With its M16 Art Project, the “peace activist” organization Peace One Day, asked 14 contemporary artists “to use decommissioned M16 assault rifles to produce artwork, thereby continuing the story of taking objects of war and using them in support of peace.” The M16 Art Project is the companion exhibition to the earlier AKA Peace exhibit mounted by Peace One Day…
2014 marks the 10-year anniversary of the release of the infamous Abu Ghraib prison photographs, an event remembered by Iraqi Detainees, an unusual exhibition in Brooklyn, New York. The exhibit of photos by Chris Bartlett is evidence enough that the wounds from the U.S. war against Iraq that began on March 19, 2003 have not yet healed. But as I…
“Who needs art when we have perpetual war?” is a question that would be asked by a general who runs a garrison state. “What is art when we have perpetual war?” is a question that could only be asked by an artist. I am an artist who believes that art reflects social realities, whether consciously or unconsciously, and that social…
March 19, 2013 marks the 10th anniversary of the U.S. war against Iraq. To commemorate the somber occasion I am presenting fifteen separate articles pertaining to the Iraq war that I wrote for this web log from 2004 to 2009, starting with the earliest post and ending with the most recent. Each piece discusses individual or cooperative artistic responses to…
I will never forget waking up on September 11, 2001 to the spectacle of the Twin Towers being hit by missile-like planes. That day I turned on morning television only to see those slow motion videos of doom and destruction; I watched with eyes full of tears and heart full of dread. Nearly 3,000 people perished in the terror attack,…
On July 1, 2009, the U.S. backed Iraqi government announced that BP (British Petroleum) and China National Petroleum Corp., had been awarded contracts to exploit Iraq’s al-Rumeila oil field – one of the largest oil fields in the world. In the past BP has attempted to rebrand itself as a “clean energy” company, going so far as to promote itself…
The equation is a simple one, in good economic times people feel they can afford to support the arts, in bad economic times – much less so. I do not mean to frame the question of art purely in financial terms, since some of the greatest art we know of has been created in the most impoverished settings and some…
Well… not really. Unidentified merry pranksters have published and distributed a fake “special edition” of The New York Times with a banner headline that proclaims; “IRAQ WAR ENDS: Troops to Return Immediately.” The first sentence of an accompanying article reads: “Thousands take to the streets to celebrate the announced end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” On Wednesday morning,…
