Joe Sacco Footnotes in Gaza

Joe Sacco is profoundly engaged with the experience of war in his new book. It is a major work of art, a telling of the Palestinian Israeli conflict from the ground in Gaza, a layering of time frames, a balance of personal ( not his experience, but that of fighters and families in Gaza) and political. I haven’t read the whole book yet. It is so important that I re-read most pages three times. First for the text, then for the images, then for the ideas. He alternates between large landscape scale images and close up heads of people he talked to, old fighters, survivors of massacres, from decades ago. Sometimes he has a sequence of smaller heads or a family scene. The scenes of families trying to live their lives in one room for twelve people, or having another child because the father may die are heartbreaking.

The stories that the old soldiers tell, of their house being invaded by Israeli soldiers in 1956 and the mass murder of young men, simply lined up in a square and shot, are horrifying. These men escaped through luck ( they didn’t quite die, when the Israelis shot them over and over, or they ran away), but so many didn’t. Sacco gives us the up close experience of war, hatred, civilian confrontation. Sacco offers no solutions, although he is obviously aware that these people are pawns in political power games, but in depicting the house on the inside, or in one case we are in the line up of the men about to be shot, or we are seeing the devestation from above, we are somehow there. Not really of course, but more than in a photograph, a novel, or a painting.

And I have only read the first 100 pages of 400 pages.

Joe Sacco came to Seattle to speak about his book. One friend of mine described his presentation well “he spoke with the precision of a diplomat, walking through a minefield with a book balanced on his head.” On my first impression, Sacco was understated and modest in his presentation, there was no heavy emotional load on the talk ( only one questioner said what we were all feeling, all the nightmare of the injustice). But then, I thought, he has so much in the book that he doesn’t need to be emotional, and if he were it would have killed him long ago.
His survival is based on his care. His care in research, in protecting his sources, in negotiating war zones, in his brilliant art.

This book is a must read. It is far more complex than his 1996 book Palestine, which was more personal and had moments of humor. This book is set deeply inside Gaza framed around two massacres that occured in 1956 in Gaza, in Khan Younis and Rafah, but giving us backwards and forwards the conditions on the ground for people in Gaza. It was completed before Operation Cast Lead, or at least that atrocity is not cited in the preface. But the devestation it depicts is the same as that of any military conflict of soldiers killing in villages.

The first shock was the image of people literally digging in the sand to find shelter in 1948 when the refugees first arrived. Then the image of them crossing over the lines of Israel to their former land and being called “infiltrators.” Then the fifties style development of housing by the UN, and now the seasoned soldiers who have fought continuously since the 1950s, understanding that the new battle today is beyond their human capabilities to fight, it is about the Israel/U.S. sheer technical killing power with machines.

Sacco wants to make sure that history is not entirely written by people who forget the early massacres that planted the seeds of hatred, as he puts it, quoting from one old man who was a child in the 1950s and saw his uncle die. As Sacco succinctly put it, it is as though the Battle of Britain has been going on continuously to the present day. There is no time for people to recollect, record, they have been in survival mode since 1948. He knows his book can’t really change anything. There are huge powers at work that he cannot affect. But at least we can all know more about the history of this horrible conflict, as the last escape hatch is being sealed by Egypt and Israel with a fence manufactured in the United States.

We all share in the war crimes. We are paying for the equipment. Our support for Israeli military operations this year is almost 3 billion.

Read this book. there are lots of reviews and discussions on line. Here is an example

Joe Feddersen’s Vital Signs

These are installation shots from Joe Feddersen’s exhibition “Vital Signs” which closes on Sunday at the Tacoma Art Museum. The exhibition sings with the artist’s poetry based on geometry and landscape. He celebrates ancient history as well as the contemporary land of today. The landscape of the Okanagan , shown in this detail of his wall mural of 500 separate pieces, is open and rugged. He refers to contemporary landscape destructions, like clearcutting, suggested in the brown triangles, and to geometric towers for the high tension wires that gallop across the open land in the center part of Washington State. The Okanagan is, for those who are driving to Spokane on the interstate freeway, a desolate empty landscape, made more desolate by the Grand Coulee Dam which was completed just after World War II. That dam destroyed the ancestral fishing streams of the Colville Indians, the Spokane Indians, and other tribes. There were no fish ladders at that time, the fish were completely unable to return to their spawning grounds.

Joe Feddersen is a Colville Indian. He comes from that land, it is part of him and his ancestors. After the dam was built, he worked for the power companies, a common occurance with Indians, whose only choice for a livelihood is the use of energy based on exploitation of their lands. But he knows those electrical towers, so when he includes them in a painting they are personal.

He has taught at Evergreen State College for the last twenty years and understands modernism, he understands color theory, his work draws on a sophisticated contemporary aesthetic, and materials- like the shining orange fish traps in glass, or the large vessels with reflective paint on which he has sand blasted the contemporary designs of parking lots and tire treads. In the exhibition he has also included some traditionally scaled woven baskets with tire track designs. He is commenting out of a deep silence and reverence, he accepts the present land, but he reminds us of where we come from, and suggests where we are now. He does not predict the future.

The exhibition has a curiously calming effect, as though we have gone into the landscape to meditate. I could feel his energy flowing through the exhbiition, as the various media, scale, colors, and geometries interacted. He is a master printmaker, a weaver, an artist of sand blasted glass. His connection to time immemorial is moving through all of the works. They are objects for sale now, not integrated with daily use, but they speak of their former functions. Since natives see our relationship to nature, to history, to prehistory, to each other, to animals as all part of a continuous non hierarchical flow of energy, these paintings and other objects suggest that idea as well. Abstract modernism has been re energized with its real sources of power in ancient abstractions.

And a tribute to the Gaza Solidarity marchers

From 42 countries 1300 people came to honor the nightmare of Gaza and the Egyptian government closed the border at Rafah, the only point into Gaza not controlled by Israel. Some are on hunger strike in Jordan. We are all with them. Last year there were marches all over the world in support of the horrors of the Operation Cast Lead. This year people have gone there in support, spurred on by a call from Code Pink and other groups, but are being barred from entering. Protest in NYC . Michael Ratner spoke of the fundamental violation of human rights by Israel in Gaza. He went to Gaza with his family. Currently a few hundred people from the international delegation were allowed to enter, but it was regarded as not enough and an effort to divide the delegation. Thousands gathered on either side to honor the dead and to call for an end to the blockade. In Cairo Freedom Marchers were brutally attacked by the police.

Honor the Iranians

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y98r5CVP7U
There are several moving slide shows on You Tube of which I am giving a link to one. The photographer Farhad Rajabali has courageously signed some of his photographs. We see so many different people. It is incredible that Ahmadinejad can attribute their activism to Israel and US who have every reason to keep the current government in place as an easy enemy to target.

On this New Year’s Eve we must honor the young Iranians who are showing so much courage in protesting the fascist regime in Iran. It no longer has anything to do with religion, it is a police state. These young people are resisting on so many levels.

Do we have the courage to do that in this country? It is striking to compare the police confrontation in Iran with the one in Copenhagen, young people being arrested by police. But behind those police uniforms are mostly more young people. And in Iran there are also the Basijis the young paramilitaries in the pay of the government who beat up their contemporaries.

The People’s Summit in Seattle and Climate Change in Copenhagen

Two weeks ago in Seattle there was a group of people who were preparing for Copenhagen – they were looking back to N30 ten years ago in Seattle and looking to the future planning for the planet. Alli Chagi -Starr told us about her Art and Revolution Another World is Possible Road Show that promoted the anti globalization protest in Seattle. That is her giant puppet above from the original Seattle anti globalization protests. It represnets an corporate octopus that has been muzzled. There were dozens of giant puppets there.

Dena Hoff as a farmer talked about La Via Campesina, the international peasants movement for food sovereignty, a group that is in Copenhagen joining the mass actions as seen in this image

Also speaking was Jihan Gearon of the Indigenous Environmental Network. Jihan is a young woman who is with that group’s Energy and Climate Program and networks with tribal nations to give them support for better solutions and green economic opportunities (instead of the historical opportunities for indigenous peoples to destroy themselves and their culture through accepting jobs in mining coal, oil, and uranium on the reservations). Jihan is talking about where we are now. As she said, we are all going to have to face the lies: we cannot buy our way out and we cannot stop climate change without changing our lifestyle. We must move away from greenwashing ( like carbon offsets) and toward protecting what we have left. The Indigenous Environmental Network is much in evidence in Copenhagen. Thank goodness. They really know what they are talking about. One of the big campaigns is against Tar Sands in Canada.Watch this amazing video. There was a die in in Montreal. to support them.

It is hard to believe how violently the UN and the Danish police are treating both protestors and legitimate participants in the Climate Change conference. This bear is from the Backbone Campaign in Seattle, but the fact that thousands of protestors are being arrested and legitimate groups like Friends of the Earth International are being expelled from the conference, is hard to understand. Could the UN be afraid of the people of the world?

Olivia Zaleski has some good posts about the conference covering youth, grassroots organizing, and exactly how the anarchists were simply a small group who were intentionally disruptive.within thousands of peaceful protestors Amy Goodman has interviewed NNimmo Bassey, Nigerian leader of Friends of the Earth International as he was being expelled from the conference. Today was a plan to “Reclaim Power”.

Is this what it has come to, complete alliance with corporate interests and despoiling the environment? And what about Denmark, it has entirely lost its image as a happy place with socialist leanings ( it was pretty shaky already after the incident of the Mohammed comic book a couple of years ago). We see fascist looking police beating up and putting plastic cuffs on protestors, preemptively arresting thousands. This is incredible. The future of the earth is obviously in the hands of the corporations who have no concern at all except their own profits. They don’t seem to get the fundamental principle that the earth is finite.

Roger Shimomura and other shows

Roger’s artistic facility with different vocabularies is also astonishingAs seen in the other painting here, American Portrait no 2, 2002, Shimomura can play with traditional Japanese images, Walt Disney cartoon types, Marvel superhero comics, formalist principles, and all arranged in amazing compositions that are far more complex than they appear to be. This composition with its boxes within boxes and the idea of a may different types of stereotypes juxtaposed to the Kabuki actor playing a warrior from Ukiyo e prints ( is this an “authentic” stereotype?), is all by itself worth a long analysis.I highly recommend Jen Graves article in the Stranger as a great review.

 

Bumbershoot How Times Change

I am finishing my book, so my blog has taken a back seat, but I must write a quick note about Seattle’s art festival Bumbershoot 09. I have loved going to this arts festival since I moved to Seattle in 1998. But it certainly has changed. It used to be full of informal creativity, clowns, the amazing spoon man, acrobats, magicians, simply moving through the festival. There was an entire paviilion for publishers and literary readings lasted all weekend.

Now we have high tech spectacles like Flexion by Wise Fool of New Mexico ( muscle acrobatics) and Rockstar Energy Drink Vert Ramp ( skateboarding ). They were big machines . Man and Machine. Also there were lots of other techie booths. The arts and crafts which used to be a highlight have declined dramatically. A few survivors include my favorite hat store, but most of them are not too interesting. That is probably because of the increased cost of a booth has shut out all but rich people, and people who sell well are usually less aesthetic ( I shouldn’t generalize like that, but I can’t help the facts on the ground, the jewelry and clothing was less individually interesting to me).
Literary arts are now simply a few readers and a small display from the Unviersity Book Store. Granted the readers were in a big theater, but the numbers are small. And guess what they were all white people. Whoops. They were funny, talented and in some cases amazing, as in the case of Tara Hardy, who is really formidable. But is spoken word poetry a type of white rap??

The creative performances that I saw were terrific, but they were all really professional! Like Bach’s 40 Goldberg Variations performed entirely by heart by an amazing pianist named Francoise Papillon, accompanied by Mark Haim ( here is one dance) and assorted other dancers ( apparently Jerome Robbins did dances to Goldberg variations, but they costumes were not modern, Improvised Shakespeare, and Performance Space 122 from New York City.

Thank goodness for Greg Lundgren!. He brought back grass roots creativity with his Vital 5 projects. He believes that “our ability to communicate through art is what defines us as human” according to his web site.
He had people dressing up for photographs in random creative clothing,

designing buildings in cut out paper

and a documentation of a third project, making an art work in a shopping cart. They were all in the context of his “Dada Economics” which is one of many projects that he pursues, in this case, random financial awards, that encourage ordinary people to be creative.

A puppet show

At the recommendation of a friend of mine, I went to see the Puppet Show at the Frye Art Museum. It came from the ICA in Philadelphia and co curated by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School. So naturally I expected something political. As usual when looking for politics in mainstream interpretations, I was deeply disappointed.
What an odd show, and an odd interpretation of the importance of puppets. The show had an historical segment, with no labels and no explanation at least in the Frye showing. I think maybe there are some labels in this picture from the ICA
Then it had a big room of hot contemporary artists that we are familiar with, lots of videos and sculpture.
The explanation for the broad inclusion of big name artists was that they “evoke topics associated with puppetry such as manipulation, miniaturization and control” OK, so you see where this is going. First we have a lack of historical information, then we have a focus on technique, rather than topic. Then the next sentence of the gallery blurb said “Perhaps it is the puppet’s power as an allegorical object that makes it so relevant and liberating.In a time when communication seems increasingly mediated and individual agency diminished, puppets abstract the drama, mysteries, anxieties and personas we might all project onto a shared stage.”

The key word here is “abstract”. That is of course not the point of puppets at all. It is perhaps the point of the contemporary art by Louise Bourgeois, Annette Messager, and other contemporary sculptures, but puppets are about politics, about speaking truth to power, about saying exactly what you think. They are not about miniaturization, but about creating a parallel universe that is very political. It can also be mythical, romantic, and historical, aesthetic, and really, really funny.
They also tell stories. Fun stories with second dark meanings. But none of those basic ideas are present in either the show or the gallery discussion.

In spite of all efforts to obfuscate and play the abstract card, there was some great work by William Kentridge including his seminal collaboration with The Handspring Puppet Company from 1994 in Johannesburg called”Ubu and the Truth Commission.” It was about the Truth and Reconcialition Commission. This was worth sitting through entirely.
The Survival Ressearch Laboratories also had an odd early piece of robots and lots of conflagration from the summer following the World Trade Center attacks. It seemed like a statement about contemporary society to me, but a little too Terminator and Hollywood.
There were some other videos like Kara Walker’s that I have seen before, with the usual Walker issue. Does it perpetuate racist stereotypes, or offer horrifying revelations of sexual assualt during slavery. An article in recent analysis I have read suggested that Walker needed to see a therapist.
And of course the main idea of a puppet being manipulated by some higher power is always something to think about, except for us activists, who want to get people moving, not have the idea that we are all pawns in a bigger picture where we are not holding the strings.
But puppets are really political, they are not games, they are not really passive. We pick up the controls ourselves, it is a populist art of resistance. That was missing of course.
Where was Bread and Puppet Theater for example.
What about puppet traditions like Karagoz that include both Turkey and Greece and which is full of ancient stories with modern resonance.
What about Indonesia where puppets are a central art form.
What about actually engaging with the history of puppets, rather than contemporary artists with name ID who really have nothing to do with it, or who do feeble spin offs from Sesame street(Christian Jankowski) that are more aggravating than important..

The contradiction of life and death

I am seared by the contradictions of life and death. On the one hand I have a beautiful new baby grandchild and a lovely 19month old grandson who is still innocent of the world, but expanding his skills everyday. On the other hand, I am living in a country that funds death and war as its first priority, cuts human services as the most dispensable government services, supports bankers at every opportunity. It stimulates the economy with road building and car buying. Where is the drastically new thinking that is necessary for all of our children’s and grandchildren’s futures????

To try to do something I am joining a lobbying campaign to try to convince our US representatives to stop funding death and destruction by Israel against the Palestinians. In the Gaza offensive there were massive violations of international law 13oo people killed, 5500 people injured, 4000 buildings destroyed. From January 2001 – November 2008 Israel killed 2086 Palestinian Citizens not taking part in hostilities. Of those 723 were children under 18.
And of course that is only one place that our tax dollars are killing people.

It is unbelievable that the US people are so inhumane, so stupid, so oblivious, that we go on spending billions and billions for killing human beings all over the planet. The birth of one human being is a miracle, the death of one human being by the murder that we call war is horrifying. But the level of our world wide killing and training for killing, as well as our torturing in prisons both in the US and elsewhere is psychotic. I have to accept that our smiling facade masks the soul of a serial killer.
So please join the campaign to End the Occupation campaign to talk to Congressman in August to call for a change in our policy. Join the campaign to sanction Israel. modelled on the plan to end Apartheid in South Africa.
There are also major efforts to activate artists to get involved with this campaign to inform people about Palestine. A recent article in the New York Times stated that Hamas is prioritizing culture over throwing bombs.
There is a campaign for artists to help end the occupation.
Everything makes a difference.

New Grand Baby Eleanor with her mother and her father and her brother Max

The complete miracle of new life is astounding. This is Eleanor at three hours old. Big brother Max is now 19 months. They seem to be getting along so far.