Freya Powell, [dis]connection
The Iraq War looms over us as a disaster of history and a tragedy in present tense. A tragedy that has often been reduced to little more than numbers and repetitious images on television screens, newspapers, and blogs for Western civilians to debate and form partisan opinions. This piece is the result of an attempt by the artist to explore the meaning of the war and her connections to the violence imposed on Iraq, violence she feels implicated in through her US and UK citizenship.
Powell’s pursuit began with her correspondence with a childhood friend stationed in Diyala Province with the US Army. In this drawing, the artist attempts to portray the abstractness of her connections to the War through blind contour renderings of the borderlines in Diyala Province. When cartographic material is personalized in this manner borders and divisions are obscured, and the truth in boundaries is called into question. When Powell, well into her art-making process, learned that her friend had lied about the details of his service in Iraq, she too began to question her preconceived ideas about war. This personal experience has forced an examination of the collective loss of humanity through the dehumanization of soldiers and civilians alike. This work is a search for solid ground.
Tim Klimowicz, Iraq War Coalition Fatalities
Iraq War Coalition Fatalities by interactive designer Tim Klimowicz is a chart of the U.S. and Coalition military fatalities that have occurred in Iraq since the invasion, mapped across the dimensions of time and space. Now in its second version, it is an ongoing project that is updated regularly and will continue as long as the war does.
Fatalities are grouped together by location, each represented by a dot placed over a map of Iraq. As time goes by, the dots grow in proportion to the number of lives lost in that location. Accompanying the visual representation is a soft 'tic' sound, the volume of which increases relative to the total number of fatalities that occurred simultaneously that day. More deaths in a single area produce visually larger dots, and more deaths in a single day produce audibly louder 'tics'.
Originally intended to represent all of the deaths that have occurred in Iraq as a result of the war – U.S. and Coalition military, Iraqi military, and Iraqi civilian – it was scaled back early on to include only U.S. and Coalition deaths when it became apparent that the sheer number of deaths and the fact that many of them aren't even formally documented made this goal nearly impossibly to attain with any level of objectivity.
Wafaa Bilal, …and Counting
Wafaa Bilal's brother Haji was killed by a missile at a checkpoint in their hometown of Kufa, Iraq in 2004. As an Iraqi-American, Bilal feels the pain of both American and Iraqi families who have lost loved ones in the war, but feels the deaths of Iraqis like his brother are largely invisible to the American public.
…and Counting addresses this double standard as Bilal turns his own body – in a 24-hour live performance – into a canvas, his back tattooed with a borderless map of Iraq covered with one dot for each Iraqi and American casualty near the cities where they fell. The 5,000 dead American soldiers are represented by red dots (permanent visible ink), and the 100,000 Iraqi casualties are represented by dots of green UV ink, seemingly invisible unless under black light. The names of the dead will be read during the performance.
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