j mandle performance - The Fabrication of Blindness

[webbwylder]

The soundscape of the video in particular resonates with my own personal feeling that we have a tendency as human beings to ignore social injustices that don't happen near to us. The strains of early Americana music interspersed with the modern cell phone ringing conjured for me Southern lynchings or Rodney King as much as the affronts of Abu Ghraib and other war crimes. It strikes me that the piece (and this video) confronts how we choose to 'see,' even here in YouTube land.

[webbwylder]

The visceral and somber nature of this piece is justifiably difficult to capture on video. However, the dominant presence of the hoods hanging over the live viewers heads is portentous, even from the removed position as a YouTube viewer.

[hnil0002]

This left me feeling raw. Like direct implication with the Iraq war or illegal interrogations, the swarm of vacant hoods dangles just within reach. The viewer (both real time and virtually) is left asking, "Is this a participatory performance?" The omitted bodies serve as a chilling reminder of our suspension of Habeas Corpus and our complicit approval of war crimes. Despite a bleak smothering effect, installations like this are essential in the process of rehabilitating the American psyche.

[JakeRHooker]

Wow. This is beautiful and haunting.

For some reason it reminds me of Douglas Crimp's book 'On the Museum's Ruins". In it he talks about the move from high modernist temples of art to postmodernism's critique of art institutions (among many other thing). This piece -- and my viewing of it on Youtube, the 'virtual gallery' -- drives another nail into the coffin of Modernism and its requisite preciousness. This is art -- and art-making -- as both intervention and elegy.