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Lots of people have been doing search requests for "Army Pfc. Lynndie England," the woman holding a leash around a naked man's neck in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. What is this fascination with evil women? A guy in Fresno shoots 9 of his children and it's a local story after the first week, but Andrea Yates drowns her 5 and it's a national cause. People, Lynndie England is a distraction from the real issue. The government and a compliant media say that the naked men tied up and arranged in dogpiles were the work of a few bad (or "overstressed") eggs. That's not true. Military intelligence dreamed up all the simulated homoerotic activity and picture-taking to break down the sexually squeamish Iraqis and get them to "confess." Our government has crossed the line and they're handing you Lynddie England. Wake up and smell the coffee, folks.
Watch war criminal Donald Rumsfeld being heckled by protesters during today's Congressional hearing. Pretty gratifying.
Opie - Our Greatest Installation Artist
Screen grabs from Ron Howard's film A Beautiful Mind. In the depths of paranoid schizophrenia, mathematician Russell Crowe sees patterns in newspaper and magazine clippings and sets out to "break the code." Twice (that we see) he fills a room with printed matter and scrawls numbers and diagrams all over everything--above is the second episode, in the tool shed. Of course, the art world is full of people doing this kind of thing, from Kurt Schwitters to Robert Rauschenberg to Thomas Hirschhorn (see below). Director Howard hired some pretty good people to channel this activity as simulated madness. Instead of the Modernist paradigm of "artists taking inspiration from the insane" this is the reverse process, sort of, bringing the visual vocabulary of the art elite (Hirschhorn at Barbara Gladstone) to a mass audience. Hence, the title of this post.
Thomas Hirschhorn, Plan Moi