WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #90, September 7, 2022
The Art of Un-War. Krzysztof Wodiczko’s films and public interventions against militarization and war.
Chris Hedges on the Collapse of Civilizations.
https://account.newday.com/streaming/?film=ART-01&preview=GHlu3DPx5d3xrKIf
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Renowned artist Krzysztof Wodiczko has practiced socially engaged art for over five decades and has dedicated his life and art in denouncing militarization and war. An instigator for social change, Wodiczko’s powerful public art interventions disrupt the valorization of state-sanctioned aggression and challenge our complacency towards war, xenophobia and displacement. The film focuses on Wodiczko's social practice art and the recurring themes of war, trauma and displacement in Wodiczko's work.
Combining design and technology, Krzysztof Wodiczko’s projects often function as interventions in public spaces, disrupting the valorization of state-sanctioned aggression. Wodiczko has dedicated his life and art in denouncing militarization and war. The Art Of Un-War follows Wodiczko, an instigator for social change, as he challenges our complacency towards war, xenophobia and displacement with his unique public projections. Wodiczko’s trajectory unfolds from his birth in Warsaw during World War II, to his expulsion from Poland by the communist regime, to today. This in-depth exploration into the life and art of the Polish born artist focuses on the recurring themes of war in his work throughout his five decades plus career. Wodiczko's public projections become impactful responses to the inequities and horrors of war and injustice.
The film delves into timely works such as Abraham Lincoln War Veteran Projection in Union Square, NYC, where Wodiczko projects the voices and images of soldiers from 20th and 21st-century wars onto the statue of Lincoln. The participants' stories of loss, displacement, abuse, and PTSD combined with Wodiczko’s own story of trauma emerge in tandem as the projects become a vehicle for healing. The evolution of Wodiczko’s political art unfolds throughout the film from his first intervention created in Warsaw in 1968 in response to censorship, to one of his most ambitious projects and a focal point of the film - a radical proposal to transform Paris’ Arc De Triomphe war monument into a site for peace-building research and activism. Wodiczko counters the monument’s glorification of war and portrayal of distorted histories by constructing scaffolding around the Arc De Triomphe and transforming it into its complete antithesis.
https://account.newday.com/streaming/?film=ART-01&preview=GHlu3DPx5d3xrKIf
Chris Hedges. “We Are Not the First Civilization to Collapse, But We Will Probably Be the Last.” Chris Hedges Report, 8-14-22.
Subject: The archeological remains of past civilizations, including those of the prehistoric Cahokia temple mound complex in Missouri, are sobering reminders of our fate.
[Conclusion] By the 1400s Cahokia had been abandoned. In 1541, when Hernando de Soto’s invading army descended on what is today Missouri, looking for gold, nothing but the great mounds remained, relics of a forgotten past.
This time the collapse will be global. It will not be possible, as in ancient societies, to migrate to new ecosystems rich in natural resources. The steady rise in heat will devastate crop yields and make much of the planet uninhabitable. Climate scientists warn that once temperatures rise by 4℃, the earth, at best, will be able to sustain a billion people.
The more insurmountable the crisis becomes, the more we, like our prehistoric ancestors, will retreat into self-defeating responses, violence, magical thinking and denial.
The historian Arnold Toynbee, who singled out unchecked militarism as the fatal blow to past empires, argued that civilizations are not murdered, but commit suicide. They fail to adapt to a crisis, ensuring their own obliteration. Our civilization’s collapse will be unique in size, magnified by the destructive force of our fossil fuel-driven industrial society. But it will replicate the familiar patterns of collapse that toppled civilizations of the past [he subject of the first three-quarters of the essay]. The difference will be in scale, and this time there will be no exit.
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