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Carnival in the Eye of the Storm - Critical Essay

Art Journal, Winter, 2000 by Trebor Scholz

It's us the armchair passengers who observe what passes, and decide what passed.... To "do" something doesn't always mean to engage oneself in the concrete practical situation. Grasping the meaning of historical events can have an impact an them.

--"The Bastard" (a global edition of Arkzin)

Receiving large wooden boxes from the Balkans, making telephone calls across the Atlantic, faxing, writing grant applications, looking at slides, emailing, installing artwork, finding relevant videos and films, reading articles and reports, writing and sending out press material, creating a website, searching through art online.

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What followed were discussions with artists, critics, journalists, students, human rights activists, and scholars from Kosov@, Serbia, Germany, France, and the United States, who had come to Portland for Carnival in the Eye of the Storm. Some of us met in the morning in the exhibition to see Abdelali Dabrouch's installation Another Day of Harvest, in which the names of Kosovar Albanian refugees are embedded in a field of chalk. From there we walked to the conference. The day ended with the screening of films like Michael Benson's Predictions of Fire and Pictorial Hero's Victim of Geography at the Northwest Film Center. This event structure created an intense personal experience that gave me an emotional understanding of the numbers of displaced people in Kosov@. It placed faces with numbers. Eyes. Names. Voices. It also left me with a set of questions.

Dealing with the war in Kosov@, in spite of the confusing religious and political complexities and the web of historical events in the Balkans, was a balancing act. The Kosov@ War, one of the most visible wars of our time, demanded our intense attention. It was the first extensive war since World War II on European territory that directly involved the United States and the European Union countries. According to the language used by NATO, Serbia was bombed for humanitarian reasons. In his essay "NATO as the Left Hand of God," Slavoj Zizek criticized NATO's hiding of a war of political economical interests behind a so-called humanitarian intervention.

It was from within this war zone that Gordana, a Serbian friend, emailed me about sitting on bomb watch on top of a skyscraper in New Belgrade, located next to the military barracks. Her brother, an army pilot, had to sell pizza because his military job did not pay well enough.

There is never enough time--for an accurate knowledge of the history of the region, for reliable, confirmed information, for an instant theory that explains it all.--"The Bastard"

As for most people, the political situation was hard for me to comprehend. How could I possibly be sufficiently informed to comment appropriately on this conflict? It was difficult not to be trapped by the media spectacle, which tried to deepen the cliche of primitive peoples fighting for causes we do not understand. The enemy was portrayed as a blood-dripping monster. The NATO air strikes caused a profound split inside leftist groups that could not decide which side they should support. "Are you for or against these high altitude bombings?" What about allowing a position that looks for alternatives instead? What else could be done? How could it have been done differently? A contributor to the message board of the website of Carnival in the Eye of the Storm quoted George Steiner saying, "Men and women are accomplices to that which leaves them indifferent." In the face of the refugee catastrophe caused by the forced deportation of thousands in Kosov@, silence becomes assent.

On TV many saw the ironic artistic intervention of Serbs wearing T-shirts with the target sign. Could anyone have imagined this same target sign on the clothing of escaping Kosovar Albanian refugees? And what about Germany, the United Kingdom, or France? There one encountered a significant absence of (art) activism in response to the seventy-eight days of bombing. In New York, Postmasters Gallery pointed to artistic responses in the exhibition War Bulletin. Also dealing with issues of war and the situation in Eastern Europe were exhibitions like War Zone in Vancouver and After the Wall in Stockholm.

How can artists and cultural critics respond to political events inscribing their work into social and art discourses alike? Martha Rosler's photocollages Bringomg the War Home, made in response to the war against North Vietnam, come to mind as a relevant example. Has art the right to aestheticize the trauma, suffering, and death of war? Michel Foucault denied this in the face of Auschwitz.

The silence of art is political and seems immoral. Which strategies could be used by cultural producers and political interest groups to engage diverse communities into discussion and reflection? In support of a civil society, art needs to reconsider codes of communication readable outside closed art circles. Then, of course, we tumble into the danger of art becoming propaganda. Robert Smithson was aware of this when he claimed, "The rat of politics always gnaws for the cheese of art." But is there not a moral responsibility for artists as public figures not to act indifferently? Could artists not simply reinscribe the structures they aim to criticize? Bertolt Brecht described capitalism as enjoying the poison thrown into its face by transforming it into a drug. Some suggest that artists should give up attempting to address political issues in the realm of art and to take these efforts to a different place altogether. At the conference, some raised the question of whether Carnival in the Eye of the Storm was a work of art or of social activism. The issues raised by the war in Kosov@ will stay with us.

Carnival in the Eye of the Storm - Critical Essay

Art Journal, Winter, 2000 by Trebor Scholz

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