American Disasters – Page 18 – Just another My blog Sites site

January 24, 2014December 16, 2020

The Overwhelming Power of Size, Magnitude, and Sound Reflected in Namelist and Remembrance

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A number never fully eternalizes the magnitude of a disaster. Whether these numbers are the economic cost for recovery, area of impact, value of damages, people injured, or even deaths; numbers lack the personalization that could affect foreign attention and deep emotion. However as individual numbers become personified and more realistic through details, feelings of sorrow, and depression, a global connection spreads. Ai Weiwei’s work entitled Namelist, with the audio recording Remembrance playing in the background successfully transforms one room into a memorial that connects the viewer to every single young student that died so tragically on May 8^th, 2008 from the Sichuan earthquake.

The Sichuan earthquake has been significantly underreported in the United States and few Americans fully comprehend the magnitude of this natural disaster. As regards to foreign disasters, over the past ten years more media attention has been given to the East Asian Tsunami, Great East Japan Earthquake, and the 2010 Haiti earthquake. As a result, the Sichuan disaster failed to get the long term global support and recognition. Nevertheless this 7.9 earthquake centered in the Sichuan province had staggering numbers that could easily rival the magnitude of any recent disaster. According to the BBC recovery page written five years post May 12^th earthquake the facts are unfathomable: nearly 87,150 people missing or dead, 4.8 million people homeless, over $137 over spent on recovery and with over 191 million USD in damages billion, this earthquake represents the second most costly earthquake since the start of the 20th century.[1] However numbers only mean so much. Weiwei’s piece draws attention to this disaster and forces you to think about every 5,196 students that died during this earthquake.

Ai Weiwei’s design is intrinsically simple; white walls, white paper, black grid-like writing, and a small audio player make up the entire room. Nevertheless, the instant you fully entire the room, you are instantly struck, both physically and emotionally, by strong feelings of power, horror, and wonder. The voice box, playing a foreign recording, only adds to the eerie sense of confusion regarding the details and reasoning behind such a design. Slowly as you approach the wall, one realizes that these are not random writings but instead memorials. For me, not knowing any meaning behind the manuscript, the only thing that made sense was the numbers. As I pieced together that these numbers were either birthdays or ages, the full power hit me. Not only were all these children born after I was, their lives were cut short nearly five years prior. As I examined further, the worst part was the vast amounts of empty spaces. These children had no record for their birthday or age. Weiwei’s work hit me as the grids and numbers were not just art, but memorials for actual humans.

Like many memorials of such nature[2] Ai Weiwei’s main purpose for listing names like this was to pay equal tribute to every victim. No one name differs from the other and no name has higher importance than anyone else. However, unlike the Vietnam Memorial and the National September 11^th memorial Ai Weiwei’s decision to memorialize just children adds the horror of this disaster. By choosing just children found in schools, Weiwei targets destruction of this earthquake as a whole. Clearly children impact everyone because of their vulnerability. But when you learn that this memorial that overwhelms you in size represents only a portion of all victims (roughly 6% of all deaths) the visualization of the entire memorial befuddles viewers. A brilliant choice of space, Weiwei covers the entire room and skillfully presents the boards at angles so no person can actually read the top quarter. Your eyes wander, knowing that the size alone makes the imagery of ever human nearly impossible. Yet, as the audio plays behind you, one is forced to realize that every name represents one child lost.

A memorial like Weiwei’s personifies a disaster and connects viewers to the pain and tragedy often only felt by those directly affected. As historians studying disaster, we must realize that numbers alone never tell the entire story. The loss of one life is tragic; the loss of 5,196 is a travesty that words alone cannot summarize. Art work like this makes you realize a death toll is so much more than a number. When looking back on disasters we must stay mindful of the physical destruction, yet realize how there is no value on life. These children all had their lives cut short and a death toll cannot fully encapsulate the loss every family must still be going through.

[1] “Sichuan 2008: A Disaster on an Immense Scale,” BBC, accessed January 21, 2014, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22398684.

[2] The description references the Vietnam Memorial and the National September 11^th Memorial as similarly designed memorials

January 24, 2014December 16, 2020

“Out of Sight Out of Mind”-The Power of Paper

After going to the State of Emergency exhibition I found myself entranced with the various works of art that were displayed. One in particular that struck me was the exhibit labeled Notepad. This piece created by Matt Kenyon was both eye opening and thought provoking. Initially when walking through the exhibition I glanced over this area thinking that it was mere station where you could jot down notes and receive information about the other pieces in the exhibition. After reproaching the table I began to read the information card that explained the piece and was immediately struck by the power behind the art. The table was filled with about 50 legal yellow notepads and a TV screen with a businessman at a table in a white background. The shocking part about this seemly plain exhibit was that the lines of each notepad were actually composed of the names, dates and locations of each Iraqi civilian who died (on record) between the first three years of the Iraq War (2003-2006).

The disaster that Matt Kenyon is reacting too is the tragedy of the deaths of innocent civilians as a result of the first years in the Iraq War. In March of 2003 under the Bush administration America invaded Iraq. Anticipating a quick execution both Bush and his administration underestimated the preparation of the Iraqi troops. General Tommy Franks was quoted laying the seven goals of the American invasion into Iraq,

“First, end the regime of Saddam Hussein. Second, to identify, isolate and eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Third, to search for, to capture and to drive out terrorists from that country. Fourth, to collect such intelligence as we can related to terrorist networks. Fifth, to collect such intelligence as we can related to the global network of illicit weapons of mass destruction. Sixth, to end sanctions and to immediately deliver humanitarian support to the displaced and to many needy Iraqi citizens. Seventh, to secure Iraq’s oil fields and resources, which belong to the Iraqi people. And last, to help the Iraqi people create conditions for a transition to a representative self-government.”

General Franks (lengthy) quote is a clear example of what the goals were in invading Iraq, while the result may have proven to be more detrimental. In a detailed account of deaths from 2003-2005 published by Iraq Body Count totaled 24,865. In Kenyon’s display he not only has the names but the location and date of where people were killed. This total number consisted of 20% women and children and almost half of the deaths were recorded to have been in Baghdad and occurred in the first two years of the initial invasion. The disaster (or tragedy) of this invasion was that 37% of civilian victims were a result of US forces. The other large percentage came about from post invasion criminal violence. (1)

This exhibit was very powerful and can be used to create a very convincing argument against the efforts of war. Not only were these notepads on display at Davidson College, but also were distributed at Capitol Hill. These legal pads were put within other supplies and given to those people who would impact the efforts of war. This piece reflected the tragedy of war and the innocent lives that were taken. War causalities can be hidden as something that is “out of sight out of mind”. The argument that Kenyon is making and can be applied to other similar arguments, that people in power must be careful of the choices that they make and question, do the benefits of going to war outweigh the costs of the thousands of lives lost as a result? The power of the notepad on Capitol Hill represents the jotting down of ideas and the plan and formulas created for events like invasions or bombings. While people at Capital Hill are writing down their agendas, they are also writing on the lines of the people that were affected by the decisions of some of their colleagues. Kenyon wants to create “Trojan horse” of thought in an attempt to save the disasters of war.

Any war can be considered a disaster, as there are the many tragedies of war that are involved. What made this particular piece of art thought provoking and an argument against modern warfare and the “accidental” deaths of innocent civilians as a result of war. Every life is holy and sacred; to take away a life is the largest form of a disaster. Disaster by war can be categorized as a manmade, one that is not natural and can be prevented. The purpose of Kenyon’s art is to put people in an uncomfortable position of realizing the magnitude of the civilian deaths in the Iraq war and to help prevent another war like this by alerting government officials who can make a difference.

(1). Sloboda, John. “A Dossier of Civilian Casualties in Iraq .” Iraq Body Count. IBC, 19 Jul 2005. Web. 24 Jan 2014. <http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/reference/press-releases/12/>.

January 24, 2014December 16, 2020

Art of Disasters: Elin o’Hara Slavick and Hiroshima

Ghostly outlines of ginkgo leaves float on a sea of blue in Elin o’Hara Slavick’s artwork. She creates cyanotypes of natural material—such as tree bark or leaves—that was hit by the bomb on Hiroshima. Her art touches on the natural aspect of disasters. In what seems to be an entirely unnatural event—a country drops an atomic bomb on the city of an enemy country during war—still has an element of nature. Furthermore, Slavick’s choice of subject leads to questions about how varying perspectives alter the meaning of “disaster.” Her art also brings a poignant element to the memory of disasters that cannot easily be expressed in essays on disasters.

When the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima during World War II, it probably would not have been labeled “natural disaster.” It may have been a disaster for the thousands of people, or for the town, or for Japan. It could also have been an example of new technology or hastened the end of the war. Yet Hiroshima does not seem to be a natural disaster. Nature has not been an explicit agent in the destruction of Hiroshima. A bomb is not a hurricane, a typhoon, or a tornado. Countries employ bombs to wage war on their enemies. Man wreaks havoc on man, and nature appears to be far removed. Some scholars describe disasters as “entirely un-natural phenomena untethered from the non-human world.”

Slavick’s work highlights how nature may be an actor even in the most unnatural events and even if humans are discounted from the natural realm. In a disaster that seems so entangled in technology and politics, nature was still involved. Although nature did not contribute to Hiroshima, the bomb still disturbed nature. Slavick reminds viewers that almost no disaster occurs entirely removed from nature. Events rarely happen in a sterile sphere rather they demonstrate the connections found in the world. Perhaps Hiroshima appeared to involved men and technology alone, but Slavick has recorded the “Bark from an A-Bombed Eucalyptus Tree” and “Ginkgo Leaves from an A-Bombed Tree.” Those pieces represent hundreds of trees, plants, animals, and waterways that were likely affected by the bomb. Slavick strives “to make the invisible impact visible.” For the nature around Hiroshima, the bomb might be called a natural disaster.

As the trees around Hiroshima might count the bomb as a disaster, people themselves may have their own perspectives on Hiroshima. The Japanese and the people of Hiroshima likely count the bomb as a disaster; it flattened a city, killed or injured thousands, and contributed to Japan’s loss in World War II. For Americans, however, the bomb may represent an advance—albeit terrible—in technology, the probable saving of American soldiers from invading Japan, and the successful end of World War II. They may be less likely to categorize Hiroshima as a complete disaster. Slavick’s choice of materials reminds viewers of the various perceptions of disaster. For instance, there is a white shape of ginkgo leaves and the negative outline of the leaves in blue. The shape is at once positive and negative space just as disaster may be simultaneously “positive” and “negative.”

Furthermore, Slavick artwork portrays a view of disaster that cannot be conveyed in an essay discussing disaster. The art may be interpreted in multiple ways, which is more difficult to do in writing. The ghostly outlines may represent the loss after disaster; the artists depicts one survivor’s experience by describing “the disappearance of the world as she[the survivor] knew it.” Slavick’s art also points forward to the aftermath of a disaster. The memory of the disaster still exists in the outline of the images, but there is something peaceful in the art. Soft white and clean blue point to a hopeful future. Disasters will always be remembered but are also able to be overcome.

January 24, 2014December 16, 2020

Old Disasters, Modern Metaphors

Before walking into the Gallery room for the State of Emergency, I noticed a strange work on the left side of the entrance hallway to the VAC. The black and white etching, called And the Santa Fell a Week Later, first appears to be a sort of ship sinking in icy waters, but closer inspection reveals that it is a kind of UFO crashed in the snow. The artist, Wisconsite John Edward Paquette, entered the piece into the first Davidson National Print and Drawing Competition in 1972, although he never fully explained his work or its objectives. The title, according to the placard, refers to how NASA astronauts typically use the callsign “Santa Claus” to identify potential UFOs. And the Santa Fell won a Purchase Award at Davidson and is now a permanent work in the college’s catalog. Regardless of the origin or the intentions of the etching, it can doubtlessly be interpreted as a disaster.

The viewer can utilize various clues to build an interpretation of Paquette’s work. The scene shows a small column of cavalry investigating a crashed object in a frozen wasteland. Using the horsemen as a scale, I noticed the immensity of the ship- one that could capably store thousands of people. The very first image that popped into my mind was the Titanic sinking in the North Atlantic. I’m not sure what led to this mental connection. Was it because AMC just had a marathon of the movie last weekend? Or does the image of any ship facing a vertical demise immediately remind me of the Titanic? As Paquette never fully explained the argument of his work, we are only left to the details and our interpretations. As a work from 1972, the Titanic, as well as UFOs, had both become established parts of American folklore. However, I believe that the Titanic imagery is more important and prevalent than the use of the UFO. In my opinion, Paquette is making a contemporary argument about the state of America at the time of his work.

Marston noted how disasters are often utilized as tools of “inflated dramatization” in modern media, and I believe that Paquette uses this idea in his work. In the 1970s, the United States was struggling with unemployment, oil embargoes, and defeat in Vietnam. There was a crisis of trust and leadership, as highlighted with the chaos in the Nixon Administration. Despite its past victories and technological advances, the nation found itself vulnerable and susceptible to setbacks. Common clichés concerning the Titanic include how the ship was perceived to be invincible by its backers, only to find that there were internal faults that they had overlooked or underestimated. The same story, arguably, could be used for Vietnam-era America, and Paquette uses the memorable image of the Titanic’s stern slowly descending into the ocean as the powerful analogy. The “advancedness” of the UFO’s structure symbolizes the material strength of the US military, while the ship’s demise reveals its overconfidence. Paquette’s symbolism reveals power of using historical disasters (especially well-documented ones) to construct contemporary arguments and metaphors. These kinds of disasters create emotional responses in our psychological interpretation of art, whether we notice them or not.

January 24, 2014December 16, 2020

The United States of Emergency

I am greeted by the image of a New Orleanais kitchen in disarray upon entering the “State of Emergency” exhibit in the Van Every Gallery of the Visual Arts Center (VAC). The photo shows the aftermath of nature battling human development in the summer of 2005. Hurricane Katrina slammed the Louisiana coast, and showed no mercy for the city of New Orleans. The superiority of wind, water, and waves was demonstrated in several other works present at this exhibit: some resembled the destruction caused by tropical storms while others portrayed the inundation of urban areas by floods. “Flood Cubes” by Eben Goff is the piece I found to be the most visually and intellectually appealing due to its originality and candidness. The piece dually reflects on pollution and urbanization, two products of the anthropocene, in the Los Angeles region.

In January of 2010, before a heavy rainfall, Goff attached the clean chrome cubes (the same cubes that 4 years later were shipped to Davidson, North Carolina) to anchors fastened to the bottom of the Los Angeles River. The artist was familiar with the precipitation patterns of this region and anticipated that “winter rains are often heavier” even though “debris flow amounts are typically highest in fall after the dry summer months” (Eben Goff, 2013). Knowing this, he was able to set up the appropriate stage for the metal cubes to transform themselves into art.

The cubes are unique conceptually and artistically. Although originally clean, I find them covered in natural and “unnatural” elements, with only part of the silver metal frame visible. Part of a palm tree, or maybe a coconut tree, swings up from the clean wooden floor of the VAC to the top of the cube on my right. This cube has more of a mix between pieces of plants and plastic than the cube on my left. The frame of the cube on my left is facing me, so I walk around to analyze the part that is now covered in things “local” to Los Angeles. A surplus of yellow police tape is wrapped around the bottom, connecting the white plastic bag and red yarn on one side to the black plastic bag on the other. There is some grass and there are some leaves, but mostly this cube is covered in man-made objects. While scrutinizing this piece of art, I wonder at which point “unnatural” elements become “natural”. Does this occur through a piece of art representative of the things found in a stream? Does a stream become “unnatural” if it is floating down a cement riverbed? Successfully, Goff has brought two issues to light: urbanization and pollution.

In addition to the visuals on the floor, Goff provided instructions to replicate his work called “To Replenish a Flood Cube”. Replicate is not an accurate term because every cube is a result and creation of the most recent rainstorm and trash in the riverbed. Goff doesn’t edit the cube, but displays them raw and instructs, “receding floodwaters will reveal a Flood Cube replenished with a new coating of debris.”

In these instructions Goff also includes advice to receive the best results:

“An L.A. area rainstorm with total precipitation amounts of ½ inch will cause flooding of creeks, some major river channels, and is a sufficiently large storm for this sculpting process, however a storm with greater tan >1/2 inch total rainfall is ideal.”

Urbanization decreases the amount of time it takes rainfall to reach streams by removing the vegetation that normally absorbs this water. This rainfall flows more quickly over paved sidewalks and roads than it would through grass and forests, which creates more flooding in a shorter time period. Engineers paved over the original streambed of the Los Angeles River in 1938 in an attempt to solve the floods that had bothered the city in past years. Although Goff displays litter and debris to demonstrate the disaster that is our environment, the imminent floods caused by urbanization are what made the final product possible. This problem is not specific to Los Angeles: it is also portrayed in the very first image I saw upon entering the “State of Emergency” exhibit.

Site of interest: http://ebengoff.net/flood-cubes/

January 24, 2014December 16, 2020

Art as a Form of Protest: “Notepad” and it’s Invitation to Dissent

Matt Kenyon’s 2007 piece “Notepad” at first glimpse appears to be a stack of legal pads. However, he uses this mundane object to bring attention to the civilian deaths in the Iraqi war, printing the names of these loses, as well as the location and date, in microprint. The inclusion of this work in the State of Emergency art exhibition explores a different definition of disaster, one that is not natural but manmade. It also explores the purpose of art as a tool for social dissent.

The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 brought enormous suffering to the Iraqi people. It was a controversial decision at the time, and continues to be an emotionally charged issue for many Americans. In “Notepad,” Kenyon highlights this overlooked disaster that continues to claim many lives. The role of the media in bringing a disaster to the national conscience cannot be overstated. This is apparent in the deaths of Iraqi civilians: the media will headline the death of an American solider in Iraq, but then bury a small news bulletin about the large-scale civilian deaths in an interior page. This American-centric perspective of the Iraqi war minimizes the true cost of this war. By highlighting this, “Notepad” is a form of protest.

This piece of art grapples with the purpose of art as a tool for social dissident. As discussed in class, disasters serve to expose the fissures in society. “Notepad” brings to light an aspect of American society that the government would rather remain marginal. “Notepad” performs a different role from many other works depicting disaster; it is an act of protest against American policy. Additionally, this piece provokes active protest, in asking the gallery visitors to write letters to congressmen on the notepaper. This explores a different way of looking at disaster, in critiquing government response or responsibility, and pushing for policy change.

“Notepad” insinuates that through the act of acknowledging the dead, it allows them to recover the dignity lost in an anonymous death. This is an idea that is also seen in the American Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC as well as in Ai Weiwei’s Namelist, also presented in the State of Emergency gallery.

This piece is different from many of the other pieces on display in the State of Emergency gallery in that it deals with a different definition of a disaster, one that is not a natural disaster such as a hurricane or an earthquake. It portrays an act of war, and the civilian deaths that result from this war. In doing this, “Notepad” deals with a controversial subject, one that the American government wishes to minimize.

The way that disaster is portrayed in art is one way of looking at the myriad problems and changes that are produced during a disaster. “Notepad” addresses one aspect of the Iraqi war, the loss of dignity of the victims and its restoration through recognition and remembrance, and implies an American civic responsibility to respond to disaster. The way in which the victims are remembered is a crucial aspect of disaster study, as it can expose the political climate and act as a litmus test for national sentiment.

January 23, 2014December 16, 2020

The Dangers of Desensitization: Miguel Aragón and the Mexican Drug Wars

The Mexican Drug War is a series of conflicts surrounding the Mexico’s massive illicit drug trade. It involves Mexican drug cartels, the Mexican government, including its army and police forces, Mexican vigilante groups, and the US government. This paper will analyze the disaster that is the Mexican Drug War as it relates to the border city of Ciudad Juarez. While this may seem unnecessarily limited in scope, an examination of Ciudad Juarez is valuable both because it is the artist Miguel Aragón’s native city and thusly the subject of his work and because of the exceptionality of its violence (it was only recently surpassed as the murder capital of the world).[1] The 10,500 murders it saw between 2007 and 2012 stemmed largely from the feuding between two rival drug cartels, the Sinola and Juarez Cartels, but also from a culture of violence that seems to target female victims with impunity from legal recourse. In fact the term “femicide,” which refers to the “misogynous murder of women by men, was coined in response to Cuidad Juarez’s largely publicized frequency of female murders which that failed to receive adequate governmental attention.

Miguel Aragón’s work can be used to argue for an examination of the ways in which the media’s disaster coverage and also stress the importance of the media’s role in disaster response. His art is created by taking grotesque images of victims published by the media and, through a process of laser burning on to cardboard and then imprinting the resulting soot onto paper, creates a sort of negative that, though portraying the same image, forces the viewer to more thoughtfully evaluate what they are seeing. His method is vastly important to this argument; by choosing to retool images that have already been published by the mainstream media, his art acknowledges the necessity of the media’s publicizing of brutality while simultaneously expressing the need to alter their message. This can be understood as a warning against the dangers of desensitization for two reasons. Firstly, by muffling the image and thus muting the brutality, he forces the viewer to fully investigate the image in order to ascertain what it portrays. In doing so the reader must fully consider the images implications in a way that might otherwise be unlikely given the dearth of grotesque images that the viewer is likely to reflexively ignore due to a desensitization to such emotionally taxing images.

Additionally he removes defining facial features; this allows for increased empathy from the viewer by portraying victims as a relatable human form rather than someone of a distinctive background. This is a particularly interesting feature of his artwork when considering in conjunction with the danger of desensitization; as grotesque images become ever more circulated, Aragón’s art serves as a reminder of the ways in which people can compartmentalize violent disaster images so as to maintain a barrier between ‘us’ and ‘them’ in order to reduce psychological anguish. By removing the ‘us’ and ‘them’ the viewer is forced to reconsider the implications of this particular disaster.

This message is particularly important in a city that seems to embody desensitization. Despite, at its peak, seeing nine homicides a day, most of which were organized executions, Cuidad Juarez provided little support for its residents. Not only are “femicides” rarely investigated but the city still fails to receive adequate aid due to inexcusably rampant corruption. The local police force formed a crime collective that was employed by the Juarez Cartel, the federal police force and army often utilized torture and planted false evidence in order to extort money, and federal prosecutors took on far less than one percent of the murder cases.[2]

Although Cuidad Juarez could benefit most from this argument of desensitization, it is not to say that these lessons should be contained to the disasters of Juarez or even of the Mexican Drug War. Rather, due to the increased degree with which media pervades daily life and frequency with which it reports on disasters this danger of desensitization is becoming all the more relevant.

[1] http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/10/15/mexicos-ciudad-juarez-is-no-longer-the-most-violent-city-in-the-world/

[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/in-mexicos-murder-city-the-war-appears-over/2012/08/19/aacab85e-e0a0-11e1-8d48-2b1243f34c85_story.html

January 23, 2014December 16, 2020

Doom and Spoons: An Analysis of Tempest IV and V

Tempest IV and V are magnificent pieces of art by D.C. area artist Kate Kretz that focus on the chaos and doom associated with extreme weather. The pieces were created by etching images of extreme weather, in this case images of tornados onto antique spoons. Kretz’s art often depicts scenes of doom as she is inspired by “nightmares featuring weather imagery specifically several tornadoes hovering on the horizon.” Kretz did not have a specific tornado in mind, but rather used what she knew about tornados and her vivid nightmares when making the piece.

While both Tempest IV and V depict tornados, they focus on different aspects of tornados and highlight different emotions. Tempest IV shows a long, thin tornado shooting out from abstract clouds and rapidly approaching a rural farm. The tornado is almost elegant and in many ways the scene is calm. The farm is still tranquil and there is a sense that the inhabitants have no idea of the doom to come. The abstract clouds provide a feeling of foreboding and the elegant tornado is the manifestation of this waiting evil. Tempest V shows a much different scene. The tornado in this piece is fat and not clearly defined, blending in to the clouds above. The scene is also set in an urban area, and the main feature of the piece is the tornado tearing apart the electric lines. Tempest V has contact between the disaster and humanity and there is no sense of foreboding because the doom has arrived, but in its place are chaos and destruction. It is interesting to note that the “canvas” of the pieces are antique spoons which provides interesting depth to the pieces. The curvature of the bowl of the spoon makes the image have motion and feel dynamic. The color of the spoons also has a great affect on the pieces because the entire image is just different shades of grey. This adds to the negative emotions of the image and makes both images feel as if everything is tarnished and doomed.

Kretz says that extreme weather events have come to symbolize in her mind unpredictability and anxiety associated with dysfunctional family relationships. This notion comes through strongly in her pieces, but as a historian looking through the lens of disaster to me the piece represents much more. This piece is a visual representation of how disaster is a human social construction. Tempest IV shows a tornado in the distance and the main emotion that the piece evokes is a sense of foreboding. There is no anxiety about what the tornado is doing to the non-human sphere, but only a sense of foreboding about what will happen when the tornado makes contact with the human world. In Tempest V the tornado is presently destroying the human world and their is a vivid sense of present evil. Disasters are not a disaster unless they come into contact with the human sphere, it is our reaction to them that makes them a disaster, and thus the whole idea of disaster is a social construction.

The piece also can be used to make a more tornado specific argument: even though tornados occur on a much smaller scale than many other disasters, their devastation is so enormous and all encompassing to those affected that tornados should be a high priority in disaster relief efforts. Tempest V shows how small of an area that a tornado effects, part of a town and its power lines are being completely destroyed while the other half of town is unaffected. It also shows the complete and total nature of the destruction cause by the area affected by the tornado and all the pain and anxieties that those affected feel.

Overall, Tempest IV and V are fascinating pieces that are interesting and provocative to view.

January 23, 2014December 16, 2020

State of Emergency: An uneasy, but intriguing call to disaster awareness

Disasters can both be sparked by mankind or the natural processes of our mother earth, however the cohesion between the two separate have lead to unimaginable interactions. I was moved by Mel Chin’s movie of animated illustrations, as it described two events in history sharing the same calendar date of September 11, however separated by 38 years, 1973-2011. Both of the instances are revered as disasters, 9-11-2011, being an attack on America by the terrorist group known as Al-Qaeda and the second, 9-11-1973, being the coup de’ taut backed by the US in which democratically elected government of Salvador Allende seated in Santiago, Chile was forcibly removed from power. It is interesting that two of the most noticeable relationships between the two are the calendar date of each and the rough estimate of life loss. I took away from this short animated film, history is inclined to repeat itself and the date 9-11 is remembered by both Chile and the USA for completely different reasons, however the United States is a player that had a hand in both events.

As I walked around the room another two pieces of art, produced by Kate Kretz, caught my attention. Kretz carefully illustrated two scenes of tornadoes on the end of a spoon tarnished by nothing touching down in the heartland of rural America. She used the most impressive technique of silver pointing on silverware that had tarnished, which is caused by natural exposure to air and moisture. In checking the credentials of Kate Kretz, we learn she is an American artist born in Grove City, PA and was raised in Binghamton, which is located in update New York. After little research in can be noted there have been tornadoes in Binghamton, NY within the last twenty years and the area has had historical accounts of tornadoes touching down dating even further back. Even more evidence to the fact Kretz was exposed to tornadoes growing up can be found in her own quotations at http://www.snyderman-works.com/artists/kate-kretz. In her short testimony as to why she constructs images of impeding catastrophic tornadoes, Kretz notes that, “Emotion is internal weather. Growing up in a highly dysfunctional family, tornadoes in my dreams have always felt like signals of impending doom, hovering on the horizon, a reminder to brace one’s self against the next disaster. Floods feel like overwhelming sorrow.” A point, unnoticed by me when examining these spoons, is Kretz placed these illustrations on common tools for ingestion because she hopes to convey the idea that situations and emotions associated with disasters must sometimes be swallowed because that is our role as human beings. In both of her pieces at the exhibit the overwhelming focal point is the tornado itself, making the surrounding setting seem minuscule. The path of a tornado is almost unpredictable, which means all that lays in its path will be altered by the natural destructive forces of a tornado. A point that should be noted is there were no works by Kretz in the exhibit depicting floods, but a number of her other pieces use flood waters as the focal point.

The State of Emergency exhibit brought together the human element and the recurring uneasiness brought on by disaster. In Chin’s animated film we saw how attacks against humanity by other humans can create different opinions when the role of aggressor and target are swapped in two different disasters. The works by Kate Kretz teach people the duties of humanity even though sometimes they may be hard to swallow.

Here is the url address to Mel Chin’s website for his movie…

http://www.911-911movie.com

January 23, 2014December 16, 2020

Emotional Cognizance: Finding a Balance between Empathy and Distance when Discussing Disasters

As I am from metropolitan Atlanta, I was drawn to Katherine Taylor’s three part series, Atlanta Flooding. I was struck by the fact that I did not remember the flood at all. The VAC’s description notes that the heavy rains that caused the flood in Atlanta in 2009 also affected Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, and Arkansas, but I suppose because I was not aversely impacted, I didn’t make the effort to commit the event to memory.

The first thing I felt when looking at these painting was guilt. I felt guilty that I couldn’t remember an event that apparently caused culvert failure, school closings, and homes to be destroyed less than thirty minutes away from my home. Floods are topics of historic, biblical, and often cultural import, but with modern technology, they are now localized. Unless a flood garners a wide media following, it will rarely cause an outside party to think twice on it. I decided to do research on other floods in my area once I got back to my room, and did not feel guilty that I could not remember other natural disasters. I think the difference between my two reactions was that one event was depicted visually and the others in writing. Visual appeals to emotions can often be more effective at swaying an individual’s opinion than written appeals to reason (this is a crass oversimplification of a complex psychological issue, and there are many exceptions to this notion, but for the sake of space I’ll leave it here).

Why is this significant, and how can students of history benefit from an understanding of this idea? In order to be an informed global citizen, students should recognize the types of appeals texts make. Political cartoons, photographs, and films often inspire more intense reactions than academic dissertations, pamphlets, and news articles. They can lead to riots and play instrumental parts in revolutions. To know that emotion plays a key part in historical events is to be one step closer to understanding those events. In this sense, introspection and empathy are useful. However, too much empathy can lead to bias. For example, when a student is selecting sources to use in a paper, he should keep his own reaction to a text in mind. As Eli pointed out, historians often need to distance themselves emotionally from their topics in order to present a fair and accurate depiction. That’s not to say art should not be used as a source, but that it should be used with the understanding that it can sway a writer or reader without their knowledge.

Were I to write a paper on recent southern floods, I would have to consider the guilt I felt when looking on Atlanta Flooding when deciding whether or not to use it as a source. According to the VAC description, the artist combines colors, painting and drawing techniques, and stains on the paper to illustrate her point that floods are “contradictory” and “distorted.” I could use that analysis to my advantage were I to write a paper on the confusing and distorting effects of floods on southerners, or I could combine this series with other texts in order to make the point that while some southerners think floods are contradictory and distorting, they aren’t as disruptive as they appear. The quality would depend on my own conscientiousness as a writer and on my ability to incorporate other texts effectively. Toeing the line between empathy and emotional distance in a class on disasters will be a challenge this semester, but with this assignment as an introduction, I think it will prove to be a very manageable one.