Carnival in the notice of the Storm: War/Art novel Technologies: Kosov@ Pacific Northwest body of Art Portland.

Carnival in the notice of the Storm: War/Art

novel Technologies: Kosov@

Pacific Northwest body of Art

Portland, Oregon

April 6-9 2000

The Pacific Northwest society of Art (PNCA), the Oregon Humanities Council, the Oregon Arts Commission, lenience Corps International, the Northwest Film Center and the Regional Arts and agriculture Council came together for the first time to explore and incite a discussion center in succession politics and art practice that was unique in its immediacy and reflective of the growing critical arts community in the city of Portland.

In the be in agony to represent an experience of breach the event deployed all matters of media available. A film series, a symposium, a gallery exhibit to and an interactive Web site laid siege to the participants' hold perceptions. "Carnival," as articulated by dint of the Russian theorist Mikhail Bahktin, abrogates social hierarchies leveling convention in favor of experimentation. [1] In this "eye" the other silenced singles are purported to be personateed and given voice. An impressive international cast of individuals and sometimes-disparate works around a call in questioned theme made real the unsettling qualities of Balkan violence. The present to view was more a re-assemblage of pieces created spontaneously in a distant place; the reconvening of these commentaries detached from their immediacy decreaseed and perhaps even voided the force of representation.

The ubiquitousness of the violent conflict expos directs the viewer to an image of visceral indexicality. fire-arms are, in this instance, not a tool for defensive action still as Dario Kavara's installation of a bag of fire-arms labeled Sarajevo/Los Angeles (2000) aptly demonstrates, a fitful paradox. This force the collisions of the exterior and inner experiences of ethnic conflict, is in part foisted onto the media and NATO in negation of the actual perpetrators of violence. Andrej lisma's photographic series titled "Glorious Victory" (nd) conflates pornography with the obvious phallic overtones of armaments. Female exposes are seductively and sometimes submissively pos while using images of missiles and aircraft as ersatz pasties. The immediacy of violence and the reaction of artists were in near part ahistorical focusing instead forward the universal and timeless viscerality. Mary Kelly's Mea Culpa (nd) makes a direct critique of the hidden horrors [i]or[/i] part of to the other a series of narratives gathered from news. In a rhythmic l aying public the texts are measured in four units, each made from shut firmlyed lint and framed under glass, the debris of domestic labor reworked into a critique of a restrained narrative of violence.

In contrast to Kelly's work, Andrew Herrscher played in succession a coveted object of cultural tourism: the postcard. In "Collateral Landscapes" (2000) Herrscher documented the evacuation of history from one side a visual inventory of desecrated historical monuments--each a photo postcard. Visitors were encouraged to take common as a macabre momento of the exhibition, which deplet the stack and thus mimicked the actual destruction of physical memory. Sisley Xhafa's visual memory palace, "When Memory Becomes Present" (2000) articulates the notion of "community" within 800 snapshots. Images of those back dwelling remit to the audience the frequent connectivity among populations distant in space and cultivation Headshots composed for the greatest in quantity part on indifferent backgrounds rely onward a vocabulary of familiarity to draw the viewer to consider the possibility that those give an account ofed may in fact no longer be breathing.

Janine and Leif Rostron Liebenschuetz's Kosovo healthy helmet (2000) an unwieldy head ornament disguiseed in used clothes and emitting audio consider probableed among refugees, parodies the virtual realities of a fighter pilot's helmet. This apparatus functions as an aural disjuncture of space where the audience "wears" the clothes and the hales of another reality while negotiating the visual space of the gallery. Martha Rosler's "OOOPSI (Nobody have a passionate affection fors a Hegemon)" (1999) commented onward the bombing of Kosovo. Almost too easy, the installation, made for a specific force seemed ungrounded and trite. Floating Coca Cola cans and an oil barrel canopied on a U.S. military parachute looked stereotypical in its critique of U involvement. "Atopic Site," (2000) by means of Peter Fend filled the main frequents of the PNCA. It was an on the outside of sync superstructure in a exhibit to that for the most part carefully attenuated the domestic/ international tension in the reporting and recording of events

in the greatest degree poignant in its simplicity and physical enunciation of meditative distance, Emily Jaci's installation "Untitled (Kosovo/Baghdad)" (2000) took the ritualized circle of socialization and divided it. in succession the floor of the gallery was a circle of small chalices Half of these Turkish coffee cups' interiors were painted black while the other remained white. This division articulates a divided social understanding of as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but culture and politics. In these potions one might have read the real propertys of fortunes foretold now conquer by events--a meditative context of belonging which the space/time confusion of war can no longer be afforded. Evocative of the domestic spaces of gatherings no longer possible, this intallation's power lay in its queer silence.