SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2007
Mobile Aesthetics & Social Movements: Thinkspace
1 – 3 p.m. Polycentric sessions and screenings, San Francisco
Art Institute, Lecture hall and classrooms
Back to Beginning
WTF: The Exhibition
“Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: Word from Iraq”
was an audio/visual exhibition of the images and stories of soldiers
serving in Iraq. It sought total transparency. The visual aspect of
the exhibition came in the form of 12 floor-to-ceiling murals that,
when viewed from a distance, presented benign or, at least, familiar
images of war. As visitors approached the murals, they realized they
were actually looking at photo mosaics composed of over 5,000 individual
images from soldiers, media and government sources. The only criteria
imposed on their selection involved achieving balance between negative
and positive, triumph and tragedy, human and hardware, soldiers and
civilians. They were randomly assigned according to shape, tone and
color. They were presented without spin, interpretation, judgment or
politics. The exhibition celebrated the courage and acknowledged the
sacrifices made by the men and women serving in Iraq, but did not offer
any observations, opinions or judgments about the war. Instead, it forced
visitors to form their own conclusions about the realities the soldiers
experienced. The audio portion of the exhibition featured readings of
soldiers’ letters, stories and online journals (milblogs). Again,
the object was to gain a better understanding of what soldiers are experiencing
in Iraq.
Soldiers have always been reluctant to share
their experiences – either for security reasons or because they
have no desire to relive the experience. Many argue: “If you haven’t
been there, you couldn’t possibly understand”. Of course,
they’re right. Stripped of the racism, romanticism and sectarianism,
what happens in war is violent, ugly and generally incomprehensable.
However, if those who have been there refuse to talk about it, how can
the rest of us possibly understand? Some wars may be necessary, but
all wars result in death and destruction. Speaking of a distant and
too often forgotten war, Wilfred Owen put it this way:
If in smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick
of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues
–
My friend, you would not tell with such high
zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro Patria mori.[4]
Soldiers also complain that the media misinterprets,
misrepresents or distorts what is happening in its coverage of wars.
Again, how can we hope to avoid war if the news media sanitizes it and
the entertainment media romanticizes it? If our only impressions of
war come second hand from sources that have ulterior motives (whether
commercial or political), how can we understand?
For a short time in the current war, this seemed
to change. Milblogs were created to address soldiers’ complaints
about mass media coverage of the war. In effect, they eliminated the
media and gave soldiers direct access to those who get their news online.
With direct access, milblogs also threatened the military’s ability
to control information about the war. Ironically, what began as an effort
to present a more balanced or “positive” view was considered
a threat to security. In a series of operational security directives,
severe restrictions were placed on milbloggers.[5] According to Matthew
Burden, one of the earliest and best known milbloggers:
This is the final nail in the coffin for combat
blogging. No more military bloggers writing about their experiences
in the combat zone. This is the best PR the military has – its
most honest voice out of the war zone. And it’s being silenced.[6]
Of course, the military insists it's a question
of security.
The internet provides no limit on access to
information. Thus, in theory, a soldier posting a milblog could inadvertently
supply the enemy with details that could compromise an operation. However,
in practice, there is no question that the security measures take the
form of censorship; more intriguing, but difficult to prove, is the
possibility of political motivation. Because soldiers are now required
to clear their postings, the directives have stifled criticism of the
war.
As indicated, the exhibition did not make any
overt statement about the war. Visitors were left to form their own
opinions. We deliberately avoided offering personal opinions - out of
respect for the soldiers and visitors to the exhibition. We hoped to
avoid misrepresenting the former or misleading the latter. Instead,
we sought to confront visitors with an image that, when viewed from
a distance, offered comforting familiarity or suggestions of tragedy:
an American flag waving in a breeze (Old Glory), a soldier kissing a
letter (Letter), a soldier kissing his girlfriend (Kiss), a father embracing
his two daughters (Homecoming), a soldier with a tear running down his
face (Tear), Canadian soldiers carrying the flag-draped coffin (Canada),
a soldier carrying a dead baby (Baby), a soldier posing with a group
of children (Smiles), a group of Iraqi boys “mugging” for
the camera (Boys), a group of Iraqi girls posing shyly (Girls), Saddam
Hussein gesturing at his trial (Saddam), George Bush giving his “victory
wave” (Airbush).
These images served as the masters for the
large photo mosaics. They were taken by photojournalists or military
photographers and posted on the Internet. The selection was random –
other than that we were looking for images that worked aesthetically
and represented the media’s portrayal of the war. Obviously, the
selections were subjective and familiar to the point of being visual
clichés. They served as visual shorthand to help the “folks
back home” understand what is going on or, more importantly, to
accept a particular view of what is going on. They served to establish
and reinforce what Sun Tzu described as one of the five constants that
govern the art of war: “The Moral Law causes the people to be
in complete accord with the ruler, so that they will follow him regardless
of their lives, undismayed by any danger”. As such, they are propaganda.
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