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Curator’s Pick: Beyond Convention: Artists’ Ephemera, Printed, Inflated, Etc.

By April 15, 2004 Arts & Culture

An exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago’s Ryerson and Burnham libraries sifts through artists’ “temporary” announcements

By Mark Pascale

Artists’ ephemera are those items that are often printed and produced for temporary use and amusement. The genre may include exhibition announcements, brochures, games, fliers, and sculptural multiples. By design and default, the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries catalogue have large quantities of ephemera. As this display will show, it is an idiom representing a significant aspect of the ways in which artists, publishers, and others have deployed mass production to substitute, emulate, and in some cases replace the original object of art.

Building upon 19th century developments in mechanized printing, during the first two decades of the 20th century a revolutionary new method of printing was developed—offset lithography. Offset radically changed the speed and volume by which knowledge was distributed, just as the invention of movable type had centuries earlier. Artists, particularly those involved with the Dada movement, were quick to use this new technology to facilitate the profusion of printed matter they designed and issued, and which was crucial to their artistic output.

Seen here is an early example of printed ephemera, which for some has become a revered object in its own right. Developed by Marius de Zayas (1880-1961), 291 was a journal named after Alfred Stieglitz’s influential gallery, that focused on satire, criticism, and modern art. This issue, guest edited by Francis Picabia (1879-1953), features a gallery of his mechanimorphic portraits, laid out across a two-fold broadside. Its style and content served as a model for similar Dada works in Europe.

Pictured on the cover is Picabia’s satirical portrait of Alfred Stieglitz. The inscription on this print: “This is Stieglitz/Faith and Love,” is a mocking reference to the faith and love which Stieglitz and his followers lavished on the gallery and his photographic activities. As suggested recently by Marcia Brennan in her book Painting Gender, Constructing Theory: The Alfred Stieglitz Circle and American Formalist Aesthetics, the words appear flat, especially given Picabia’s implication that Stieglitz is a broken camera, its bellows separated from its body, and its lens aiming at, but not making contact with an “ideal” floating elusively above it. Picabia has set the camera on a platform with a stick shift in neutral and an engaged hand brake. Brennan further elucidates that, “taken as a whole, Picabia’s image suggests that Stieglitz is both eviscerated and stuck.”

The exhibition includes works as diverse as Eleanor Antin’s “100 Boots,” 1971-73, a certificate and diagram for Sol LeWitt’s “Wall Drawing #63,” 1971, and Jenny Holzer’s Inflammatory Essays, 1979-82, from the museum’s collection. Examples from the ephemera collection held by Ryerson Library include Linda Benglis’s announcement card for her 1974 exhibition at Paula Cooper, “Rubber Stamp Portfolio,” 1976, “A Do-It-Yourself Kit,” 1994, and SAIC professor Ellen Rothenberg’s announcement for The Anne Frank Project, 2002, among many others. The exhibition continues through June 7, 2004.

Mark Pascale is an Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago and Adjunct Professor at SAIC.

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Lost Children in the City of God

By March 20, 2004 Uncategorized

Take anything you know about coming-of-age dramas, splice that with well-traveled gangster formulas, add a heaping load of social commentary and visual spectacle, and you are only getting close to what City of God has to offer.

When death stares you in the face, the obvious modes of response are fight or flight. A chicken at the start of City of God watches as his own kind are gutted and mutilated for the sake of the higher end of the food chain. Knowing the end is nigh, in what limited capacity a chicken is able, the bird bolts off the literal chopping block only to be pursued by gun wielding hoodlums down narrow streets as it is nearly struck by a police car. The bird’s exasperated attempt at survival leads him headlong into the unwitting clutches of our narrator and protagonist, Rocket. As the hoodlums close in, shouting at Rocket for assistance, the police roll up behind, sandwiching Rocket in the battle lines, as firearms are drawn on both sides. There is our storyteller, staring down death. What choice does he have? This is the beginning and the end of his life, but more important, it is the horror of his everyday.

Take anything you know about coming-of-age dramas, splice that with well-traveled gangster formulas, add a heaping load of social commentary and visual spectacle, and you are only getting close to what City of God has to offer. The initial scene of the chicken chase is an obvious, not too heavy-handed, analogy for the rest of the film, where choice is more powerful than any ammunition.

The triumph of this visceral and engaging film is not only the dynamic camerawork and script (by Braulio Mantovani, based on the novel by Paulo Lins, who lived in the favelas), but the ultimate believability of its many characters. Most of the children in the movie are from places like the City of God. The directors spent eight months working with the children to get them comfortable in front of a camera, and you can see their natural quality on the screen.

After the initial scene, which the movie loops back toward, we are immediately taken in time to Rocket’s childhood in the favela during the 1960s. The favela was a shantytown offered by the rich to keep the poor in their place and away from the tourists of Rio de Janeiro. The ironic name of the town is City of God, a profound jab at the absentee deity in this world of anarchy. It is there that a young Rocket learns from his hoodlum brother Goose, along with his small-time compatriots in the “Tender Trio,” that crime doesn’t pay and that the only road to salvation is through study.

Another younger generation denizen, Li’l Dice, follows their destructive path, and then some. Li’l Dice is involved in the downfall of the “Tender Trio’s” only big-time heist, and without revealing too much, he is the cause of the horrible fate of two out of three boys. The scene I am omitting is a chilling depiction of sociopathic mayhem, made all the more mesmerizing because the perpetrator is a giddy child. This child grows up to be the notorious Li’l Ze (the maniacal Leandor Firmino da Hora), whose early obsession with power and violence leads him to become the ruthless kingpin of the favela’s drug ring in the 1970s. He achieves this power by literally killing his competition and taking over their business. Corporate takeovers in the most bloody of senses, Li’l Ze’s violence begets more violence snowballing into a final all-out war.

In a city without heavenly order, the children play god. In the gangs of ’70s and ’80s-era Brazil every child with a hand is clutching a gun. They play with life and death the way American children play on a playground. Gangs of children pettily quench desires at the expense of others, only to incur violent retaliation from the bigger bullies who, no doubt, will get their comeuppance one day, from an even greater force.

The struggle for dominance amidst poverty and an over-saturated drug culture leads the children to believe they are men before their time. One child in Ze’s gang, Steak, comments that he has done all the things that qualify for “man-ness,” even the taking of lives. Steak is later involved in the most powerful kill-or-be-killed scene in film history, as Li’l Ze forces him to choose which small, cowering child he is to shoot in order to join his gang.

With all this talk about the nature of a man, one would think that women have been forgotten altogether. Though relegated to the sidelines, women are depicted as the only salvation for these men. They represent a more peaceful life––a gateway. Most of the time, this is never to be. Li’l Ze, the embodiment of blind and childish ambition, rapes a girl (off-screen) as an act of destroying the personification of beauty and hope.

Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues) is our moral center, and, as such, is never involved in the perpetration of violence. We see him as the pacifist photographer, taking pictures where other journalists wouldn’t dare to tread. This is his life he is documenting, and through the camera he gains power. In fact, his salvation comes from the final “shot” of Li’l Ze. Although Rocket uses film, not bullets, he too fits in with the plot arc of dominance-through-decimation. One can only advance at the expense of another. The conscious choices we make everyday to destroy another (to loosely quote Brian Cox in Adaptation) keep us alive and propel our individual ambitions. You can either ride this unjust system to the top or drop out altogether. Here are your choices: fight or flight. This is life. True for gangland Brazil, true for corporate America.

Cidade de Deus (City of God)
Portuguese with English subtitles
Directors: Katia Lund, Fernando Meirelle
Release 2002, American 2003

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Three To Tango: A Review of The Dreamers

By March 20, 2004 Uncategorized

I bought my tickets in advance to Bernardo Bertolucci’s new film The Dreamers, fearing an opening weekend rush. Much to my dismay, upon arrival I discovered that I had overestimated the film’s popularity. The theater was almost empty. As the last preview faded to black and the Fox Searchlight logo appeared on the screen something very unusual happened. The undersized audience began to clap in response to the Fox logo! I have seen audiences clap for an actor, or even at rare instances a favorite director, but I have never in my life seen an audience clap for a studio. The reason that these intrepid movie-goers were applauding takes a bit of explaining.

The Dreamers, following in the footsteps of Henry and June and Showgirls, garnered the Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA) notorious NC-17 rating due to its graphic sexual content. Instead of cutting it down to receive the more lucrative R rating, as is typical studio practice in such situations, Fox Searchlight made the brave and potentially ruinous decision to release it as it was. It is for this rare show of studio integrity that my sophisticated fellow viewers were clapping (what they lacked in quantity they apparently made up for in quality!). It is, perhaps, a sign of the times that a studio would take such a risk.

The Dreamers is the story of a young American student named Matthew (Michael Pitt) who is studying in Paris in 1968. An avid cinephile, Matthew hangs out a lot at the Cinémathéque Française. One day, during a demonstration against the firing of its director, he meets Théo (Louis Garrel) and Isabelle (Eva Green). Théo and Isabelle are twins who are also big film buffs and the three of them strike up a friendship that takes an overtly sexual turn early on in the film.

Matthew is invited to stay with Théo and Isabelle, and he soon discovers that his hosts’ relationship is rather incestuous. As he falls in love with Isabelle, the three create an insular world for themselves where sex, politics, and cinema are the only things that exist.

Few filmmakers have the talent to be as sexually explicit with a film and not cross the line into pornography like Bernardo Bertolucci. But even by his standards, The Dreamers is extreme in the graphic nature of its sexual depictions. Nevertheless, we don’t at any point get the feeling that the nudity is gratuitous, or exploitative; this is quite an accomplishment considering that the characters are naked for the majority of the film.

The politics discussed by the charectars are of its time and the soundtrack, though a bit heavy-handed, helps to convey the emotional atmosphere of its tumultuous era.

There are certain scenes in which the dialogue seems a bit wooden, as when the Vietnam War is brought up. But, for the most part, the exchanges are realistic and engaging. When it comes to dealing with cinema, Bertolucci chose to use footage from some truly great films and he intercuts them in a visually literal manner with the actions and thoughts of his characters.

This technique is the most risky part of the film and it is only partially successful. It is successful to the extent that the film references establish an elitist culture within the fantasy world. This is important, because it makes for a fertile political contradiction. In perhaps one of the most interesting scenes of the film, Matthew confronts Theo with the fact that despite his espousal of an extreme form of Marxism and his support of Mao’s cultural revolution, he is, in fact, living a bourgeois existence.

The referencing technique, however, is not as successful. When the film clips begin to feel like a glorified form of Jeopardy: What is Blond Venus? What is Breathless? What is Bande á Part? I could bear the flippant references to André Bazin as well as the inane debate about whether Keaton is more funny than Chaplin. But on balance, using actual clips from the films ended up distracting me more from the interesting psychosexual drama and the insular fantasy world. Some may see these clips, such as a scene where Théo, Isabelle, and Matthew recreate a race through the Louvre, as an homage to great film. I feel that there are more interesting ways to reference great cinema than literally inter cutting it with a staged recreation. Indeed, the last clip used is from Robert Bresson’s Mouchette, and this reference, as well as a few others, succeeds in engaging in a more complex manner with the story.

Leaving the theater, I was left with many mixed feelings. On the one hand, the sexual sensibilities are intense and engaging. We are successfully seduced into following these characters on their wild sexual odyssey, despite its transgressive overtones. On the other hand, the politics are thin and somewhat superficial and it is this paucity that allows us to dismiss these young adults as spoiled bourgeois brats. How much more powerful could this film have been, if we didn’t have the luxury of being able to easily dismiss them and alienate ourselves from their intellectual immaturity? At the end of the day, The Dreamers is an intriguing film, but its main characters fail to really challenge us.

The Dreamers
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Starring: Michael Pitt, Louis Garrel, Eva Green

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A Review of 6 Irresponsible Albums

By March 20, 2004 Uncategorized

This month’s F News theme is “Responsibility.” Should we as artists be up in arms and brushes attempting to alter the social suffocation that is modern American politics? As a lazy alternative for young consumerists everywhere, I offer you six satisfying soundtracks to accompany what we do best: being excessively hedonistic, apathetic and indifferent, as opposed to all that hard work it takes to make a positive difference in your country’s crumbling infrastructure. Now let’s party like Bacchus is your roommate! `Till next, hit the decks…

Quasimoto — The Unseen (Stone’s Throw)

The Unseen has been out for five years now, and as of a couple of months ago it was still one of Egon’s (Stone’s Throw CEO) favorite records. Mine too. A shroomed-up, pitch-shifted Madlib raps over sublime beats; the Fantastic Planet—sampling “Come On Feet” and the transcendental “Jazz Cats” are just two of the diamonds in this field of precious stone(d)s. It’s not a classic, it’s timeless. The tracks are also available in instrumental form. There exists a definite possibility that you may be creatively inspired by this album…

The Consumers — All Our Friends Are Dead (In The Red)

Volatile, forever underground, shockingly nihilistic (and yet intelligent?), The Consumers are punk’s archetype. This heat blister of an LP, recorded on one Arizona evening in 1977, remained unreleased until 1994 when it began burning up listeners’ ears with the same energy that got them banned from almost every club in AZ and California back in the day. Raw, violent, awe-inspiring with its calculated brutality, All Our Friends Are Dead is the definitive soundtrack to not giving a fuck.

Carl Crack — Black Ark (Digital Hardcore Ltd. Ed)

A messy pastiche of druggy broken-beat hip-hop, headphone accidents, VHS movie samples and cut up synth blips. Black Ark is like listening to aural codeine. great music to lose your mind to. Carl (formerly 1/3 of the not-so-infamous Atari Teenage Riot) recently died of a multiple drug overdose in Berlin.

DJ Boogie — Born Freaky (website)

First, purchase copious amounts of hard liquor (and other delights…) and tasty mixers. Second, find girls anywhere who will drink and dance with you back at the crib. Third, go home, take their coats, mix up a stiff round of drink, and turn this mixtape on with your subwoofer to the floor, bass +10. Born Freaky is ghetto house music stripped down to the sweat and thongs—one-note melodies, lascivious samples and most of all that filthy bass, rump shakin’ freaky naked bass for that ass. Note: Any of Boogie’s mixtapes can turn an ordinary party evening into a shocking funk orgy.

Squarepusher — Feed Me Weird Things (Rephlex)

A tough choice between this one and Big Loada from sound psycho Tom Jenkinson, but FMWT is the more chaotic, experimental of the two. Before the later onslaught of digital processors and laptop sequencing, Squarepusher’s 1995 sound is crippling abuse of drum machines, analog bassline fury and funky noise collages. “Smedley’s Medley” and “Theme from Ernest Borgnine,” “North Circular,” “The Swifty,” beautiful insanity.

Les Rallizes Denudes — Heavier than A Death In The Family (Ain’t Group Sounds)

Five hellish, tube amped rock tracks from a super-obscure Japanese group notorious for heirloom CD prices and terrible sound quality. Vocalist/ lead guitarist Mizutani Takashi mumbles and dodges over simplistic bass grooves, all the while sculpting edifices of howling distortion with his axe. This album is intensely raw—think of a Japanese Pixies, high on morphine and coke trying to cover Motown classics. Read Julian Cope’s review at http://www.headheritage.co.uk/ for a comprehensive history of LRD.

Yabby You — Jesus Dread 1972-77 (Blood and Fire)

Ridiculously funky and bass-heavy roots reggae, ripped from the original master tapes and mashed into 47 tracks over 2 CDs. A whole gaggle of guest artists toast over some of the best riddims ever to blast out of Kingston—includes the R&B vocals of Wayne Wonder, the nutcase scatter-rap of Dillinger, and of course King Tubby’s dub treatments. I’ve lost three sets of this over the years due to greedy friends, so backup and theft protection is a must.

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Camille @ Gallery 37 Center for the Arts

By March 20, 2004 Uncategorized

Assume the existence of burning, eternal love. We all know it is the UFO of human feelings: a hardly believable phenomenon where you not only have hot pants for one another but every worldly care is forgotten. And all of this, the everyday devotion as well as the heaving, has to be a part of forever.

The Hypocrites’ production of Camille/La Traviata never questions this kind of love’s existence. It jumps headstrong into the consequences of its arrival. The starting point for this story is found only after tracing back in time through the litany of its permutations. Director, Sean Grainey, has attempted an adaptation based on three sources: the libretto for the opera La Traviata written by Francesco Maria Piave as well as the play and novel La Dame aux Camélias, by Alexandre Dumas. The results are muddled.

Our lovers are Camille and Armand. She is the most sought after Paris courtesan, and he is the respectable gentleman who can redeem her with his undying love.

Contending with the observation of their unfolding relationship is a range of distracting conceptual elements. Grainey abuts modern dance beats with operatic narration to farcical effect. His red saturated set—-the inside of a heart—is more neon cool than flaming passion. In his director’s notes, Grainey says that he wants to rid the play of its melodrama for something more honest. But he replaces melodrama with sustained hysterics, masquerading at times as realism. Camille (Amanda Putman) and Armand (John Byrnes) work (and shout) too hard. We never get a tender look.

Grainey, to his credit, lays out an ambitious goal for this play, asking a whirlwind of theatrical artifice that belie itself to the raw depths of love. Melodrama might not be the answer, but neither is sensory overload. A foil to the cacophony was nearly provided in the second act. At Camille’s country estate the torrid passions begin to mature; the lovers’ sanguine raiment of Parisian nightlife are replaced with everyday wear––but too briefly. Soon we are back in Paris for a trying third act. Here the script takes a down turn. Clever quips and retorts are replaced with playground polemics between Armand and his rival, the Baron. Unfortunately, there are not enough interesting ways to rearrange the cliché “Unlucky in love, but lucky at cards.”

Later during the act, Camille and Armand are beset in turn by a vamping chorus routine, doing what looks to be an attempt to achieve some high color kinetics—perhaps akin to Baz Luhrmann’s film, Moulin Rouge. The uneven production values here exacerbate this unwise decision. The shuffling steps, part Cats and part round-dance, were as cornball as the thudding heartbeat heard overhead.

Some individual performances were pleasant reprieves. Steve Wilson’s Baron stood out as understated and comically charm-less. Stacy Stoltz’s Flora had a very believable physical sass. But even together their roles were too limited to be a saving grace. Grainey’s conceptual elements and script emphatically tell us repeatedly that Armand and Camille are in a dreadfully deep love. We heard it said, but we never felt it.

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The Government That Cares: Interviews with the New Student Government Officers

By March 20, 2004 Uncategorized

As the Spring 2004 semester goes on, SAIC welcomes four new officers of the Student Government. The four previous officers resigned due to personal reasons. Student Government officers are responsible for representing all of the students enrolled at SAIC. They must assist student groups with funding and address concerns and suggestions of other students. They are also responsible for holding weekly office hours and open meetings.

Shaun J. Herndon
Fourth Year Undergraduate

• As a student government officer, what is your goal for this new semester?

I’m interested in having student government become more intrinsically involved with the concerns of the working artist at SAIC. I’m interested in creating more ways for our school to promote its serious working artists, through potential programs that can be funded by student government. There are of course other goals that I feel are important, that directly align with the student government reform. The reform entails creating a working relationship with the students by funding programs or events that are suggested by groups of students that attend the student government meetings. Creating special events that are fun and worthwhile for the students such as Cafe Relax, is another goal that relates to the student government reform policy.

• How would you improve the SAIC community?

I believe that the SAIC community needs to be aware that there is a group of people in student government that really do want to work for the community of students. I would like student government to have a bigger role in the school art sales to benefit the working artist. Creating more spaces for art to be shown would be good too. I believe that this office is more than just “window-dressing” and there is a potential everywhere that can be tapped into. More in-depth communication between the students and student government can bring about a momentum of change through programs that are created by the ideas and suggestions of the voice of the student body. The SAIC community will improve through the genuine feedback and ideas that create a working relationship with student government. These are ideas that I myself am going to hold the student government office responsible for, when I am no longer in office.

• What is your concern for the school?

With gallery spaces being sold, I find myself concerned that the students here will feel that they are not being supported by their institution. My concern is that there needs to be more spaces and exhibits available for the students.

The working artist needs more support at an art institute.

Ryan Corey Hall
Undergraduate Senior

• As a student government officer, what is your goal for this new semester?

I would like to have the student groups get involved with student government. I also hope to make it easier for students to get involved in the many opportunities that SAIC offers

• How would you improve the SAIC community?

The best way to improve the community is to form student groups and have them represent and advertise themselves ever chance they get.

• What is your concern for the school?

I know that SAIC would be a much better place if more students participated in the life of the school.

Luciana Terronez
Graduated Fall, 2003.

• As a student government officer, what is your goal for this new semester?

My goal is to improve the relations between the Student Government and the SAIC community and faculty.

• How would you improve the SAIC community?

The improvement of the community would consist of better communications within SAIC — more events, student groups, Senators and a possible web site in the future. We haven’t seen this many students involved with Student Government before, it’s great! I would like to help the Student Government become more pro-active in their relationship with the SAIC community. We strive to be leaders of this school and helpers for the SAIC community.

• What is your concern for the school?

I am concerned about the students understanding of how to access their financial resources here at the school. Helping students make their dreams come true through this institution is a top priority. The very basis to make that happen is through financial Aid, Career Development, Students Accounts, and Student Government. But the communication with the offices and their resources should be at the students’ fingertips so they can focus more on their studies. We at the Student Government are working with our financial institutions to provide better communication to the students.

Kathy Havens
Fourth Year Undergraduate

• As a student government officer, what is your goal for this new semester?

My goal is to work with the Academic Integrity and the sub-committee of Student Life. I would also like to put together a plagiarism packet because the info on plagiarism is non-existent.

• How would you improve the SAIC community?

It’s hard to improve the community, but I suggest that students help, and get involved. Communication is great for funding. Also, I think the kickball tournament for the faculty, staff, and students is a great idea.

• What is your concern for the school?

My concern is the buildings and the property. But the part-time faculty situation at SAIC is another problem. The effectiveness of the new FYP is also a concern.

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Artwatch: March 2004

By March 20, 2004 Uncategorized

Guerrilla Girls receive an award

The infamous art gang Guerrilla Girls, “the conscience of the art world,” has been awarded the 2004 Frank Jewett Mather Award by the College Art Association. The Guerrilla Girls received the award for their “unique and evolving adaptation of art criticism as a vital, socially relevant, and transformative art form.” The completely anonymous collective, who use the names of famous women artists such as Frida Kahlo and Käthe Kollwitz as a decoy, have been in existence since 1985. The group has been creating posters that attack the museum’s role in society and its attitude towards women in particular. One such Guerrilla Girl campaign was a poster of Ingres’ Odalisque who’s face was superimposed with the Girls’ signature monkey mask. The caption reads: “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female.” The group has since attacked various galleries, Jesse Helms, the Oscars, and the Internet, which the Girls consider “too pale, too male.” The collective has published their third book, Bitches, Bimbos and Ballbreakers, which dissects the female stereotype. Ms. Kahlo, a member, has remarked to the New York Times, “It’s a little disquieting that a lot of people who hated us early on tend to be fans of ours now.” Ms. Kollwitz emphasized, “or say they are.”

More info: Guerrilla Girls

Tibetan groups protest the Bowers Museum of Orange County

Tibetan demonstrators came out to protest against the exhibit Tibet: Treasures from the Roof of the World at the Bowers Museum in Orange County, California. The exhibit includes 200 sculptures, paintings, and other artworks never before seen in the U.S. Tibetan groups are calling for a boycott of the national traveling exhibit because it lacks any reference to Tibet’s occupation by the Chinese government and the exile of the Dalai Lama. They claim this is in part due to pressure from China. The absence of political undertones was intentional on the part of curators and museum administrators. Rick Weinberg, a spokesman for the Bowers Museum, remarked that “we’re in [the] business of art; we’re not in the business of politics. We have to remain neutral. It’s inappropriate for the Bowers to take a political stance.”
Cuban art crackdown

Since the Bush administration has canceled most licenses for culture-related travel into Cuba, art collectors are realizing that collecting Cuban art could no longer be a possibility. According to Art & Antiques, Americans who are caught taking unlicensed trips to Cuba from Canada or the Caribbean must pay up to $10,000, making official licensed cultural trips to the country an impossibility. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which sponsored trips for collectors, has stopped such activity, and, as a result, many Cuban artists are feeling the sting. After a cultural renaissance in the ’90s, Cuban artists began showcasing their talents across the globe, especially in the U.S. However, State Department officials still insist that legitimate, non-commercial artistic exchanges will remain possible. How such exchanges would be implented were not explained.
French intellectuals fight back

In a climate of increasing economic cutbacks backed by the government, French intellectuals have signed a letter of protest claiming the conservative French government of starting a “war on [the] intelligentsia.” More than 20,000 French artists, thinkers, filmmakers, scientists, lawyers, doctors and academics signed the letter, which was published in Les Inrockuptibles. Signatories include philosopher Jacques Derrida, filmmakers François Ozon and Catherine Breillat, and several prominent politicians, including Danny Cohn-Bendit, a hero of the May 1968 student uprising. The letter denounced the state’s economic cutbacks affecting universities, research labs, actors, medical staffers, judges and lawyers, as “massive attacks that are revelatory of a new anti-intellectualism of state.” It further states that these economic policies which are “carried out in the name of good economic sense and budgetary rigor, have an exorbitant human, social and cultural cost and irreversible consequences.” The economic setbacks have affected many spheres of French society. Emergency room doctors blamed the government cuts for nearly 15,000 deaths as a result of a devastating heat wave in August 2003. Last year, actors invaded a live evening news broadcast and a popular TV program to protest the cuts in unemployment benefits.

What can U.S. intellectuals and artists learn from this? If, as sociologist Alain Touraine suggests, American economists have taught the world that the “knowledge industry is what moves a country,” what can we say about the U.S.? Have our intellectuals confronted the challenge of the government-backed increase in Medicare costs, dwindling funding in education, and the rise of censorship in art?

Censorship on the fly

The public project Eye Speak, selected by the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department (LACD) to be showcased in the city’s nternational airport LAX, elicited fervent reactions by city officials, airport employees, and passengers. The project, curated by Los Angeles artists June Castillo and Joseph Beckles, is a 150-foot long tapestry created by a collective of 115 Latino, Chicano and African American artists in two community colleges. The project began in 2001 when the curators asked artists to interpret the first year of the new millennium. A few months later, September 11 shook the world and, naturally, the artists enlisted by Castillo and Beckles responded to the crisis within their own work. Victoria Delgadillo, a participant in the project, commented that being “bewildered by the events of those few days, many of us created artwork that related to those feelings of loss, confusion, [and] impending war.” The tapestries, which, according to the Los Angeles Times, include images of a “bare-breasted women holding a bleeding heart with the World Trade Center’s twin towers on fire behind her,” a “winged image jumping from a skyscraper to the ground, where chalk figures lay on a city sidewalk,” and a “skull that lurks behind black cross bars,” made city officials respond to the tapestries as “bizarre” and “scary.” After receiving complaints, the airport agency ordered LACD to remove the artwork. Kim Day, the airport agency’s interim executive director, complained that the “artwork is inappropriate for the airport. We are not a museum, and we need art that does not offend anyone, and does not in any way add stress to an already stressful experience.” After a petition circulated by the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) and the subsequent media coverage, airport officials reversed their decision and decided the tapestries would stay during their originally scheduled exhibition. The controversy has re-kindled anxieties of censorship, free speech, and the role of the public. Castillo responded to initial warnings of censorship as “insulting.” “They’re trying to silence an entire community of artists in Los Angeles in 2004. On Rodeo Drive they just put in a nude torso of a woman in the center of the street and no one bats an eyelash, and people come from all over the world to Beverly Hills.”

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Ink: March 2004

By March 20, 2004 Uncategorized

What did the winner get?

I don’t know. I didn’t look. But I know what the loser got. I know what the loser got because I was the loser and I know what I got. I got beat. I got punched in the face. I got humiliated in front of my wife. I got laughed at. I got emasculated. I got a taste of the ground with my own blood as a condiment.

I got a chip knocked out of a tooth. I got a concussion.

I got a parting gift basket of insults. I got driven to the hospital in a brand-new car. I got sent behind door number three where I got what will probably be a lifetime supply of Neosporin. I got an emergency room bill for over one thousand dollars.

What did the winner get? I don’t know. But I know what I got.

Fear and Covert Giggling

Responsibility is the by-product of power. The mortal enemy of responsibility is sticking your fingers in your ears and singing loudly. The mortal enemy of power is silliness. This is true because nobody with power is silly. Or perhaps, more specifically, anybody who accuses somebody in power of being silly immediately gets shot. The people doing the shooting refer to this as “respect.”

This is a problem for those of us whom the world at large regard as silly (i.e., the art world). While artists are busy trying to take responsibility for the condition of the world, the world is busy giggling like middle schoolers at the latest dead animals we’ve pickled. Taking responsibility for a party requires that the party in question would be loathe to describe you with the same terms used to describe guys wearing black dress socks with flip-flops. If the party in question is headed towards almost certain destruction (say, the open mouth of a large alligator) and they regard you as a silly individual (say, Popeye the Sailor Man), they will not listen to your warnings no matter how many sheep you pickle. Vlad the Impaler, of course, never being one to pickle sheep, never had any problems getting people to respect him. This is not because the individual who was later the inspiration for Count Chocula was not silly. This is because Vlad the Impaler was scarier than he was silly. This is also because anyone who wouldn’t listen to him ended up as a decorative birdbath for his front lawn. The ability to turn annoying people into birdbaths and similar decorative objects is the primeval basis of modern political power. Therefore, responsibility, being inversely related to silliness, is directly correlated with scariness.

This presents an obvious problem for any party officially labeled as Not Scary (i.e., the art world). Luckily, in modern times, the key to scariness is not the actual impalement of individuals who call you silly. It is merely the implication that your decorative birdbaths were not purchased at Pier 1, which earns respect. However, inspiring fear rather than covert giggling requires some forethought. Running around selecting scary accessories willy-nilly could be disastrous, given the multitude of scary genres. For example, historically, there have been the Monosyllabic, Hairy, Big-Stick-Wielding, Loincloth Wearing variety (i.e., Attila the Hun), and the Inevitably Foreign, Inexplicably Wanting to Destroy the World variety (i.e., Nero). More recently, of course, the Undead and Sexually Ambiguous variety (i.e., Marilyn Manson), enjoyed popularity for some time, but lately have been replaced with the Irritable and Loud variety (i.e., Howard Stern and Eminem). The latter, in particular, seems to be very frightening to perhaps the scariest variety of the scary: the Wealthy Conservative. Given that the art world is not renowned for its fondness for conservatives, the ideal approach for the art world to achieve scariness (and thereby respect) would be a combination of the other most recent trends. That is, Irritable and Undead.

As Marilyn Manson and the religious right know, the first step in becoming scary is to look scary. In order to achieve a successfully scary Undead demeanor, artists might be well advised to begin with some tips on appearance from popular horror movies. Movies such as Evil Dead and Army of Darkness contain a lot of data on this particular topic. In particular, it would seem that one of the keys to being respectably scary lies in being very pale and having bad posture. To some extent, this also applies to the appearance of the Wealthy Conservatives. One of the other keys lies in dressing like a flood victim that has fallen into a cement mixer.

The necessity for a scary appearance in the context of the art world most particularly applies to Converse All Stars and black plastic-rimmed glasses, which neither Vlad the Impaler nor the evil Undead considered viable fashion accessories while terrorizing the populace. For the fashion-conscious artist, however, a popular scary alternative to Undeadness (looking like a flood victim) lies in Irritableness.

As can be observed from both Howard Stern and Eminem, the best method of being effectively Irritable is to publicly say mean things specifically engineered to offend large portions of the population (i.e., “Old people, puppies, mixed ethnic minorities, and quadriplegics suck”). Evidently, given the amount of effort which certain portions of the population have put into having them banned or made very rich (respectively), this is an extremely effective method of inspiring political fear and earning social respect (respectively). However, a somewhat subtler although equally scary alternative is available for the fashion-conscious artist. That is, having mean things printed on your clothing. This would work especially well for textiles artists, who could embroider or screen-print their own mean sayings (i.e., “I killed your kitten, you loser”).

When coupled with Undeadness, this could truly make the art world a scary and respectable force to be reckoned with. Instead of making paintings and covering them with elephant dung (which, although seemingly initially scary, only ended up inspiring more giggling) a scary artist could go to city council meetings, spray the audience with fake blood, and shout, “Aaargh! Eat complex carbs and polysaturated fats, you overzealous stoats! I stomp on small starving foreign children in your name!” While this is not guaranteed to inspire respect or fear from the general public, it is probably not any less likely to do so than pickling sheep. Furthermore, such messages might actually lead some Wealthy Conservatives to mistakenly support our cause. However, as long as the world at large continues to regard artists with an attitude not unlike that with which they might regard a gerbil attempting to devour a plastic lemon, the question of our responsibility for said world is somewhat irrelevant.

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Mouth Off: Full Frontal Nudity

By March 20, 2004 Uncategorized

Janet shows one shiny breast, and there is an uproar that reverberates in moral self-righteousness out into the heavens even as you read this. On Super Bowl Sunday, parents gasped, the network swooned, advertisers cursed, and little Timmy got all funny inside for the first time since the last OC. But imagine if it weren’t Janet who did the flashing. Imagine, if it were Justin Timberlake and his Mickey Mouse club?

Clearly the world as we know it would end.

Fact is, the American entertainment community can put up with as much T and A as it pleases (anyone remember the Miller ad last year? How about the blatantly sexist lyrics of American flag poncho sporter, Kid Rock?) while men get a little squeamish when their MVP is exposed.

Even more dastardly—the Motion Picture Association of America thinks extreme amounts of violence is less harmful than explicit sexual content. Movies like the needless remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre get by with an R while films like The Dreamers get slapped with difficult rating, NC-17.

Bernardo Bertolucci has commented: “How is it in 2004 we are more puritanical than 30 years ago?…After all, an orgasm is better than a bomb.”

Why do you think it is ok, socially/culturally, for a woman to be exposed rather than a man? Why has this art convention been maintained for hundreds of years? Is the penis more dangerous than the sword? Where does the shameless promotion end and the moral ambiguity begin? Is there even ambiguity? Plastic America has castrated our cinematic cock.

At least in the seventies there was good porn. What are our lonely farmboys to do? Squinting my eyes to see a denim-covered bulge on a 24-inch television screen has ruined my vision. We need to recognize the facts: it is not attractive for a man to convert into an effiminate doll with a limp dick. Sure, he is sensitive and harmless—but noone wants to fuck him. I want a man not afraid of his celluloid dick, his sex, his power. I want erections on cable television.

I want the lilac droop. I want the flash of candy.

— Michael Koby, Fiber and Materials Studies, Graduate

I think that the reason that males are never featured nude is because that puts them in a position of vulnerability. To be naked is to have no protection from outside forces including, but not limited to, criticism—we all know that boys have a certain insecurity with their bodies. However, it also makes them a pleasure object, a thing to be looked at and admired instead of a mighty force to be reckoned with. This brings them down a notch on the hierarchy scale where males are in charge and have the nude women to serve them pleasure instead. In a male-dominated society, a woman in the same position would not be regarded in the same negative manner.

— Erin A. Milosevich, currently without department

Ms. Jackson only did it because she wanted the public to gasp, “oh my!” and the media to site her name numerous times. She wouldn’t have done it if she knew that people would just laugh and forget it the by the next day.

You know that desire to do something more so if it is not allowed, or considered scandalous? Like the time you did something at high school that you were not supposed to? If people stopped making a big fuss, it’s not gonna be suprising or scandalous anymore, and people are not going to expose themselves in that attention-craving manner.

Female bodies are more frequently exposed than male bodies, simply because there are more dynamics in it–it has more of easily noticeable curves and shapes than the male body, whether that body is beautiful or not, whether the female body is more beautiful than the male body or not. I mean, when you’re in a figure drawing class, why are there more female models than males?

…right???

— Jae-Won Shim

The same people who shudder at a bare breast are the ones who sexualized the breast in the first place. The vast majority of human beings begin their lives suckling breasts. There should be no reason to get all funny or weird about them. So when you see cultural conservatives raise a stink about bare breasts, you are simply watching superstitious people do that “fake outrage” thing they always do—-what they’ve been trained to do since the first day of Sunday School.

Penises and vaginas, on the other hand, are totally different animals than breasts. They tap directly into our reproductive instincts in a way which is deeply compelling. That’s not to say we can’t get used to the sight of reproductive organs, but even the full-time nudist can still muster up enough genital appreciation to have sexual intercourse. The penis and vagina transcend the normal desensitizing effects of repetition. Exposed, especially outside a nudist context, they are highly distracting. If you’re trying to focus on complex tasks, they are downright disturbing. That’s why nuclear physics is not conducted in the strip club (primarily).

As far as art history, it is important to note that the convention with regard to nude females has always been to avoid showing the vagina.

So until Janet Jackson does a “Streets of Bangkok” version of the Vagina Monologues at the Super Bowl, I think penis exposure, however rare, is right on par with it’s female counterpart. But bring on the boobies, cause all the little babies love’em, and you know what? So do I.

— Bill Voltz, Admissions Staff

I think you are comparing apples and oranges, so to speak (no euphemisms intended), in your Super Bowl example…

A woman’s breast does not equate with the male penis…well you know where I’m going….

“Showing pink” is almost as huge a taboo as the male member…probably equally so in our prudish American popular culture.

And (for the cynical take on things) it doesn’t take a genius to know that all power structures in American society are dominated (predominantly) by heterosexual white males. Heterosexual white males want to see T and A not other men’s members. (Plus there are way too many self esteem issues associated with that thing that all men, consciously or unconsciously, are dealing with. They don’t want to think about it, other than to think about where they would like to put it.)

—Travis Hartman, Writing Dept.

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Worst Case Scenario: How to Create the Illusion of Opinion

By March 20, 2004 Uncategorized

As an artist, it is your responsibility to mirror society at large, raise thought-provoking questions, and mess with the self-satisfied minds of those thinking they’ve got it figured out. This great honor and responsibility comes as quite a shock to many new artists who have entered the philosophical and political arena unarmed. In dire situations, young art students may even be asked to think critically about weighty subjects. Are religious fundamentalists short-sighted hypocrites looking for easy answers? Are moral relativists fool-hardy lushes who use the non-existence of God as an excuse to be irresponsible? How fascist is America?

Many students enter a great debate finding that they never assessed a situation before because it required too much tact or consideration. At this point, one may choose to reserve judgment. This is fatal. For any artist to be taken seriously, they must project an image of total self-assurance, even to the point of narcissistic obstinacy. In the written form, this is easy to fake. Any frail-voiced artist can sound as emphatic as Michael Moore to an SAIC instructor by simple linguistic evasions. Simply extract lyrics from a pop song conveying the type of confidence that you wish to feign and sprinkle it throughout your essay. The generational gap between pupil and student will protect you from being a plagiarizer of poetry if the song lyrics are recent enough.

You can avoid ever taking a real position on anything, provided you have enough generalized exuberance. A safe way to sound poignant without actually making a point is to convince your instructor that you will rock politics like a hurricane, or that if a problem comes along, you will assuredly whip it and whip it good.

If you are unfamiliar with appropriate rock lyrics, it is critical that you divert the attention away from your neutrality with nostalgia. Begin writing your essays in an archaic language. Dead vocabulary from 15th and 16th century Europe naturally gives any debate a sense of 75 percent more chivalry and 33 percent more piety. In addition, many full-time professors will become nostalgic upon hearing dialogue from the dark ages. Make note that you too long for the glory days of medi cine, when mercury was still quicksilver, the cure to all ailments, and when bloodletting was the best remedy for a cold.

What to do when your passion lies in trivial or forgettable topics

Don’t make the mistake of assuming that your peers are empathetic to your mundane loneliness or trite anxiety. Plus, they will undoubtedly be uninterested in how corporate America and media conglomerates are stifling your creative efforts. Most art students are only stimulated by new and enticing concepts. To snag the attention of fellow students or art critics, it is recommended that you take existing emotions and present them out of context. To do this you will need to become an astronaut.

It is important to not only dress up as an astronaut, but to become an astronaut. Since dressing up as an astronaut is inherently foolish, it is imperative that you never take off your suit for as long as you attend art school. You will live perpetually as a being that just returned from the constellations. As an astronaut, your whiny complaining will become an expression of pure odyssey. An astronaut is the ultimate “fish out of water,” commanding an immeasurable amount of attention and respect. An astronaut’s experiences are celestial-they feel cosmic isolation amidst a nebula—of the galactically insensitive. An astronaut’s brain is a nova of burning genius. They have constellations of independent, interconnected thoughts suspended in the harsh vacuum of their minds. You will notice that the conceptual frame you inhabited as a mere art student has become fortified.

Other, yet trickier roles to become are that of the time traveler (whose brief but uncanny experience of becoming unstuck in the linearity of time has forever altered your worldly perceptions), the Castoridae-child (whose upbringing by a pack of kindly beavers gave you that unique insight that comes from growing up as one of the largest North American rodents), or the scam artist (who lives among art students and attends classes like an art student, but is only pretending to be an art student).

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Resistance and Dissent in Milwaukee: Visions of Tragedy

By March 20, 2004 Uncategorized

The high drama and brute emotionality of German Expressionist prints exhibited in the Defiance Despair Desire: German Expressionist Prints from the Marcia and Granvil Specks Collection provided the perfect context for a discussion panel “Visual Artists Responding to War,” held on Thursday, February 12th at the Milwaukee Art Museum. The exhibition features bold and dramatic prints from Max Beckmann, Emil Nolde, Otto Dix, Kathe Kollwitz along with the works of other leading artists of the movement. It is a collection of artists convinced of the power of their art in bringing about social change, whose experimentation in stylistic representation of humanity within the rigorous technical concerns of printmaking still speaks to us of the human resilience and vulnerability in the face of unspeakable horror. The artists used the revolutionary style and subject matter of their images, as a way to bypass official institutions and communicate directly with the public. An atmosphere of social turmoil, violence, and national insecurity leaps off the walls, profoundly moving the viewer.

A diverse group gathered in the Lubar Auditorium to hear presentations from printmaker, professor, and World War II veteran Warrington Colescott; political artist, writer, and teacher Nicholas Lampert; and photojournalist Rick Wood. Despite the regional character of the panel—Colescott is a professor-emeritus from University of Wisconsin, Madison; Lampert teaches at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and Rick Wood works for Milwaukee’s Journal Sentinel, the discussion centered on art that seeks to engage the world outside the self, be consciously political and bring about change.

There was no attempt to conceal a liberal agenda. Nicholas Lampert, immediately announced that his presentation would be an “unabashed antiwar protest,” emphasizing that the current state of “perpetual war, is the greatest tragedy of our time.” Similarily, Colescott displayed prints of some of his best political cartoons, attacking the Bush administration as well as the mass slaughter of deer by the Wisconsin hunters that is presented to the public as necessary population control. It was perhaps Wood, due to the nature of his work as a photojournalist, who tried to provide a more unbiased view of suffering and tragedy that ensued from the attacks of 9-11 and the recent war in Iraq. The discussion was anchored by Colescott’s age and experience as a veteran of several wars, and his reputation as an established and accepted artist. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Smithsonian among many others. He located the others’ comments within the timeline of history, calming the volatile and highly political subject matter of the event.

Colescott took the podium first, proceeding to talk “personally about war, having lived through too many of them.” He presented graphic highlights from his career as a printmaker of over forty years: starting with his education at UC Berkeley, including time spent in the trenches of Europe, garrisons of Korea. Since the late ’40s he has been a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

His prints, particularly etchings with aquatint, combine a strong narrative component with montage-like compositions executed with a bravado of line and color, as well as a fine sense for the vulgar and the apocalyptic, characteristic of master printmakers like Hogarth, Callot, Goya and Daumier.

The subjects of his caricatures are often political: generals, officials, presidents presented in situations often involving cross-dressing and sado-masochism. Actively engaged in a profession in which success is measured by the amount of censorship and persecution leveled against the artist, Colescott states: “I hate triviality, and the demands I put on myself specify complexity: if you seduce, do it with wit and creativity; if you attack, do it with skill; if you educate, do your research.”

A presentation by photojournalist Rick Wood followed. A widely traveled reporter, he shot photographs in Somalia and Cambodia and also visited Iraq in 2000 as part of a team invited by the Iraqi government to assess the state of the country severely crippled by UN sanctions.

Images of children suffering in hospitals, lacking the basic supplies, in homes where starvation and malnutrition were commonplace, were poignant in light of reports in which Iraq was being presented to us as a country that is somehow dangerous. These scenes were replaced by photographs of 9/11, which Wood witnessed and recorded in person—jet fuel burning away at the infrastructure of the World Trade Center buildings just seconds before the collapse, shapes too closely resembling human proportions in open air, which in a different context could be easily mistaken for hovering birds, expressions of shock and disbelief on the ash covered faces of witnesses. Little analysis was needed, and Wood supplied some factual data, maintaining that his goal as a photographer is “to record the human condition.” The look on his subjects’ faces indeed spoke eloquently for the frailty of our species.

Nicholas Lampert closed the night with an impassioned presentation, describing the current state of the anti-war movement in the US and displaying some of its graphics. He emphasized the increasingly important role of the internet in disseminating images of dissent, crediting it with the greater amount of publicity that the anti-war movement gained in 2002 as opposed to 1991. He particularly stressed the role of websites like www.protestgraphics.org. Full of copyright-free, bold, and powerful protest graphics, the website received enormous amounts of traffic following the start of the invasion. And while the speech had a slight accusatory subtext — many of the images Lambert presented referenced the logos of major corporations pointing the finger at the consumers and the taxpayers, the focus rarely strayed from the ability of the internet to help organize and spread the message of the anti-war movement.

No image or photograph can match the reality of war, and every artist that has in any way referenced it has to address that certainty. The tension inherent in the work that grapples with this issue greatly contributes to its power. The prints of German Expressionism on display in the museum can attest to that. The recent bloodshed in the streets of New York, Baghdad and Kabul brings these works of art much closer to us. Whether considering them as art of response or a call to arms, their power seems particularly great in our time. Most of them were created for a mass audience of artists and non-artists alike. One of the most difficult problems that any artist with a populist attitude must struggle with is the legibility of one’s art in relation to its quality—the message must be clear every time, while the envelope has to be pushed in order for it to maintain its vitality as art. Some assert that German Expressionism failed precisely because of that—artists drifted too far away from the initial goal of affecting social change, and lost themselves in the examination of the inner self. At this point in time, the art of resistance in the United States tends in the other direction, but then again, none of us are yet to be confronted with disaster as great as a world war.

More information:
Warrington Colescott
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Rick Wood
Anti-War Posters

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Snow White and the Trouble of Interpretation

By March 20, 2004 Uncategorized

A Swedish/Israeli incident occurred at the anti-genocide conference “Making Differences,” when the Israeli ambassador to Sweden began to dismantle Dror and Gunilla Sköld Feiler’s installation “Snow White and the Madness of Truth.” After the ambassador Zvi Mazel was removed from the Museum of National Antiquities, he was quoted by the Associated Press as saying, “[I] couldn’t have reacted in any other way.” Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, according to BBC News, commented, “It would have been forbidden not to have acted on the spot.” But was the meaning of the installation so easily read?

In “Snow White”, Johann Sebastian Bach’s “My Heart is Swimming in Blood” plays over a pool of red water, on which a toy boat, with a picture of former law student and suicide bomber Hanadi Jaradat, floats. The installation can be interpreted as follows:

* Reading 1) Jaradat sails valiantly on a sea of Jewish blood. Her attack was a victory, the way to paradise.
* Reading 2) Jaradat, like Elizabeth Bathory, is beautiful, but deadly, bathing in the blood of her victims.
* Reading 3) Jaradat, and many other desperate people, do horrible things in support of their political beliefs.

None of these readings of the Feilers’ “Snow White and the Madness of Truth” can be absolutely true. Whether or not the application of a single meaning can ever be integrated into the whole of anything is, perhaps, the main question at the heart of modernity.

The “Snow White” controversy is not about a simple statement; it is about the interpretation of a work of art. The Israeli government suggests that discussion, whether or not in Israel, about Palestinian suicide bombing, or anything which can be negatively interpreted about Israel, should be forbidden. This sentiment recalls the Iranian response to Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, but limits the demand to silence, not death. The Israeli state’s response implies dialogue is unacceptable outside of their terms.

The application of meaning, though essential in the attempt to understand the universe, is always subjective. When Zvi Mazel toppled the spotlight and caused the commotion at the Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm, he attempted to force his own reading of the piece, as “a call to genocide,” on everyone. This rigid position, supported by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, serves to limit discourse not only on a work of art, but on the continuing Israeli/Palestinian conflict as well. However, dialogue and peace cannot be pursued in honesty by eliminating the avenues of discourse. The current state of misunderstanding and violence will continue to cycle.

“[Mazel] said he was ashamed that I was a Jew,” the BBC News reported Feiler as saying, after the ambassador assaulted his installation. Interestingly, Dror Feiler has been villainized because he is not only an Israeli Jew, but also acts as the president of Jews for Israeli-Palestinian Peace. He attempts to engage in artistic as well as political conversation in his work. Furthermore, Feiler offered the following interpretation of the installation to BBC News: “The work had a message of openness and conciliation,” and Hanadi Jaradat, the suicide bomber, was “weak, lonely…capable of horrible things.” These readings are quite different from “the call to genocide” that Zvi Mazel saw.

No one, not even the artist, has an authoritative reading of a piece of work — Israel has no right to ask Sweden to censor speech or anything that hints at an anti-Israeli interpretation. The logic is similar to that of President George W. Bush’s abstinence-only sex education programs. The analogy is that if a teenager knows how to use a condom, he will have sex; if someone presents suicide bombing as anything short of genocide, he will cease to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

For more information see:
http://skold-feiler.sida.nu/
http://www.tochnit.aleph.com/drorfeiler/
http://www.avantart.com/feiler.html

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