Marc Estrin : GWOT Love

Dedication ceremony for the Vermont Global War on Terror Memorial on Veterans Day, 2010, at the Vermont Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Randolph Center, Vt. Photo by Alison Redlich / AP.
GWOT LOVE

By Marc Estrin / The Rag Blog / November 14, 2010

BURLINGTON, Vermont -- I hear on the news this Veterans Day that our thankfully exiting governor -- cynically known as Governor Scissorhands for all his ribbon cutting -- will be dedicating a new memorial to our Vermont dead in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The "Vermont Global War on Terror Memorial," planned and funded by the families of "Vermont's 36 Fallen Global War on Terror Heroes” to the tune of $350,000, is aimed at “marking both the sacrifice of those who served and the heartbreak of the loved ones left behind.”

A memorial to oneself?

The sculptor of the Memorial describes it thus:

In front of the field memorial stands a low sarcophagus etched with the names and representing the body of Vermont’s Fallen Patriots.

Surrounding the field memorial and sarcophagus are three semi-circular bench walls.

In the center of each bench wall stands a monolith. The monolith on the left is dedicated to all those from Vermont who have served in the Global War on Terror. It has a hand tooled War on Terror Service Medal. The monolith on the right is dedicated to the families of the fallen and the great sacrifices they have made. It has a hand tooled Vermont Patriot’s Medal. The monolith in the back has a bronze dedication plaque and expresses the pride and sorrow of the citizens of Vermont.

Together the three monoliths -- their family, their comrades and their fellow citizens stand as sentinels ready to guard the sacred honor of the fallen...

The Cemetery Advisory Board of the Vermont Veterans Memorial Cemetery has provided what they call “a reverent location at the entrance to the cemetery.”

The GWOT Memorial will be a lasting tribute to our Fallen Heroes who have made the "ultimate sacrifice" protecting our country and defending our freedom. They will not be forgotten.

It is hard to know where to begin reacting to all this. I cringe at the language -- bathetic, maudlin, soupy, cloying, schmaltzy, large-P Patriotic -- but the sentiments inscribed in this language are more problematical still.

A guy stopped by at our peace vigil last night and said, “My nephew got back from Iraq and blew his brains out. He couldn't deal with the stuff he had done -- killing civilians and all that.”

This, it seems to me, is a more accurate description of reality.

Our president, of course, made a typical Veterans Day pledge: “As long as I am Commander-in-Chief, I am going to do right by them [our veterans]. America will not let you down. We will take care of our own,” he said.

On the other hand, yesterday's release of the draft report from the President's Fiscal Deficit Commission has recommended establishing Veterans Administration health co-pays. From the report:

This option would increase out-of-pocket costs for veterans in Priority Group 5 -- those who do not have service-connected disabilities and whose income is below a VA-defined threshold. Currently, those patients pay no fees for inpatient or outpatient medical care. This option requires copayments for medical care provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs to these enrollees, saving 0.7 billion in 2014.

This, it seems to me, is a more accurate description of reality.

And today, Obama exhorted Congress to stop shooting down the deficit proposals before they have been studied.

If people are in fact, concerned about spending, debt, deficits and the future of our country, then they're going to need to be armed with the information about the kinds of choices that are going to be involved, and we can't just engage in political rhetoric.

A new rhetorical War on Political Rhetoric?

The question of supporting troops is a vexed one. It is true they have suffered -- but they have also caused much suffering. Which of the two do we support? Only the first while ignoring the second? The families too have suffered. But is part of their pain related to their own responsibility in sending their children off to kill and be killed in the interests of a governing elite? Do we support such sending off?

In any case, the language of the Vermont Global War On Terror Memorial is tired, empty, and ever less to any point. It perpetuates a sentimental, obscuring cloud-of-unknowing over the realities we currently face and must radically change.

[Marc Estrin is a writer, activist, and cellist, living in Burlington, Vermont. His novels, Insect Dreams, The Half Life of Gregor Samsa, The Education of Arnold Hitler, Golem Song, and The Lamentations of Julius Marantz have won critical acclaim. His memoir, Rehearsing With Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater (with Ron Simon, photographer) won a 2004 theater book of the year award. He is currently working on a novel about the dead Tchaikovsky.]

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Cuba: Encouraging Artists to Criticize the System

Cuba’s Minister of Culture Abel Prieto in Havana during an interview he granted La Jornada. Photo: Pablo Espinosa.
Cuba urges artists to be critical in order to defend the utopia, Abel Prieto says
By Pablo Espinosa

A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann. Originally published April 2, 2009.

This analytical spirit is often in line with our efforts to eliminate the very bureaucracy we have created, holds the Minister of Culture. We have managed to turn our capital city into a great art gallery, he tells La Jornada.

HAVANA -- Cuban Minister of Culture Abel Prieto stated in no uncertain terms that using art to criticize the system is indeed a revolutionary action nowadays. “We encourage the kind of critical, reflective art that helps find out where we go wrong and defend the utopia. When criticism is exercised from a position of commitment to the country, the outcome can be really productive”.

Interviewed by La Jornada a week into the 10th Havana Biennial, the senior official offers a preliminary assessment, speaks about sensitive topics and stakes out new directions for Cuban culture.

Q: What would be a preliminary assessment now that the 10th Biennial is in full swing?

“We are quite satisfied. A major goal has been met: turning Havana into a great art gallery. It’s a principle of our cultural policy to outsmart and democraticize any elitist approach to art. Still, our institutions are weak in the face of talent, whose strength, energy and demanding nature are beyond our real institutional ability.

“That we sometimes find ourselves crippled to operate by financial problems and a marked lack of resources is a crude reality we can’t deny. When you add it all up you realize this Biennial was put together cent by cent and working wonders. Some friends who know about it told us, ‘Hey, you need millions to organize a thing like this’…”

A FORUM OF RADIATING POVERTY

“This is a biennial of poverty,” Abel Prieto continues, “of radiating poverty, like [late Cuban writer José] Lezama Lima said, and I mean it as a good and positive quality.

“And it’s precisely the field of visual arts where we are worst stricken, because our institutions lack the financial means to put artists on the great market.

“However, artists like Kcho, for instance, acknowledge that the Havana Biennials have been a launch pad for the main Cuban artists in the last 20 years.”

Q: Is it in the nature of this Biennial to promote alternatives to a market-oriented art?

“One of the Biennial’s principles is to provide a choice to dealership and the frequent occurrence of fraud, since some works receive a lot of publicity and become highly successful even if they have almost no artistic value.”

Q: How significant is the presence in this Biennial of U.S. artists and their works of political criticism?

“It puts symbolic pressure on Obama’s government and its hostile blockade and policy. There’s a whole movement of artists and cultural representatives in the U.S. who oppose any barrier to cultural exchange, even powerful people who hold important positions in show business.

“Unfortunately, as you know, Joe Biden said a few days ago that the blockade will remain. We expect no big changes in the U.S. policy on Cuba, but at least the exhibition Chelsea visits Havana raises a symbolic flag after years of silence under Bush. Many U.S. actors used to come before, such as Jack Nicholson, Robert de Niro, Steven Spielberg, etc. The Cuban National Ballet traveled every year to the States, and so did the music group Los Van Van. At a disadvantage, of course, since neither [Cuban prima ballerina] Alicia Alonso’s company nor [Cuban singer and composer] Juan Formell’s band could be paid for what they did, a drawback to the Cuban artists but a cultural exchange after all.

“There was a Havana Biennial attended by three thousand American artists. Bush nipped that in the bud by denying them further visas. He even had the passports of Irakere’s founder Chucho Valdés and Los Van Van’s director Juan Formell stamped with an insane caption that says something like they are dangerous to the national security of the United States. That’s how far he took his paranoid hatred.

“That’s why Chelsea visits Havana is such an important exhibition: it’s a first for U.S. culture in the post-Bush era. Here in Cuba we always stress the fact that we feel no contempt for the American people or their artists, quite the opposite.”

HEALTHY REVOLUTIONARY CRITICISM

Q: An outstanding fact of this Biennial is the presence of the Cuban artist Tania Bruguera with her Cátedra de Arte Conducta (Studies in the Art of Behavior), made up of very young figures whose work levels harsh criticism at the Cuban system. Is that openly critical spirit encouraged or tolerated?

“A critical, analytical art that rekindles society’s time-honored, avant-garde spirit of changing things, people and the environment is visible not only in Tania’s project, but in general among our young artists.

“It’s a healthy thing, this criticism from positions of commitment to the Revolution which is very often in line with our efforts to be more efficient and eliminate the bureaucratic snags we have put up ourselves.”

Q: There are works in this Arte Conducta Workshop where Fidel Castro is portrayed as one of those plush animals you can "fish" for some coins from vending machines in shopping malls and the glorification of Cuban athletes is shown to be nothing but an utilitarian tendency to treat them like objects. Is that also a tolerated or a fostered practice?

“Those artworks sprung from Arte Conducta have a demystifying purpose which proves very attractive to young artists. But there’s a downside, like the provocation on Sunday evening during Bruguera’s performance when this famous bloger-girl Yoani Sánchez took the microphone and made a speech against the Revolution. She said the Internet was a chink in the wall of Cuban censorship.

“She talked about something we deem important: to provide a proper framework to receive that kind of art. But it happens that we in Cuba are under constant surveillance by a media bent on distorting reality on a regular basis. The Sunday events were used by unscrupulous individuals and the Florida-based newspapers.

“That’s one of the topics addressed by this critical art in Cuba, which we promote in order to fuel reflection and pinpoint our flaws, so that it helps us defend the utopia.

“When you exercise criticism as Tania Bruguera does, from a position of commitment to the country, the outcome can be really productive.”

Source / La Jornada

Thanks to Jeffrey Segal / The Rag Blog

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ART : The Writing's On the Wall

Charlie Halsey, co-founder of Alphabeta, stands in the graffiti store's art space. Photo by Margot Adler / NPR.
Brooklyn Store Celebrates The Art Of Graffiti
by Margot Adler / July 14, 2008

Graffiti has always had a double edge. Often reviled as a symbol of lawlessness and the deterioration of neighborhoods, it can also be a form of cultural and artistic awakening. There's even evidence of graffiti in ancient Ephesus in Greece and in ancient Rome.

"Who knows why people write on the wall, or where that instinct comes from," says Charlie Halsey, one of the founders of Alphabeta, a new Brooklyn-based community art space and event space that also sells graffiti art materials. "As far as I know, people have been writing graffiti since the dawn of mankind."

Alphabeta has only been open for three weeks — it's so new that it doesn't have a phone number or a Web site — but one New York City official is already sounding the alarm.

The store is a single room on Greenpoint Avenue in Brooklyn. It features a larger outdoor space where murals can be painted on high walls and painted over and over again. Inside, there are racks of T-shirts, spray-painted hats and boxes of deadstock sneakers that were popular with graffiti and hip-hop artists in the 1980s and 90s.

There are also locked metal cages to hold the aerosol cans that come in a wealth of colors, some imported from Europe. Halsey says the cages have to be locked as part of the fire code, because "any combustible materials have to be locked in metal cages."

New York City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. has made the eradication of graffiti a personal mission. Vallone says it's naive to believe the store will "cater to legal graffiti art, because there is just not enough of that to turn a profit." Vallone believes that only a small fraction of graffiti art is legitimate.

"Eighty-five percent of graffiti is just tags," says Vallone. "Another 10 percent is gang communication."

Councilman Vallone came of age in the 1970s, when graffiti was associated with New York's rising crime rate and the deterioration of neighborhoods. But recently, the Tate Modern Museum in London had graffiti artists paint the building.

Andrew Michael Ford, the director of the Ad Hoc Art Gallery in Brooklyn, says he knows street art has come of age when there are art shows like the one at the Tate:

"It sent a wave around the world that it's legitimate, relevant and people need to pay attention to it," says Ford, who adds that he believes graffiti art and other forms of street art will be appearing in more museums in the future.

The people who run Alphabeta want to ensure that the store is a success by riding that wave. Its founders hope that it will be as much an art space and event space as it is a store. To this end, Alphabeta has hosted five parties in its first three weeks of existence.

At a recent event, sponsored by the international graffiti art magazine Overspray, eight Austrian artists from the Inoperable Gallery in Vienna were doing "live" painting on three walls of the store's outdoor space. When asked what he was doing, an artist who goes by the name of Franke, said that what he does is only for fun, "and pure joy."

"The real graffiti artists," says Franke, "are in dictatorships, where writing on a wall is a courageous act. What I do is child's play. But a real graffiti artist risks a lot to make people think."

Source. / All Things Considered / NPR

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Chafed Texan in the Naked City : Too Many Boobs!

Boobs at Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C.
Says he'll videotape the evidence
By Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts / June 16, 2008

Washington is a town filled with boobs.

They're everywhere, from the bare-breasted ladies who decorate the fountain at Dupont Circle to the peekaboo statue in the Justice Department's Great Hall to the countless nudes in our museums. But while those of us who live here hardly blink at the public nudity, it can shock some of our visitors. Such was the case for Robert Hurt, who last week tried to add the issue of artistic indecency in the nation's capital to the platform of the Texas GOP.

"You don't have nude art on your front porch," the Dallas Morning News quoted the delegate as telling the platform committee at the state party convention. "So why is it important to have that in the common places of Washington, D.C.?"

Hurt, 54, a Kerrville, Tex., rancher and father of 14, told us in a phone interview he first came to Washington a decade ago for a gathering of the evangelical Promise Keepers on the Mall. "It was probably not much different than 'The Beverly Hillbillies' going to Beverly Hills," he joked. At the National Gallery, he was appalled to see statues of unclothed people. "I found it very inappropriate," he said. Returning a few years later, he discovered Arlington Memorial Bridge, flanked by the bare-chested figures of Valor and Sacrifice.

"The Lady Godiva thing -- that's what it conjured up, and that's not what our country's about," he said.

Hurt notified his elected officials of his concerns but believes nothing was done. While he said he respects free speech, "I believe art affects a country indirectly. I have been studying the decline of morals in this country. It's sending the wrong message to children that nudity is fine, that nakedness is fine. . . . There are degrees of vulgarity, and it opens up the door for the other stuff."

The platform committee did not adopt Hurt's recommendation on Washington nudity (nor his proposal to extend the 22nd Amendment -- presidential term limits -- to spouses). But Hurt said he'll pursue the issue, possibly with another trip here to videotape the evidence. "I'm not going to stop until I succeed. I'm prepared for a long fight."

Source. / washingtonpost.com

Thanks to Carol Petrucci / The Rag Blog

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