NEWSgrist: *TROUBLE IN PARADISE*

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Vol.5, no.8 (May 24, 2004)

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*Underbelly*

Bulletin board: post your own news, press releases, urls:

http://pub11.bravenet.com/forum/show.php?usernum=870870569

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*NEWSgrist blogs it up*

NEWSgrist’s fledgling blog

http://newsgrist.typepad.com/

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CONTENTS:

- *Url/s* iRAQ; Lil Suzy

- *Splash* Trouble in Paradise

- *Snuff Wars* Prison pics: hellish visions (Artforum.com)

- *Some Like It Hot* Michael Moore wins at Cannes (NewKerala.com)

- *The “T” Word* Susan Sontag regards the torture (NYTimes.com)

- *Triumph of the Mall* World War II Memorial (ArtNewspaper.com)

- *Beyond Memory* meant to be photographed (Artnet.com)

- *The Day After the day after...* Hyped carnage (NYMetro.com)

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*Url/s*

iRAQ ?

http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/strip-pix-burn-iraq-016298.php

http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/images/iRAQsubway.jpg

An i for an i

http://bagnewsnotes.typepad.com/bagnews/2004/05/an_i_for_an_i.html

"Lil Suzy And Atomic Energy" (requires Flash)

by Virgil Crow

http://www.vcifilms.com/movie12/index.html

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*Splash* http://newsgrist.net

Trouble in Paradise

curated by Amy Lipton

May 27 - June 26, 2004

Opening Reception: May 27th from 6 - 8 pm

Van Brunt Gallery

819 Washington Street (in the Meat Market)

New York, NY

Trouble in Paradise will present works by artists with a focus on issues

of loss in relationship to the natural world.

Artists include: Brian Alfred, Brandon Ballengee, Edward Burtynsky,

David Chow, Dan Ford, Adam Fuss, Joy Garnett, Fariba Hajamadi, Julie

Heffernan, Steve Mumford, Alison Moritsugu, Kirsten Mosher, Alexis

Rockman and others.

In the past three years of the Bush administration we have witnessed a

broad scale effort to unravel decades of hard won environmental

legislation and protections. We are witnessing an assault against our

environment and a battle against the policies that have been put in place

over the past four decades. In their attempt to roll back these regulations,

our current administration reveal their state of denial concerning global

warming, extinction of species, health issues relating to pollution and lack

of clean water and air. These losses are mounting and will continue to

take a terrible toll into the unforeseeable future. Aside from the tragic loss

of humanity in a time of war, wars also take their toll on the environment,

releasing a host of toxic chemistry with conventional and nuclear weapons

and their production, mobilization and proliferation. This thinly disguised

war over terrorism in Iraq can also be looked at for what it really is

about, the desire for control, including that over natural resources and

commodities, namely fossil fuels.

Trouble in Paradise takes a look at the implications of loss in our present

social context using a variety of artworks and sensibilities. The artworks

depict the contrast of the splendor and beauty that are diminishing in our

natural world with the grim reality of what has been lost. The attempt of

this exhibition is not to spark a nostalgic sense of longing for what is

irretrievable, but to incite recognition of what is mostly unimaginable and

the action that can accompany this recognition. Its aim is to bring

awareness to the viewer of the need for protection, preservation and the

preciousness of what remains.

Guest Curator Amy Lipton ran a gallery in New York City from 1986 to

1995. Since then she has been working as an independent curator and is

affiliated with ecoartspace, a non-profit organization whose mission is to

raise environmental awareness through the arts. Her current exhibition,

"Imaging the River" is on view at the Hudson River Museum through

May 23, 2004.

For further information please contact: Rose Burlingham at

212.243.8572 or info@vanbruntgallery.com

splash archived at: http://www.newsgrist.net/Splash_Trouble.html

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*Snuff Wars*

THEWELEIT et al. on the ICONOGRAPHY OF WAR

Art Forum Online

INTERNATIONAL NEWS DIGEST week of 05.17.04

http://www.artforum.com/news/week=200421?sid=9a7bab704aef2866348c29693ad57971#news6892

In the wake of the Iraqi prisoner-abuse scandal, German cultural critics

offered their analyses of the role of iconography in war. Klaus Theweleit,

philosopher and author of the influential Male Fantasies, insists that all

the images must be made public. "It may sound hard, but these pictures

did not really upset me," he said in an interview with the Süddeutsche

Zeitung. "I have these kinds of scenes in my head, from concentration

camps, from splatter, snuff, and porn films. We could repress these

images, but then we give ourselves over to the illusion spread by the

sanitized editions of the daily news: that we live in a half-civilized world."

Sensing a growing conflation of politics and aesthetics, Die Welt's Klaus

Honnef notes that the photographs of Iraqi prisoners seem to mark the

completion of a transition in the imagery of the "war on terror," from Top

Gun–style victory scenes to hellish visions reminiscent of Hieronymus

Bosch's paintings. Die Tageszeitung's Sebastian Moll believes that the

scenes from Abu Ghraib prison are destined to become as emblematic of

the Iraq War as the iconic photograph of children fleeing a village

bombed with napalm is of Vietnam.

Die Zeit offers an interview with media theorist Joseph Vogl, who argues

that traditional wartime photojournalism has been superseded by private

snapshots and home videos with an utterly different documentary value.

"What is presented is not just humiliation," Vogl told Die Zeit. "The

images document the fact that the voices of the prisoners themselves

were never heard. Their testimonies have been extinguished a second

time by these pictures."

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*Some Like It Hot*

Why Michael Moore's film is giving George Bush the jitters

New Kerala, India: World News

http://news.newkerala.com/world-news/?action=fullnews&id=18247

London, May 21 (ANI): Oscar winning director Michael Moore's new

documentary "Farenheit 9\11" has sparked a lot of controversy around

the world and has reportedly been giving President Bush sleepless nights.

And according to The Mirror, the reasons for nervousness in the Bush

camp could be many.

The film, says the report reveals that immediately after Nine Eleven,

even though America became a no-fly zone, the only plane that flew out

was the one containing Bin Laden's family, that too on Bush's orders.

It questions the credibility of the American media as the film has

documented various instances of Iraqi people being physically and

sexually abused by the American soldiers, which were known to the

press but had not been revealed.

The film, adds the report, also goes back in history and explains Bush's

close personnel connections with the Bin-Laden family and how Bush

senior had funded the Taliban at one time.

It also claims that George Bush's 2000 win had been doctored and that

Bush is creating a culture of fear to get the gullible American youth to

fight his war. His film also captures the disillusionment and despair of

the soldiers in Iraq.

"We were able to get film crews embedded with American troops without

them knowing it was Michael Moore. They are totally f***ed," says

Moore while explaining why his film is authentic and manages to get

footage which was not otherwise possible.

"Fahrenheit 9/11" starts with Moore saying, "Here they are, the whole

corrupt gang who fixed the 2000 election," as major American business

magnates are seen smirking and preening themselves.

more info:

'Fahrenheit 9/11' Wins Top Prize at Cannes

By A. O. SCOTT

NYTimes, May 22, 2004

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/22/movies/23canne.html

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*The “T” Word*

Regarding the Torture of Others

By SUSAN SONTAG

NYTimes, Published: May 23, 2004

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/magazine/23PRISONS.html

For a long time -- at least six decades -- photographs have laid down the

tracks of how important conflicts are judged and remembered. The

Western memory museum is now mostly a visual one. Photographs have

an insuperable power to determine what we recall of events, and it now

seems probable that the defining association of people everywhere with

the war that the United States launched pre-emptively in Iraq last year

will be photographs of the torture of Iraqi prisoners by Americans in the

most infamous of Saddam Hussein's prisons, Abu Ghraib.

The Bush administration and its defenders have chiefly sought to limit a

public-relations disaster -- the dissemination of the photographs -- rather

than deal with the complex crimes of leadership and of policy revealed by

the pictures. There was, first of all, the displacement of the reality onto

the photographs themselves. The administration's initial response was to

say that the president was shocked and disgusted by the photographs –

as if the fault or horror lay in the images, not in what they depict. There

was also the avoidance of the word ''torture.'' The prisoners had possibly

been the objects of ''abuse,'' eventually of ''humiliation'' -- that was the

most to be admitted. ''My impression is that what has been charged thus

far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture,''

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said at a press conference. ''And

therefore I'm not going to address the 'torture' word.''

Words alter, words add, words subtract. It was the strenuous avoidance

of the word ''genocide'' while some 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda were being

slaughtered, over a few weeks' time, by their Hutu neighbors 10 years

ago that indicated the American government had no intention of doing

anything. To refuse to call what took place in Abu Ghraib -- and what has

taken place elsewhere in Iraq and in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo

Bay -- by its true name, torture, is as outrageous as the refusal to call

the Rwandan genocide a genocide. Here is one of the definitions of torture

contained in a convention to which the United States is a signatory: ''any

act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is

intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him

or a third person information or a confession.'' (The definition comes from

the 1984 Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or

Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Similar definitions have existed for

some time in customary law and in treaties, starting with Article 3 –

common to the four Geneva conventions of 1949 -- and many recent

human rights conventions.) The 1984 convention declares, ''No exceptional

circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war,

internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked

as a justification of torture.'' And all covenants on torture specify that it

includes treatment intended to humiliate the victim, like leaving prisoners

naked in cells and corridors.

Whatever actions this administration undertakes to limit the damage of the

widening revelations of the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and

elsewhere -- trials, courts-martial, dishonorable discharges, resignation of

senior military figures and responsible administration officials and

substantial compensation to the victims -- it is probable that the ''torture''

word will continue to be banned. To acknowledge that Americans torture

their prisoners would contradict everything this administration has invited

the public to believe about the virtue of American intentions and America's

right, flowing from that virtue, to undertake unilateral action on the world

stage.

Even when the president was finally compelled, as the damage to

America's reputation everywhere in the world widened and deepened, to

use the ''sorry'' word, the focus of regret still seemed the damage to

America's claim to moral superiority. Yes, President Bush said in

Washington on May 6, standing alongside King Abdullah II of Jordan, he

was ''sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners and the

humiliation suffered by their families.'' But, he went on, he was ''equally

sorry that people seeing these pictures didn't understand the true nature

and heart of America.''

To have the American effort in Iraq summed up by these images must

seem, to those who saw some justification in a war that did overthrow one

of the monster tyrants of modern times, ''unfair.'' A war, an occupation, is

inevitably a huge tapestry of actions. What makes some actions

representative and others not? The issue is not whether the torture was

done by individuals (i.e., ''not by everybody'') -- but whether it was

systematic. Authorized. Condoned. All acts are done by individuals. The

issue is not whether a majority or a minority of Americans performs such

acts but whether the nature of the policies prosecuted by this

administration and the hierarchies deployed to carry them out makes such

acts likely.

II.

Considered in this light, the photographs are us. That is, they are

representative of the fundamental corruptions of any foreign occupation

together with the Bush adminstration's distinctive policies. The Belgians in

the Congo, the French in Algeria, practiced torture and sexual humiliation

on despised recalcitrant natives. Add to this generic corruption the

mystifying, near-total unpreparedness of the American rulers of Iraq to

deal with the complex realities of the country after its ''liberation.'' And add

to that the overarching, distinctive doctrines of the Bush administration,

namely that the United States has embarked on an endless war and that

those detained in this war are, if the president so decides, ''unlawful

combatants'' -- a policy enunciated by Donald Rumsfeld for Taliban and

Qaeda prisoners as early as January 2002 -- and thus, as Rumsfeld said,

''technically'' they ''do not have any rights under the Geneva Convention,''

and you have a perfect recipe for the cruelties and crimes committed

against the thousands incarcerated without charges or access to lawyers in

American-run prisons that have been set up since the attacks of Sept. 11,

2001.

So, then, is the real issue not the photographs themselves but what the

photographs reveal to have happened to ''suspects'' in American custody?

No: the horror of what is shown in the photographs cannot be separated

from the horror that the photographs were taken -- with the perpetrators

posing, gloating, over their helpless captives. German soldiers in the

Second World War took photographs of the atrocities they were

committing in Poland and Russia, but snapshots in which the executioners

placed themselves among their victims are exceedingly rare, as may be

seen in a book just published, ''Photographing the Holocaust,'' by Janina

Struk. If there is something comparable to what these pictures show it

would be some of the photographs of black victims of lynching taken

between the 1880's and 1930's, which show Americans grinning beneath

the naked mutilated body of a black man or woman hanging behind them

from a tree. The lynching photographs were souvenirs of a collective

action whose participants felt perfectly justified in what they had done.

So are the pictures from Abu Ghraib.

The lynching pictures were in the nature of photographs as trophies –

taken by a photographer in order to be collected, stored in albums,

displayed. The pictures taken by American soldiers in Abu Ghraib,

however, reflect a shift in the use made of pictures -- less objects to be

saved than messages to be disseminated, circulated. A digital camera is

a common possession among soldiers. Where once photographing war

was the province of photojournalists, now the soldiers themselves are all

photographers -- recording their war, their fun, their observations of what

they find picturesque, their atrocities -- and swapping images among

themselves and e-mailing them around the globe.

There is more and more recording of what people do, by themselves. At

least or especially in America, Andy Warhol's ideal of filming real events

in real time -- life isn't edited, why should its record be edited? -- has

become a norm for countless Webcasts, in which people record their day,

each in his or her own reality show. Here I am -- waking and yawning

and stretching, brushing my teeth, making breakfast, getting the kids off

to school. People record all aspects of their lives, store them in computer

files and send the files around. Family life goes with the recording of

family life -- even when, or especially when, the family is in the throes

of crisis and disgrace. Surely the dedicated, incessant home-videoing of

one another, in conversation and monologue, over many years was the

most astonishing material in ''Capturing the Friedmans,'' the recent

documentary by Andrew Jarecki about a Long Island family embroiled in

pedophilia charges.

An erotic life is, for more and more people, that which can be captured in

digital photographs and on video. And perhaps the torture is more

attractive, as something to record, when it has a sexual component. It is

surely revealing, as more Abu Ghraib photographs enter public view, that

torture photographs are interleaved with pornographic images of

American soldiers having sex with one another. In fact, most of the torture

photographs have a sexual theme, as in those showing the coercing of

prisoners to perform, or simulate, sexual acts among themselves. One

exception, already canonical, is the photograph of the man made to stand

on a box, hooded and sprouting wires, reportedly told he would be

electrocuted if he fell off. Yet pictures of prisoners bound in painful

positions, or made to stand with outstretched arms, are infrequent. That

they count as torture cannot be doubted. You have only to look at the

terror on the victim's face, although such ''stress'' fell within the

Pentagon's limits of the acceptable. But most of the pictures seem part

of a larger confluence of torture and pornography: a young woman

leading a naked man around on a leash is classic dominatrix imagery.

And you wonder how much of the sexual tortures inflicted on the inmates

of Abu Ghraib was inspired by the vast repertory of pornographic imagery

available on the Internet -- and which ordinary people, by sending out

Webcasts of themselves, try to emulate.

article continued: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/magazine/23PRISONS.html?pagewanted=2

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*Triumph of the Mall*

The US finally unveils its World War II memorial

It has taken almost 60 years to commemorate the

400,000 American soldiers who died in the conflict

By Charmaine Picard

The Art Newspaper, May 22, 2004

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=11667

A memorial to the American soldiers who died in World War II is to be

formally dedicated in Washington, DC on 29 May, nearly 59 years after

the end of the conflict. Controversy has plagued the construction of the

monument since 1995 and the unveiling itself has been severely criticised.

Of the 16 million Americans who served in uniform, some 4 million

survive, with the youngest veterans believed to be 76 years old.

However, the organisers of the event, severely underestimated the

number of veterans who wished to attend the ceremony with many

being denied tickets.

This latest PR debacle, follows years of objections from campaigners,

such as Judy Scott Feldman, chairwoman of the National Coalition to

Save Our Mall, who have described the design as imperial, triumphal,

and even Fascist. Although there has been unanimous support for an

appropriate memorial, critics of the project have objected to virtually

every aspect of the monument from its massive scale and classically-

inspired architecture to its placement on the National Mall, a meadow-

like swath of land that is used as a rallying point for political

demonstrations and provides sweeping and unobstructed vistas from

the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument.

memorial plaza is entered through two 43-foot arches decorated with

bronze laurels, wreaths and eagles. At the centre of the space is a

wall with 4,000 sculpted gold stars to honour the 400,000 Americans

who died in battle.

Legislation to construct the World War II memorial was introduced in

December 1987, nearly 20 years after the idea for a Vietnam War

memorial was first proposed.

Speaking to The Art Newspaper, Betsy Glick, spokeswoman for the

Monuments Commission, said that, over the years, World War II

veterans have not suffered from the same stigma associated with the

Vietnam and other historically unpopular campaigns, which helps explain

why the construction of a World War II memorial lacked the same

political urgency as the project to construct a Vietnam Memorial

(inaugurated in 1982) or the Vietnam Woman’s Memorial (inaugurated

in 1993).

After several years of fundraising, public hearings, and a lawsuit filed

by the National Coalition opposition group, President George W. Bush

signed legislation into law on 28 May 2001 ordering construction on the

memorial to begin without further delay and effectively overriding any

further dissent.

The dedication ceremony will be accompanied by a series of events

and exhibitions including a Norman Rockwell show at the Corcoran

Gallery of Art (until 7 September).

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*Beyond Memory*

Memorial Din

by Tyler Green

Artnet Magazine, May 18, 2004

http://artnet.com/magazine/news/green/green5-18-04.asp

America deserves a National World War II Memorial that is better than

this. Maybe we can tear it down and start again.

While the dedication ceremony for the new National World War II

Memorial in Washington, D.C., is still to come -- it’s slated for May 29,

2004, at the start of the Memorial Day weekend -- the memorial itself

opened to the public several weeks ago. An oblong $175 million plaza,

flanked by two 43-foot-tall arched gates and 56 granite columns, each

holding a pair of bronze wreaths, surrounding an oval reflecting pool

with fountains, it is the strangest, ugliest major memorial in Washington.

The new monument feels as if a Fascist architect had designed a food

court for the Mall of America, and then accidentally shipped it to

Washington, where it was installed on a 7.4-acre plot located on the

National Mall between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln

Memorial.

A memorial to some of America’s greatest war-time heroes should

provide a place for contemplation and appreciation of the sacrifices

made by those who fought for the freedom of not just America but of

the entire world. And, as vague and jingoistic as this notion may sound,

such a memorial should look and feel American. It should be a place

that, when experienced, gives rise to thoughts of country and service.

Nothing like that can be found here. The plentiful fountains and running

water create a din that drowns out all but the loudest conversations, let

alone allow quiet contemplation. (This is not the gently running water that

contributes to the serene spaces at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt

memorial. These fountains belong at your local Six Flags.) The wide open

space in the center of the memorial allows it to serve as a run-around for

the children of visitors, further destroying the opportunity for

introspection. Only the size of the $175-million memorial is even remotely

American -- the design, by Friedrich St. Florian (whhose first large-scale

project was the Providence Place Mall, according to Los Angeles Times

critic Christopehr Knight), puts a premium on size. This is a memorial

meant to be photographed, not absorbed.

In fact, there is nothing about the memorial design that seems to have

much to do with World War II. Sure, there are some engravings that talk

about the war, but is there anything about granite pillars and arches and

bronze wreaths that tie them specifically to World War II? This

architecture could commemorate those who lost their lives fighting on

behalf of the Revolutionary War, or Greenpeace, or virtually anything

else. There is no history here. In fact, this memorial is an amalgamation

of designs -- it incorporates bits of several other D..C. memorials and little

that is unique to the National World War II Memorial.

The memory of the sacrifices Americans made in World War II lives on in

the minds of people who experienced the war. Ideally, a worthy memorial

extends memory beyond the generation that lived with the people and

through the event being memorialized. (Is there a better example of this,

anywhere, than the Vietnam Veterans Memorial?). It’s a national shame

that the National World War II Memorial doesn’t come close to

accomplishing this goal.

TYLER GREEN writes about art from Washington. His blog can be found

at http://www.artsjournal.com/man

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*The Day After the day after...*