Rodney Ewing
Public Safety
Gallery Reception
June 05, 2008
6:00 to 9:00 pm
"My dilemma as an artist is how to make art out of information that most of us would rather ignore. How do you actually make art when the world is in such a state?"
-Alfredo Jaar
Anyone can tell you that the events of September 11th have permanently altered the American public's barometer for experiencing fear. Similarly, since the Iraq war and occupation, the United States and its allies are now predominantly viewed with fear and suspicion by people elsewhere. Fear grows as the common currency of geopolitics, while civility, compassion and empathy recede.
We in America are subjected to color coded alerts, pre-administered directives on government recommended levels of anxiety. We are subjected to ever more vigilant physical searches and electronic screenings of our persons during our travels. And to insulate ourselves from the other we erect walls along borders, literally and metaphorically fracturing and dividing both identities and geography. Do these measures ensure or bolster real public safety?
So far we have very judiciously identified our enemies and created ways to track, detain, or eliminate them, manufacturing state-of-the-art detection devices and methods for profiling.
Public Safety will examine these devices and methods, and re-structure them as tools that will provide an alternative kind of security, tools that are conducive to a de-escalation of anxieties. The redesigning of these instruments and re-application of these techniques will fall into three categories: Disarm, Countermeasures, and Meditations.
Disarm:
Disarm will feature a group of drawings based on target silhouettes. The targets as they are now being used contain information to gauge accuracy with a firearm. The targets are either characterized as grotesque stereotypes or featureless bodies (See Examples #1 and #2). My compositions will also use the silhouette technique, but the features of the individuals will be clear and recognizably human. And instead of being marked by reference points for gun fire, the target will contain a message for the viewer/shooter that will provide instructions on how to empathize.
Countermeasures:
Countermeasures will include drawings based on the full body scans (see Example #3) being employed by some of the major airports as a way of quickly discovering which passengers are concealing weapons. These scans work so well that they can see underneath an individual's clothing and give airport security personnel an anatomically correct version of what a person looks like. For some, this device breaches their sense of security more than it relieves their fear of physical danger, and the information gained from the scans tells nothing about the character of the individual being observed. My drawings for this series will include the images from the scans, but the anatomy will be protected by descriptions about an individual's history such as, "When he was eight years old, stopped a bully," "She Sings the Blues all the time," and "Cheated on a math test."
The second group of drawings featured in this series will address the idea a physicist had for coating the borders between Mexico and the United States with a fluorescent powder. When individuals cross the border, the dust will adhere to their clothing and skin, making it easy for them to be identified. The countermeasure I will be employing here will be to create images based on some of our country's more overlooked immigrants, such as the Pilgrims at Jamestown and The Oklahoma Sooners. These groups crossed borders with little regard to the indigenous population. The goal of this set of work is to remind us that the lives we take for granted are often not our own.
Meditations:
The content of this series will be comprised of mandalas, created from objects that are used mainly for destructive purposes. A mandala is a generic term for any chart or geometric pattern that represents the cosmos, metaphysically or symbolically, a microcosm of the universe from the human perspective. A mandala (see Example #5), especially its center, can be used during meditation as an object for focusing attention.
One of the objects I will be using is a cutaway of a B-2 Stealth Bomber (See example #4). The geometric beauty of the plane lends itself to the process. But the fact is that this mechanism, in addition to many others, plays a central role in our defense. Given the huge cost of creating and sustaining these systems, meditation on the mandalas should shed light on the protective value of their contents and the associate possibilities of their literal disassembly. |
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