Interesting article plus multimedia in the New York Times last month about a show of the Ceausescu Collection in Romania’s Bucharest’s National Museum of Contemporary Art.  The paintings were all hung at angles or low to the ground to so the show is not interpreted as a tribute.

Romania Shrugs Off Reminder of Its Past (article)
From the Ceausescu Collection (multimedia)

Walks in the West Bank

The Palestinian author Raja Shehadeh looks back on years of walks in the hills of the West Bank. (A video article by the New York Times on Raja Shehadeh, a Lawyer who represents Palestinians in Israeli Land  courts and the founder of Al-Haq, a human rights group, his latest book Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape is about changes in theWest Bank told through the 6 walks he has been doing in that area in the last 30 years.)

Waltz with Bashir (2008) (youtube trailer)
A new animated documentary film by Ari Folman that tells the story of the Isreali’s siege into Lebanon in 1982. The story is told through the directors attempt to piece together the haunting events of those tense months through memory, dreams, other soldiers accounts, and ultimately with real footage.
Waltz with Bashir -Youtube trailer
Waltz with Bashir -official website

Battle of Orgreave (2001) by Jeremy Deller . Documentary by Mike Figgis.

The Battle of Orgreave was a re-enactment of one of the most violent confrontations of the 1984/5 miners strike, when police mounted a cavalry charge through the mining village of Orgreave in south Yorkshire. This documentary of the event is by Mike Figgis.
A Mike Figgis Film of Jeremy Deller’s The Battle of Orgreave performance. (<–this link will launch Windows Media player)
Jeremy Deller’s website. /ArtAngel info sheet.

Meet Big Dog, designed by Boston Dynamics for DARPA. One blogger called it “amazing”, I call it creepy. When I was young I used to fantasize about a future flourishing with robots in all shapes and sizes, but during these wartime years here in America I feel less comfortable with our military’s effort to sanitize war by leaving the dirty work to robots (along with the already active mercenary groups and independent war contractors).

Dirty work drones have been in use now for some time, carrying out assassination missions in many part of the world. By their standards, some of the robot mission are considered “successful”, meaning they killed the person they were hunting, while other not so glorious missions tell eery stories like this one in the UK’s Guardian of innocent villagers’ homes being blasted to pieces in the middle of the night, like this case in Pakistan where 18 villagers were killed, including 4 children. Just Google Preditor Drone and countless other stories will pop up.

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4 of the last post here at Bureaux have been about war, so we decided to end the week with another, this one for the robotics and ethical design debate.

“DARPA’s Robot Dog Project”, Defense Industry Daily, July 2007

More of the war-focused designs by Boston Dynamics can be found on their website.

In December 2001, Dean Kamen unveiled his latest invention, The Segway, a two wheeled battery powered scooter that can take people -umm- around the block and back? Not much more efficient than the other two wheeled invention called the bicycle. Many people still see them on the street or on TV and are befuddled by it’s awkwardness.

A couple of months before the Segway is released, American and British forces invade Afghanistan in retaliation for the Sept. 11th bombings, the day is October 7, 2001.

Two years later, March 20, 2003, with the war still being fought in Afghanistan, US decided to invade Iraq. The events that unfold still continue to change the course of world history.
Still the Segway slow to ship at with it’s hefty price tag, $6,000, where do you park it? At the end of 2003, Segway recalled the 6,000 units sold because of power/safety issues, a technological glitch that only made matters worse given that they company projected that they would sell 50,000-100,000 that year.

Fast forward 2008, we’ve been at war for 7 years now. The two wars are still raging, draining life from Iraq, from Afghanistan, from America, despite the lies and lack of progress. A conundrum, a pretzel. Can you fast forward war? I’m sure a great many Americans would love to tiVo the whole thing, fast forward and erase. I’m digressing -sort of, however remote these two diverging stories do eventually collide… in this CNN video report, Segway comes to the service of returning amputee veterans… On the surface technology seems to have saved the day again, but I don’t think that’s the end of it.

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Stories linked in this post:

“Amputee vets see eye-to-eye on Segways” by Paul Courson
May 5, 2008 CNN Video

“Segway sales haven’t transported maker” by Dawn Kawamoto
Sept 29, 2003, C|Net News

If you haven’t see the film “The Killing Fields” since it came out in the eighties, perhaps now would be an appropriate time. Dith Pran, the photojournalist and war prisoner who’s story is told by the film has passed away March 31st from cancer just as the Cambodian War Crime Tribunal gears up for a heart wrenching search for truth and justice. 5 top war criminals are being tried in the Khmer Rouge “Year Zero” genocide were an estimated 1.7 million people were killed.

After watching the DVD with bonus material I learned about the rather ironic death of Haing S. Ngor, the actor who played Dith Pran in “The Killing Fields”. Haing S. Ngor, who was a prisoner of war himself and found it difficult to reenact some of the scenes, eventually made a new life for himself in the US but in 1996 was shot to death in an attempted robbery. He escaped the grasp of the Khamer Rouge only to die in a country who still believes that we should be allowed to bear arms.

Sydney H. Schanberg, his partner is still alive.

New York Times article has many more photos of and by Dith Pran and a very recent interview at his bedside. “Dith Pran, Photojournalist and Survivor of the Killing Fields, Dies at 65″ by Douglas Martin, March 21, 2008

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Upsetting fact of living in the U.S.A.: If you attend a college in Utah you can now carry a concealed weapon, with the proper license of course. In 2006 Utah Supreme court allowed guns on college campuses. The opinion is guns in the hands of law abiding citizens can save lives. The CNN report Right to Bear Arms on Campus?

After reading and listening to a few accounts of new Hamas-made hole-in-the-wall that separates Gaza and Egypt, I couldn’t help but notice the many flexible uses of concrete in the area, depending on which story you read in the New York Times…

Here Steven Erlinger reports the brighter more optimistic uses…

Muhammad Mowab, 22, a student and barber, bought a cartload of cement for $5.40 a bag, compared with $81 now in Gaza, where Israel has banned importing cement except for specific humanitarian projects. “I’ve been waiting a year to get married, so I can build a house,” he said, then laughed. “Now there are no more excuses.” – “Palestinians Topple Gaza Wall and Cross to Egypt”, By Steven Erlanger, New York Times, January 24, 2008

Next day, he sites the mournful uses…

And many Gazans simply wanted to buy fresh milk and feta cheese and fill canisters with diesel fuel, gasoline, motor oil and cooking oil. Some bought the cement needed to make concrete for sealing the graves of their loved ones, which they have had to try to protect with paving stones, metal and boards. “More Business Than Pleasure for Hurried Palestinians”, By Steven Erlanger, New York Times, January 25, 2008.

Later that same day, he sites the criminal uses for cement, this view not his own or from an interviewee, but a statement from Israel.

Hamas gunmen could be seen quietly taking delivery of hundreds of bags of cement. Israel has sharply restricted cement imports to Gaza, even for aid projects, because it says Hamas diverts the supply to build fortified tunnels and emplacements for use against any major Israeli military action. -“Tens of Thousands More From Gaza Enter Egypt Seeking Consumer Goods”, By Steven Erlanger, New York Times, January 25, 2008.

I began to wonder if Steven Erlanger was the only guy reporting from the Gaza?? A couple of days later, on January 28th, I heard a radio report on the BBC that was similar to his Steven Erlanger’s first report, it had an interview with a Palestinian, in the interview the Palestinian was excited about purchasing cement from Egypt to repair his home, again stating that it might attract a wife. (I couldn’t find the link to the story because the BBC’s website has the WORST search capabilities, but if you heard it too, email us the link)

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Image above, a more innocent use of concrete at the Laguna de San Gabriel cement playground in California, circa 1960. Even here, American’s have found a danger to this use…(read rest of that report on NPR “Residents Unite to Save Concrete Animal Park” by Jennifer Sharpe)

A couple of nights ago we bumped into artist Paul Chan at a mini film festival of Apichatpong Weerasethakul at Anthology Film Archives.* I remember having read that he had just completed a production of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” in collaboration with the Classical Theater of Harlem. At that time I was hoping to see the play, the only problem was that it wasn’t being performed in some alternative performance space in New York City but in an empty lot in New Orleans 9th Ward.

What does it mean to bring something like a play into a devastated landscape like New Orleans in a way in such that is becomes aesthetically interesting but locally sustainable?” – Paul Chan on producing/art directing Waiting for Godot, New Orleans 2007, Creative Time documentary video by Matt Wolf

The play was completed at the end of 2007, around the time when all of NYC art world was wheeling and dealing in Miami Basel, and to my understand it was successful in a way that it revived the spirit of the community. Their patience and hope was in some way rekindled.

This experience has been the most exciting of my life,” Pierce said. “This was the best of New Orleans, the humanity of New Orleans, all kinds of people coming together as one: 9th Ward residents, people who may never have been to the 9th Ward and everyone in between. New Orleans was one, unified in spirit. And I haven’t seen or felt that in a long, long time. For me, there were times when it wasn’t a play, it was so beyond the play… And theater did this! That’s what art is all about. Art is to the individual what thoughts are to the community. —Wendell Pierce, actor interviewed in Times-Picayune, November 10, 2007

Creative Time has since them created a micro site of the project complete with documentation of the concept and events that took place and continue to operate in the community such as the Shadow Fund for the rebuilding of the community. There is also a reader to accompany the entire event, so check back, it lightly references the Susan Sontag’s wartime production of “Waiting for Godot” in Sarajevo as being part of the reader.

I’m left wondering, where to next? He’d been to Baghdad in 2003 before the war**, at the Republican Convention in 2004***, and now in New Orleans 2007. One thing is for sure, where ever he goes you can count on him to keep his feet on the ground.
-AS

Creative Time Website: Paul Chan’s Waiting for Godot in New Orleans, A play in two acts, a project in three parts.

A Broken Tree. A City. Evening. “Waiting for Godot in New Orleans” review in the New York Times by Holland Cotter. Dec. 2, 2007.

UPDATES-
A taste of the play in NOLA from a reader:
http://www.nola.com/photos/t-p/index.ssf?GODOT_ptw/

Paul Chan is represented by Greene Naftali Gallery in New York City.

Coming up later this year the New Museum will be exhibiting “The 7 Lights“. April 9 thru June 29, 2008.
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Paul Chan, 5th Light, 2007. Digital video projection, 14 min. From Greene Naftali, New York. Photo by Jean Vong.

* Also at the event was Rirkrit Tiravanija, who coincidentally will also speaking at New Museum’s Night School along with Paul Chan and others.

**NYPL’s 2006 event: Paul Chan in conversation with Kathy Kelly on nonviolence and his work with Voices in the Wilderness. (Audio recording of the event available)

***Along with the Friends of William Blake, he produced a map for the “The Peoples Guide to the Republican National Convention” in New York City 2004, that map is still available as a PDF on Activist magazine’s website.

A rather odd video report on New York Times today highlighting the AK-47 machine gun as it turns 60 today. In the video, at what appears to be a celebratory conference honoring the AK-47, the Defence Attache to Zimbabwe and Vietnam are giving speeches that pay tribute to the gun in which they “see Freedom.” Makes sense in a very barbaric and twisted way. Being near guns just makes my hairs stand on end, having had unfriendly encounters with handguns I can’t imagine anyone wanting to celebrate it’s birth.
Also in the clip is Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the AK-47, recounting how in every village in Mozambique there are atleast a dozen children named Kalashnikov. It makes him proud as long as he doesn’t have to pay alimony, he says. Funny guy.

The AK-47 at 60
Russia’s Trademark Gun
By C. J. CHIVERS
July 15, 2007, NYTimes.com

Episode 1 of The Black Scorpion of Baghdad, a 7 part documentary that follows a heavy metal band Acrassicauda (l. black scorpion) in Baghdad after the US invasion with footage of concerts in and around war torn Baghdad.

It amazes me how simple it was for Suroosh Alvi and Eddy Moretti to enter Iraq without embassy visa approval. If you’re interested, they point out that there are chartered planes from Germany that can take you into the Kurdish airport sans problem, it’s getting from the Kurdish north to Baghdad that’s more than just a hop-skip-and a jump into the capital. And if you can afford $1500 a day, you can hire one of many private contractors to shuttle you in and out of the green zone, bullet proof vest included. (BYO bullet proof helmet) These guys are serious metal head roadies- kudos to Vice Mag.

At the time of writing, only episodes 1-4 are posted on the VBS The Black Scorpion video page. I think episode 5 is floating around on youtube is you search “Heavy Metal Baghdad”.

Vice TV (vbs.tv) is produced by Brooklyn’s own Vice Mag, the same fellows who brought you the Do’s and Don’ts book, a rude and crude toilet reader for the fashionista in all of us.

I bought this painting in a decrepit stairway just outside what is now know as the ‘green zone’ in Baghdad. I find dreamy women (and men) incredibly attractive. Yasser, the painter agreed. He also assured me that the man on the upper left corner was not Lenin. I bought it anyway.

There were many painters in Baghdad. Most painted pastorals. Others, portraits, like this one. But every once in a while, you’d see something escape, and think of Paul Klee, or Amy Sillman, or Lee Godie.

I don’t know where the painters get their paints now. They used to smuggle them in from Syria and Jordan. I don’t know where Yesser is either. Fuck.

Roughly two months before the American invasion of Iraq in March 20, 2003, artist Paul Chan went to Baghdad as a member of the Iraq peace team called Voices in the Wilderness. Since 1996, Voices in the Wilderness‘s mission is to ‘campaigned to end economic and military warfare against the Iraqi people.’ This commentary from Paul Chan is from the section Replay, the last page in Flash Art Magazine, Vol. XXXVII, No.241. March-April, 2005.