Two plays about war and one "quilt"

Theaters can make statements about war, directors care, but sometimes it is a little ambiguous what the plays actually say. Two plays in Seattle, Henry V and An Iliad (a modern play performed by one actor, that refers back to the classic but also inserts contemporary references), each one is obviously responding to our permanent war culture.

The first Henry V by Shakespeare is really celebrating victory against long odds in war. It was used to rally the British morale during World War II, with a film version starring Laurence Olivier. Prince Hal was a pretty wild kid, but he became King Henry V.When the Church gives him a chunk of money (to avoid having their lands confiscated according to the play’s beginning), he’s off to war in France, based on some shakey premise that France is actually belonging to the English because of way back when family connection (that sounds like Israel in Palestine). Anyway off he goes and he beats the complacent French at Agincourt because (although this wasn’t emphasized but my knowledgable husband informed me) they use the older technology of the longbow while the French used a cross bow with a shorter range. The real story of the war not included in this play, is rather grim, with many women and children dying in a siege.

So is this an anti-war statement??? The Director said in the program that her best friend’s son was in Afghanistan. It seems to me the play was an homage to the courage of soldiers.
But then there is Shakespeare’s own perspective. It has been said that on the one hand he creates heartfelt speeches by King Henry, on the other hand suggests he is ruthless, and his men mock him.

This play was commissioned by Queen Elizabeth because the Irish troubles had already begun, so perhaps it was intended to give heart to the British. But, of course, underlying it, is the ordinary people and their ordinary thoughts, always a feature of Shakespeare. And of course they were wet, dirty and sometimes uninterested.

To further mitigate its anti war statement, in this production there was a mix of 1940s war costumes, seen here, and 1960s Pop around the Princess Catherine of France who at the end marries our Henry V, which did bring peace. So that makes the war worthwhile??? Or could he have married her anyway and no war. He was offered her at the beginning of the war. ( It is a little like the Vietnam War, Kissinger was offered a peace before it started and in the end had exactly what he was offered at the beginning, after so many years)
Odd Play. Here is another opinion.

An Iliad (this isn’t much of a picture but it is all they have on the website, obviously the character was posed before the production) , created by Denis O Hare and Lisa Peterson (who also directed it) was an entirely different matter. It was a tour de force performance by a single actor, Hans Alweis, and he played the entire range of characters ( Hector, Achilles, Ageammenon, Patroklus, Priam, Helen, Paris, Andromache, Astynax the baby son of Andromache and Hector , Zeus, Thetis, Athena) brilliantly, as well as himself (perhaps Homer) and himself again ( a contemporary who sees the meaninglessness of war).

The selections from the Iliad, the parts that were chosen, were perfect to convey the stupidity of war, the needless suffering, the insanity of killing, the arrogance, the egos, the hesitation, the thoughts of avoiding war that were not acted on, all of it was there. The recital of wars from ancient history to the present was staggering, presented in a soft voice that seemed to come out of the actor like a slow drip of blood. It was a similar intention to the slide show at the end of Henry V of art works about war, but had much more impact. The simple recital fit with the poetic homage of the play as a whole.
An  Iliad gave us the full persepctive on what war is about and an extraordinary performance.

But then there is the Srebenica Quilt made by the widows, sisters, daughters of survivors of that terrible massacre. Each square is an homage to a lost loved one. Each one is actually woven, it is not a quilt, it is done in the flat weave kilim style, a heritage of the Ottoman Empire in this area. It is done by a group of brave, activist women who are extraodinary survivors, who are claiming a burial ground for their loved ones, who are reburying them, who are organizing to declare that they are going forward. This is the message of woman. I wish there were a play about that.

From Oppression to Liberation

 “Boycott Israeli Apartheid” the  pro Palestinian protest at Westlake Plaza in downtown Seattle had a huge audience last weekend because it coincided with a “flash”, a coming together of young people. The Boycott, Divestment Sanctions campaign is a long project. It is just beginning. The people of Palestine and pro Palestinian Israelis and other people around the world are urging the world to support this campaign that compares the current situation in Palestine Israel to apartheid in South Africa. The Palestinians are trapped in their cities by endless checkpoints. They are living in open prisons, they cannot get to work, their fields are being stolen by the wall. The campaign is asking people not to buy Israeli products, like Naot shoes, and to advocate for divestment of investments in Israel such as Motorola and Caterpillar. Here is an image with some of the companies that do business in Israel.

Of course the largest factor in the situation is the enormous US support for the Israeli military budgets. We send untold billions there every year. End the Occupation is a project to help us educate the American public and lobby Congressmen on the issues.

Not far away from the pro Palestinian rally, there was an immigrant rights rally, hundreds of people protesting the deportations, proposed horrendous legislation, and advocating for their rights.  They oppose further militarizing the border, and they support legalizing their status. They came here simply to make a living because many people are increasingly unable to do so where they live, often because of our Free Trade policies that are dumping cheap agricultural products in Mexico, putting farmers out of business.

The film festival was sponsored by Tasveer, which has been going for about nine years, an amazing and enterprising operation. It is partnering with Chaya, a group that advocates for and provides services to South Asian women who are victims of domestic violence. Yoni Ki Baat ( Vagina Monologues) was a series of courageous monologues by women who addressed dating, marriage, cultral traditions, sexuality, coming out, childbearing, and female circumcision.

And finally, there was an Indian PowWow, a celebration and example of an extraordinary resurgence of American Indian cultures, traditions, languages, and pride. Far from being obliterating, tribes are asserting their rights and recovering their languages and traditions.

So from oppression to liberation, from the beginning of a resistance, to the results of resistance, from people in the midst of struggle to people healing themselves to people celebrating their liberation.

Very inspiring. People organizing together really do make a difference, they really can change the world. And artists are an integral part of that.  Doing nothing or just talking really does waste that potential. As Arundhati Roy says in one of her brilliant essays in Field Notes on Democracy ” “There is something pitiable about a people that constantly bemoan its leaders. If they’ve let us down, it is only because we’ve allowed them to.”

Kiki Smith 2 and Milton Rogovin

So  I went back to the Henry Art Gallery’s Kiki Smith exhibition “I myself have seen it” for another look. It is a complex exhibition and deserves a lot of looks. First I watched the Art 21 video which was really helpful . She talks about death masks, her grandmother’s, her father’s, her sister’s. She herself is cast, that is terrifying. And she talked about Genevieve the savior of Paris.

So when I saw the series about Genevieve in the exhibition, it was clear what she was doing. The exhibition includes six photographs of parts of the sculpture, a profile face, lips, a hand,  the legs of a wolf ( perhaps signifying the enemy that Genevieve’s prayers staved off from Paris), the wolf’s furry face, four animal feet. Together they create an imaginary narrative, much more than the sculpture in which G calmly steps over a supine animal, but this narrative is another story, a story of fragments of bodies that seem to be frozen, even as they create, collectively, a sense of anxiety. The stasis is perhaps related to Genevieve’s spiritual nature. But there didn’t seem to be any suggestion of the actions that she took to save the people by bringing grain.

Going through the rest of the show starting with a young girl trapped (floating?) in a branch, to odd photographs that seem to evoke fragments of organs, to Mary Magdalene ( we know her story, Christ’s “fallen” woman) , to Lot’s Wife (who turned to a pillar of salt, if you remember), to the Harpies (perched about on mouldings high above us) , to the witches, to the little girls, dead white animals, dead black crows, shredded puppet, worms, and a photograph of just Guanyin’s head on its side (the image is in previous post) which does not suggest her power as a goddess of love and mercy and childbearing. There is only one message for me – violence against women, and especially little girls. The show is presenting frighened girls  and oddly powerless witches. Even fairy tales where little girls succeed, like Alice in Wonderland, seem to be oddly ambibuous – will she succeed in escaping her pursuers??

The question is why doesn’t Kiki Smith say what her real subject is, why is she so unwilling to be an advocate for all the victims she creates in her sculptures?? Why does she make victims from powerful goddesses and biblical women. Why can’t they fight back? Why doesn’t she fight back? My intelligent friend Deborah Lawrence talked me out of saying it is about personal trauma. What do I know, but why is Smith so obsessed with this single subject of death and threats of death and powerlessness.

The contrast to Cindy Sherman comes to mind who works from film, that, like fairy tales, are often about violence against women (in fact the new mythology), but we know they are re-staged with herself as the main actor, and she is opposing violence against women by calling attention to it. 

Kiki adds to the victims in the world without doing anything for them. As far as I am concerned this is not feminism.

In an intriguing revelation, she mentioned that she had worked with Bread and Puppet theater for awhile. But she takes their confrontational approach and empties it of all resistance in making these  prone or frozen or fragmented women and girls.

And what an amazing contrast to the adjacent gallery at the Henry with the photography of Milton Rogovin.

 He has photographed the working class for fifty years. He went to Chile ( the image above is from Chile,) Appalachia, photographing. among others, the families of miners and the miners themselves (particularly resonant at the moment with the horrifying greed propelled, mine accidents in the non unionized mines )and repeatedly to the Lower West Side of New York City. His people are dignfiedand strong. He honors them with his photographs.
He wrote poetry about the subjects of his work.
Here are a few of his comments.
“They are regular people just like the rest of us. We must not abandon them.”
“Everybody should have an opportunity for a better education.”
” All around we saw people with great potential but we knew none of them would realize it under the conditions of our society.”

Here is a man who cares deeply about the human condition and has spent his life recording it and speaking up for what he believes.

Kiki Smith

Plum Blossoms in the Spring Pure Poetry

 

The William Kentridge Moment in New York CIty

I was privileged to be there, during what was referred to as the “William Kentridge moment” in New York City. It combined his major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, “Five Themes”, a lecture at the New York Public Library “Learning from the Absurd” and his groundbreaking  production of “The Nose” at the Metropolitan Opera. William Kentridge directed, made the set designs (with Sabine Theunissen), and staging, (including a nose the size of a human being dancing around and even singing ), proscenium curtain, and banner. Also part of his team was Urs Schonebaum from Munich, who did the lighting, and Catherine Meyburgh from South Africa who did the video compostions.

Dimitri Shostakovich wrote the opera in 1928 at the age of 22. It was produced in 1930 ( in Leningrad/St. Petersburg). It was not performed in the Soviet Union again until 1974. Shostakovich survived Stalinism, unlike many of his brilliant contemporaries, but he was shattered by it. “The Nose” represents a watershed moment of brilliant experimentation.

At the Metropolitan Opera the music was conducted by world famous Shostakovich expert Valery Gergiev. Its extraordinary music is atonal and non lyrical, as well as filled with satirical references to traditional musical forms like folk music and chorales. But its main characteristic is the incredible use of unpitched percussion. It is based on a Gogol short story of ten pages called The Nose, written in 1836. The nose is a character on its own. The owner of the nose wakes up to discover his nose is gone, he has various adventures ( as the nose dances around the stage in both real time and on the animated film sequences that Kentridge created, borrowing from all sorts of Russian, modernist sources.) The extraordinary singing by Paulo Szot, who played Kovalyov, the mid level bureaucrat who lost his nose when he had a shave ( it fell into the barber’s flour supply and reappeared in his bread the next morning)  and therefore his position in the world, is a Brazilian baritone who sang almost non stop for one and a half hours. He was thrilling. I am now a convert to opera.

Kentridge animated the stage and its surroundings with the Russian avant garde art of Lissitzky, Malevich, with moving red squares, black lines, red circles. The costumes ( by Greta Goiris) drew on Popova’s famed constructivist inspired dresses. The proscenium curtain was a giant collage with all sorts of amusing references, such as a list of the hierarchies of people under the tsar that starts with angels, the tsar, with actors way down the list with slaves, then thieves, pirates, gypsies, Jews/Muslims, animals, plants and finally stones. Then there was the hierarchy in Stalinist Russia, self seekers, loafers, careerists, morally corrupt, cadets menshiviks, democratic centralists, workers opposition, three times contemptible degenerates. Then there is the hierarchy ( not on the curtain, but recited in the lecture) of apartheid South Africa, Whites, Japanese, Chinese, Other Asians, Indian, colored, black. And we know about Mexico and its mind bogglingly complex castata. Which is to say that all hierarchies are futile exercises in arbitrary and meaningless status driven by the desire for power. The Nose, short story, opera, performance all refer to the absurdity of stature and how it is endowed.

Kentridge has also done a performance that related directly to the Opera, “I am not me, The Horse is Not Mine,” which I wrote about when I saw it last year ( search the blog under Kentridge). His theme is the great aspirations and tragic failure of the Russian Revolution and its artists. And yet, the exuberance of his set and the staging of the absurdist play suggests his love of this art as well as its hopes. The performance began with an animation of the silhouette of a marching worker carrying a red flag across the stage. ( We all know about the importance of processions for Kentridge with the layers of meaning from protest to desperation)

Kentridge as a white South African and genre defying artist, working in animated film, drawing, prints, and collage, is deeply political, but he defined it, in a conversation at the New York Public Library, as conveying the political as surprising, as having an “uncertain ending.” His work is laced with the humor of the Cabaret Voltaire defiance of World War I and its absurd performances. He throws us off from any certainty, he plays with the ridiculous, the illogical, the embarrassing , the accidental, the digressive, selecting from various experimental actions what will work in his performances. He has given us “sketches” in a DVD accompanying his book Five Themes that include some of the ideas he didn’t use. He is absolutely in tune with Gogol and Shostakovich themselves, who perpetuated the same kind of disruptions with the novel and music respectively.

His animated films, including the story of Soho Ekstein, the greedy capitalist, and Felix Teitelbaum the neurotic lover, along with Mrs. Eckstein are about greed and love (love as a type of greed). His technique of animating drawings by sequential erasers is poignent and deeply moving. Ubu and the Truth Commission, with Ubu referring back to another Dada character, the impossibly self important  despot Ubu from the Alfred Jarry play, is another performance that uses puppets, as he did last year in “The Return of Ulysses.” “Ubu Tells the Truth” a film from 1997 has some shockingly violent sequences, including a person being chopped up and exploded three times.
From the Soho and Felix group, here is a line of starving workers and nearby the greedy capitalist stuffs his face from Kentridge’s first film, Johannesburg, the Second Greatest City after Paris, 1989. One vivid image in this film was the capitalist using a coffee press, and the press goes right down into the deep underground and sets off charges that explode into the veins of a mine.

The Nose opera, the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, the lecture, all together comprise the astonishing work of one of the most extraordinary artists working today. He draws on not only Russian avant-garde art of the 1920s and Dada, but also on German Expressionism, that great style of political protest art in Germany.

Living in post apartheid South Africa and having lived tin South Africa all his life, he is acutely aware of the absurdity of contrived hierarchies that make some people superior to other people. He is undermining those certainties of who is important and who is not, and Gogol’s short story and Shostakovich’s opera with their wandering nose looking for status, removing it from its owner, and giving it to another person of “higher rank”, etc, is a perfect ( he would say literal) example of the absurdity of who is powerful and who is not. That is the most subversive political statement I can imagine.

Of course, I am myself very opinionated about politics, and I feel that opinions and taking a stand for what I believe in is important. So why does Kentridge appeal to me so much? Because I can feel that underlying the wonderful humor, the absurdities, there is a man who cares very, very deeply about humanity. His work “the Black Box,” addressing the ravaging of Africa by whites in the nineteenth century, is filled with pathos. The arbitrary slaughter of rhinocerous shown with vintage footage, connects directly to our continuing random slaughter of the planet for sport and greed.

But Kentridge also believes that humor, of which he makes such use in many of his works, can encompass the experience of the many, while tragedy only the experience of the individual. So he relies on humor, our collective laughter, and our recognition of our shared humanity as we laugh, to get ideas across.

In The Nose performance, and the related section of MOMA exhibition, Bukharin, that most deeply intellectual of the early Russian Revolutionary idealists, speaks up for humanity, may also speak for Kentridge, even as the words are those of a man who is laughed at, and, ultimately, condemned.
There is a lot more to say, but I will stop there for now. Kentridge will be the Conclusion of my book on Art and Politics Now so buy the book next summer when it comes out for more analysis.

Kentridge at the New York Public Library.

PS And the contrast could not have been starker with the shallow and failed works in the 2010 Whitney Biennial. I hope those artists attend Kentridge’s exhibition.

International Women’s Day March in Seattle

On Saturday March 6 we had an amazing march. We walked for over two hours and went to a recruiting station, the King County Jail, the ICE Immigration Center and Seattle Human Services, with a rally/ speaker in front of each place. We ended at Occidental Square where the Duwamish were there in spirit. We had all ages, all ethnicities, all issues, all political positions joining together. Radical Women were well represented. Also Amnesty International, as well as National Organization of Women, and Pinay, Gabriela, CARA, photographs below and more information. It was exhiliarating and inspiring.

Pinay Filipina group. Gabriela was also represented, a mass solidarity group that is politically leftist and really activist.
They led us in chants.
This child is left behind after his parents were deported. He is an American citizen so he got to stay here all by himself. He looks like he is about four years old.

These are Iranian women offering us information for supporting the women of Iran

This is Margo Heights speaking in front of the Jail and across the street from ICE ( Immigration Detention Center). 1 our of every 3 women on the planet who are in jail is locked up in the United States.
Most women are imprisoned for economic crivmes. The majority of women convicted for violent crimes were defending themselves or their children against abuse. In the U.S. a woman is raped every six minutes.

These are people listening to the speaker from Real Change about homelessness in front of the Seattle Human Services.

These are women from CARA, Communities Against Rape and Abuse

This is a general photograph of us taking over downtown.

Seattle Labor Chorus

Raging Grannies

The Duwamish watching over us in this space that used to belong to them, although they didn’t make the totem pole and totem poles are not a Duwamish art form, at least it is a reference to the Indigenous people who lived in Seattle.
No explanation needed

A young feminist ready to play songs for us.

Break the Silence Olympia-Rafah Solidarity Mural Project

These are a few of the leaves on the Olympia Rafah Solidarity Mural Project. It is intended to build solidarity among people globally
Take a look and see below for more information.

“If you have come to help me than you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up in mine, let us walk together”

Break the Silence Mural project has been collaborating with communities in Rafah and elsewhere in the Occupied Territories to paint murals for nineteen years. The mural in this post is in Olympia Washington co-sponsored by the Rachel Corrie Foundation, the Middle East Children’s  Alliance, the Gaza Community Mental Health Community, Program and the Olympia Salvage Company.

It was inspired by the life of Rachel Corrie as part of her dream of creating a sister city project between Olympia and Rafah, Gaza Strip.

It includes over one hundred and fifty separate large leaves on an olive tree that spans one hundred feet.  It was painted by peace and justice groups from all over the world, a remarkable job of collaboration, and logisitical organization. Hundreds of artists of all ages contributed to the mural.

Each leaf will eventually have a recording that tells about the group that made it, or some information about their political concerns. You can see there are a range of different ideas, resistance, peaceful solidarity, women’s rights, and anti racism.

In the image just above you can see a dove flying off to the right. At the top is Gail Tremblay’s leaf, which has maps that compare in red land belonging to Palestinians in 1948 and 2005 and below, land belonging to US Indians in 1775 asnd 2005. It has caused controversy among some Jewish people in Olympia, because it is clearly sympathetic with the plight of the Palestininan people. But Break the Silence is the project of a several Jewish artists who cannot remain silent when the Israelis are acting in their name to kill and oppress the Palestinians. In fact, most of the artists that I know about who are most active in making art about the Palestinians are Jewish. Selma Waldman for example, whom I have mentioned often here, and who would certainly have contributed a leaf if she were still alive.

Here are a few more leaves. It would be better to have a close up of each leaf. I will try for that on my next trip to Olympia.

This is the whole tree, it is on a 35 x 100 foot wall of the Labor Temple in Olympia, Washington.

Radical Printmaking in the Bay Area

The Great Tortialla Conspiracy. Prints on Tortillas. Here they are cooking at the opening. And you can see they are anti war tortillas

Enrico Chagoya wove this rug.

THe Electric Works, Collaboration: anti war slot machine

Enrique Chagoya If you look hard you can see this is a one recession bill

Victor Cartagena did these commemorative tea bags for the disappeared of El Salvador.

This is an installation by Victor Cartagena about The disappeared in El Salvador. He is using photographs that he found in a passport photo shop that were never picked up. They are not necessarily the same people who were disappeared by the military regime, they evoke the disappearance of individuals.

This stunning and provocative exhibition Prints Byte is at SOmARts Cultural Center in San Francisco. It is all the imaginative ways of making a print, these are only a few works in the show, and they are all anti war. More to come

Black History Month in Seattle II City Hall

This is the sculpture of Roosevelt Lewis who is featured in City Hall with sculptures and paintings in the main lobby. Roosevelt Lewis is a Seattle artist with roots in the Black, Creole, and Cajun people of Louisiana, a place near the Cane River of intensely mixed cultures. This piece is called Do No More Violence to Women.
It honors the women of his family and all women as they stand up to violence in our society.

This is Marita Dingus’s well known work “Buddha as an African Enslaved” inspired by her visit to China in 1995 when she saw a gigantic Buddha statue. She chose to put work on a lower floor so that Roosevelt Lewis could be prominent in the main space. Her sculpture is experienced from a very close perspective as you walk down a narrow hall. I think it is hard to appreciate it from such a close perspective, but you can see in detail the way that she uses recycled materials.

Black History Month. Yes, it is true that we still need it. Our society does not yet have an integrated public discourse. So lots of focus on African Americans this month is providing us with some important insights, especially in the age of Obama. I have been hearing on our community radio station a lot of discussion by middle class black professionals about Obama. They are suggesting that he show more spunk and stand up to the pressures on him. Of course, they support him, but they wish he would be willing to be more of a leader and drop all of the bipartisan emphasis. I see Obama as surrounded by incredibly powerful forces. We can’t expect him to change everything single handedly. We have to get out and shout for what we want. No more war, single payer health care, peace in the Middle East. Black man in the white house or white man in the white house, we still have to get out and shout. These exhibitions remind us of how much of our country’s heritage is hidden from sight. So are many of our good ideas. We can’t let the oligarchy or the tea party make off with our real identity as an energetic, diverse society.