The A Word

I’ve been reading Eugene Sledge’s “With the Old Breed”, his memoirs of his WWII experience in the Pacific theatre of war: its one of the touchstones for Tom Hanks’ series “PACIFIC”, and I can attest to its force, filth and fury. The Pacific was bloodier than Europe: you can blame that on racism on both sides, or that it was just the road that would lead to the only use of Atomic weapons against a civilian populace…(in wartime, I should qualify…where are those used core rods left, again?)

Amanda Cachia’s curatorial venture – or the first half of it – Diabolique, is at the College building gallery at the U of S, and her words about the show will explain my “digression”: “Diabolique raises intense concerns regarding the impact of violence, war and human conflict. This exhibition is an electric mix of social and political statements, evocative scenes and narratives that pose disturbing, puzzling, grotesque and surreal questions about human capacities for violence.”

There are some amazing works in this show, by some incisive and brilliant artists, well known, or less familiar. There are “names” – Douglas Copeland being the best known to a Canadian audience – but his work in this is a good entry to this show – disturbing, beautifully executed, and Art that, to quote the late Bob Boyer, is the making of beautiful objects that are meaningful objects, as well. That is a perfect, concise encapsulation of the works in Diabolique: and a pretty good working definition of ART, so all the nasty emails from “artists” I receive, please begin your argument from THAT point. Marks will be deducted otherwise: failure IS an (repeated) option.

Copeland’s gigantic toy soldiers, massive military green “plastic”, is terror wrapped in humour: at the opening, myself and several other men of similar age spoke of having these toys, and making “super soldiers” with matches, molding and melding them together. The huge “anti – memorial” seems to suggest the frenetic madness of war (arms and legs and heads jostling, in all directions), the abuse and exploitation of “patriotism” that we’re indoctrinated with young: or, as I have to say “so long” to a friend shipping out to Afghanistan, I’ve stopped asking him why we’re really there – or what he might die for, or whom, or why. I can’t refrain from saying he never stopped “playing soldiers”.

Many works play with the contradiction of beautifully executed pieces with horrifying sensibilities: South African William Kentridge has a work here, that in terms of its activity and ingenuity of construction can make you forget that you’re looking at a scene that traces its lineage back to Goya’s “Horrors of War”. The image that you’ve become most familiar with is most likely Jake & Dinos Chapman’s decapitated head, like a spoil – and spoiling – trophy of war. The putrid nature of the head is defied by the nature of its construction: it won’t really “spoil”, but stay with us…longer than the idea that mighty tongues tell mighty lies. There is a significant international flavour to the artists in this half of Cachia’s show, and this is important as its easy to ignore something when its not HERE: a conversation I had with an Phd student from the Middle East, the night of Obama’s election, was educational in that the major factors of his country and his life had not changed, would not change, and in fact, “change” was something that only happened in other places…

Jake & Dinos Chapman, from Diabolique

The video work to the side of the gallery, perhaps as a balance to Kentridge at the opposite end, follows regular people during the Iranian revolution of 1979 and beyond, making all the events there personal and so much more meaningful…..like we might understand October 1917 through Zhivago and Lara, not as “market forces” and “collateral damage” or other indifferent neo liberal / neo con bullshit that is impersonal and remote to us and defies any responsibility– or that might be us, in different circumstances. After all, I’m pretty sure the same people who think their oil is under Iraq, think their oil is under us, too.

Oh, and in case you think this doesn’t happen here, there is a strong contingent that comments on this Canada – and Saskatchewan: Dana Claxton, or in the second half of Diabolique, we’ll have Rebecca Belmore, and David Garneau – the latter’s portrait of the late Neil Stonechild has been a focal point in coverage of this show on a national level, but here, in this place, it will resonate, and echo some of the same ideas introduced in the first half, but on a deeply personal, deeply Saskatchewan, level. And I might end that its interesting how easily and seamlessly Aboriginal artists here can speak to notions of war, genocide and repression……oh, but we don’t have a history of colonialism here, do we?