No wonder there is no public outcry about the Iraq War.
The only way to make people care about the war is by having a draft. We all know that's not happening. So what now? What do I do as an individual? Go to more panel discussions? More blogs and comments that no one reads? "Frustration with the Situation" is right.
Artist:
Peter Buotte
Frustration with the Situation, 2007
Digitally-milled aluminum and detonator fuze
Artist: Peter Buotte
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