Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen's Object Lesson: Frames of War

Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen. Object Lesson: Frames of War

There is a whole spectrum of art pieces made from confiscated items looted from high-traffic places like airplane security checkpoints. These projects examine the items that naturally accumulate in particular circumstances, foregrounding the material evidence of human interactions.

I was recently art gallery hopping in Portland when I came across a collaborative piece by Anna Gray and Rayn Wilson at PDX Contemporary in which items were presented by the artists as if they were found. The pieces on display were essentially object-collages rather than non-fictional, pseudo-forensic samples.

One way the collages can be interpreted is that they represent the material lifestyle of those who engage in war and/or violent behavior. Read this way, Frames of War might conjure up the image of  a soldier away from home and with a meager stash of ephemera, patriotic items, and pebbles and/ or ammunition s/he forgot s/he was keeping. Objects which are held dear intermingle with those consumed passingly, and in the collage, all are visible. This stash might also be the only trace of a life after the body is gone, the source of memory and the relic of remembrance.

On the other hand, the piece asks questions about the juxtaposition of objects, and the myths which objects both emanate and engender. 

In the context of war, what is the meaning we apply to handcuffs, or handguns, or maps, or illicit photos, when they are linked like forensic evidence to the war setting? Do the objects come off as less harmful or more so? Moreover, questions arise such as if it is the gun, or the soldier's hand responsible for violence.  

Another question I have is what do we do with the toothpaste in Object Lesson: Frames of War, or the bottles of Coca-Cola and shortcake in Object Lesson: Violence? Immediately I think back to Errol Morris' documentary on a Texas murder trial, The Thin Blue Line and the emphasis the film puts on the spilled contents of a police officer's malt milkshake as she stepped out of a police car to witness the murder of her partner. The presence of these kinds of objects encourages us to see that the unimaginable occurs in mundane and comfortable circumstances as well as in distant, dark ones. This makes violence seem more real, as if it could at any time penetrate into our day to day routines.  In the Object Lesson photos, we are prompted to think of how violence sprouts from individuals who initiate daily practices on the micro level that very much resemble our own.

To be truthful, I find the imposition of an archival grouping of objects which were not truly found  presumptuous, almost on the level of a prop artist assembling pieces for a show on a table. Nonetheless, Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen's work offers a unique experience which urges the examination of social myths surrounding objects and of the artifacts of violence and war.

Object Lesson: Violence

Object Lesson: The Administration of Fear

A Comic Writer's Take on Journalistic Truth

      

     I've recently been on a political, graphic novel kick and I've realized that there are a lot more of them than I ever imagined-- and a lot more specifically about conflicts in the Middle East. Most self-respecting liberals these days have most likely consumed the pages of the Persepolis comics but few have branched beyond that, or perhaps know the variety and the seriousness of the subjects that many of these comics try to tackle. 
       I just finished Joe Sacco's Palestine, winner of the 1994 American Book Award. In the novel, Sacco illustrates the raw material generated by a freelance reporter in his day-to-day work on the border regions of Pakistan, Israel, and Egypt. In the novel our protagonist, Joe Sacco himself, interviews individuals about their experiences with the occupation, the heavy violence, and with public institutions like jails, and the scant number of dilapidated and discriminatory hospitals and schools. 
       Joe Sacco's work has been featured in many reporting magazines and newspapers but he has battled public associations of the comic genre with fluff, camp, and pulp. After reading Waltz with Bashir, (see my last post) and Palestine, I feel especially touchy and defensive when it comes to this subject.  Sacco does a great job of describing the role of the comic journalist in his newest collection, Journalism (2012) from their need to be intensely observational and attuned to detail like a courtroom illustrator might be, to their qualifications as writers and interviewers, and courageous forces of nature, like other freelance journalists and wartime reporters. 

He writes: 

"      There will always exist when presenting journalism in the comics form, a tension between those things that can be verified, like a quote caught on tape, and those things that defy verification, such as a drawing purporting to represent a specific episode. Drawings are interpretive even when they are slavish renditions of photographs, which are generally perceived to capture a real moment literally. But there is nothing literal about a drawing. A cartoonist assembles elements deliberately and places them with intent on a page. There is none of the photographer’s luck at snapping a picture at precisely the right moment. A cartoonist “snaps” his drawings at any moment he or she chooses. It is this choosing that makes cartooning an inherently subjective medium.

            This does not let the cartoonist who aspires to journalism off the hook. The journalist’s standard obligations—to report accurately, to get quotes right, and to check claims—still pertain. But a comics journalist has obligations that go deeper than that. A writer can breezily describe a convoy of UN vehicles as ‘a convoy of UN vehicles’ and move on to the rest of the story. A comics journalist must draw a convoy of vehicles, and that raises a lot of questions. So, what do these vehicles look like? What do the uniforms of the UN personnel look like? What does the road look like? And what about the surrounding hills?

            Fortunately, there is no stylebook to tell the comics journalist how far he or she must go to get such details right. The cartoonist draws with the essential truth in mind, not the literal truth, and that allows for a wide variety of interpretations to accommodate a wide variety of drawing styles. No two cartoonists are going to draw a UN truck exactly the same way even if working from the same reference material.        "