KRZYSZTOF WODICZKO

Though I am not an expert in political and cultural anthropology, I will

attempt to elaborate on some conditions and issues that may have contributed to
the passivity and silence of artists, intellectuals, academics, and those from within
the cultural domain.

The War
Unlike during the Vietnam War, we have no official military draft, which is
an important condition for the potential of a nationwide antiwar movement.
And unlike before the Vietnam War, the U.S. was indeed attacked (in
2001)not by any country, and certainly not by Iraqand thus, for many, retaliation seems legitimate. The cultural and larger publics, including artistic audiences
and institutions, are confused by their complex relation to the popular support
our troops slogan.
I lived in Poland during the Vietnam War and cannot be a witness here, but
from what I hear from my American-born colleagues, the resentment, resistance,
and fear of military draft in the context of the illegality of the war (because the
U.S. was not directly attacked) were critically linked with, and to some degree
fueled by, powerful and emotionally charged reports and images of war.

The Media
In the current war, there is no attempt to present politically insightful information and images of war; particularly absent is the damage done to civilians and
to cultural and social life in Iraq.
To make it worse, the real picture of war damage inflicted on the U.S. population (including trauma transmission and dissemination) is not being taken into
account by the media. (I will come back to this issue in the later part of my response.)
The damage to immigrants and their families caused by Homeland Securitys
domestic war on terror(the subject of my interior projection titled If You See
Something . . . ) is also neither seen nor heard.
Through skillful imposition of the editorial technique of omission, the governments public information machine has silenced the complexity and magnitude of
the toll of war and successfully manipulated a confused and disappointed middleclass and its centrist public sphere. In this way, the government turned media into
its publicity. The art of the front-page image (no more than trite photographic
war icons) in the New York Times and affiliated Boston Globe testifies to this.
Antiwar discourse between cultures, classes, and generations needs evocative,
OCTOBER 123, Winter 2008, pp. 172179. 2008 October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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passionate, and agonistic war reports and images, ones that compete for truthtelling. Artists and intellectuals, especially visual artists and their audiences, rely
today only on media imagery. In order to construct new forms and methods for
critical thinking, resistance, and rescue, artists and intellectualsand the public
at largeneed to see and hear information and imagery that reports, testifies,
explores, and uncovers the war.
Ernst Friedrichs Anti-War Museum and Krieg dem Kriege! [War against War!]
project, which relied on photographic documents as evidence of the horrors of
war, would be as difficult today as it was then, in the time of German censorship
during World War I. John Heartfield would have had have a hard time as well (but
I am sure that his sense of humor would have helped him find a way to unmask
and ridicule the empty sentimentality and hypocrisy of the medias war imagery
and the workings of the censorship itself. He would have embraced the Internet
and the methods of Electronic Civil Disobedience, just as he mastered the
method of photomontage and the use of the most advanced printing technology,
rotogravure).
Reading the Morning Newspaper . . .
Our postdeconstructive artistic efforts (analytical, critical, and pro-active)
are not only sporadic and lonely but also overshadowed by the spiritual impact
of media imagery.
The media provides for a daily spectacle of humanized and universalized
war trauma. Television, radio, and the Internet provide spiritual assistance to
ones confused life. The physical, mental, or moral injury and suffering of those in
Iraq and Afghanistan are being turned into soft and digestible parareligious
media representation. Aimed at comforting our ethically confused souls, todays
art of media culture is elegant and hermeneutical in its careful choice and omission of critical issues. The phantasm it inspires has a sublime and metaphysical
effect. Hegel said:
Reading the morning newspaper is a kind of real Morning Prayer. One
orients ones attitude against the world and toward (in one case) God,
or (in the other case) toward that which the world is. The former gives
the same security as the latter, in that one knows where one stands.
Made long before the advent of the newspapers advanced color photography and
its iconic impact, Hegels observation seems surprisingly accurate today. Present
day image reproduction technology adds quality to Hegels real Morning
Prayer. The large-scale, holy image on the front page of the New York Times functions as an altar in front of which we justify our political passivity in real life. They
are skillfully created to be used by a reader as empathy objects.
As long as we look at the tragic media icons with feelings for the victims

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establishing a bridge of empathy with them, or, more precisely, with their icons
we feel that we are part of a larger human family. We may imagine and wish (pray)
that the suffering of these war survivors and victims may redeem us, or offer a
sort of salvation, and relieve us from an obligation to try to do anything about
their and others situations. Ones empathy functions here as a substitute for action.
When in the time of war the middle classs spiritual, humanistic, and aesthetic
needs seem to be fulfilled by the art of the media, the critical artist and his or her
art are put out of business by the art of an official and powerful media artist.
Is there a way to confront the artistic impact of the media? To disclose and
challenge what it is shown, how it misrepresents, and what it hides about the war?

If You See Something . . .

In my interior projection If You See Something . . ., a reference to the Homeland Security signs still displayed in the public transportation systems of New York
and other cities that read If You See Something, Say Something, I focus on the
tragic effects of our Ministry of Interior, U.S. Homeland Security, on the limits
of our perception and imagination effected by the interior of our uninformed
minds (our subjectivity), and most importantly on the invisible people, the working residents of our country who are struggling to survive the U.S. governments
unjust actions conducted against them in the name of the war on terror.
With the use of high-definition video projection, the windowless space of
Galerie Lelong was transformed into an illusion of an interior with windows. On
the other side of milky glass windows (Chelsea-style), as if outside on the sidewalk, one could see the foggy images of those others suffering arrests, detentions,
and deportations, the aliens from whom we are alienated. They actors worked
according to scripts written themselves; they recalled and reenacted scenes from
real life, situations that happened and could happen again to them on the New
York streets.
The psycho-political and aesthetic aims of the projection were as follows:
To come close enough to these strangers, who one usually does not
notice, to see and hear some unexpected details of their painful, often brave and
comically tragic experiences, and to realize how incomplete our understanding
and access to their experience is.
To engage the survivors emotionally and aesthetically as coartists in the
production and animation of the projection; to help them develop rhetorical survival skills and emotional capacities by publically articulating their traumatic
encounters with Homeland Security.
To help organizations attract media and public attention for their clients
situations.
To take advantage of the cultural production situation in order to build
new connections between immigrants and social support networks.

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During the two years of the projects development, I joined the work of
many social support groups and established political ties with the Visible
Collective, directed by Naeem Mohaiemen, which developed Disappeared in
America in conjunction with the Queens Museum. Besides those immigrants who
were directly involved, numerous lawyers, social worker, families, friends, and
organizations helped with the project.2
Cultural Economy of Silence
The ineffectiveness of early antiwar demonstrations (here and abroad) and
the reelection of George Bush weakened the self-confidence and strength of critical sections of the middle-class: the media, universities, museums, cultural
institutions, etc.
Today, in cultural institutions and academia it is in good taste to imply that
one may be against the interventionism and imperial war conducted by the present governmentyet only in private or in confidential meetings. In public and,
above all, in ones projects, one must remain neutral, humanistic, and universalanything to avoid what could be called political.
The political climate ignited by our fears of terrorism, real and/or imagined, controls of our thinking. Collectors, directors, curators, gallery dealers, art
professors, and artists themselves live with self-censorship and the dubious results
of their common sense choices made in the name of economical survival and aesthetic sophistication. (They say political art is too simple; that artists should
not be preaching to the converted; that in our hearts we are all against the war
anyway, so lets keep quiet to survive; its only a year before he is gone.)
Boards of trustees, corporate and individual sponsors, and state and city
political support have indirect or direct connections with the U.S. governments
interventions. One cannot mess with these interests; the new managerial styles of
cultural and academic institutions say so quite openly.
Many people say that the idea of political art is pass, which sounds like
saying that criticism and the political process are pass, that critical thinking,
protest, and opposition to right wing nationalistic and imperialistic ideology are
pass. The political art of the past cannot, of course, make sense for the present;
2.
The social support organizations and groups that directly collaborated were the American-Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee (Asli); the American Friends Service Committee (William Coley); the
Asylum Project, Immigrant Rights ProgramNYMRO; the Civil Liberties Union Boston Chapter; the
Coney Island Avenue Project (Bobby Khan); the Council of Pakistan Organization (Mohammad Razvi);
DRUM (Desis Raising Up and Moving); Families for Freedom (Aarti Shahani and Subhash Kateel);
Keeping Hope Alive ( Jane Mee); the National Immigration Project (Malik Ndau); Peaceful Tomorrows
(Nail Ashour); Physicians for Human Rights (Barbara Ayoite); Safe Horizons, Immigration Law Project
(Ellen Friedland); the Visible Collective (Naeem Mohaiemen); and the War Resisters League (Steve
Theberge). Without these groups, examples of the presence of an oppositional public sphere, this project would not have been possible.

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another form will need to be invented now and in the future. What was good yesterday may not be good for today, what is today may be not good for tomorrow.
Why, then, have we been attempting since the 1990s to bury all kinds of political
and engaged art? Why havent we just gone ahead and invented new ones?
I absolutely agree with your questionnaires implication that the marketdriven cultural economy alienates us from the collective and/or coalition based
oppositional practice of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Emphasis on an individual
artists oeuvre (demanded by the market) and the fashionable aversion to any kind
of socially focused, critical art (a bad name, if not a curse), is a serious background
for the lack of any socio-aesthetic action and movement (another bad name).

The Internet
Contrary to Octobers implied skepticism about the effect of the Internet, and
in accordance with the more optimistic position of Critical Art Ensemble and
other technologically and politically minded groups and artists, I believe that the
Internets communication technology and culture are NOT socially alienating and
depoliticizing factors.
I hold that the Internet continues to be a great political and artistic vehicle
for all of us and the vital means of collective being and action. The creative use of
the Internet, in conjunction with digital imaging technology, cellular telephone
communication, and other media, is an organic part of the public oppositional
presenceas much as physical gatherings, actions, and events. Through various
interfaces and cross-organizational networks, the Internet can enforce, protect,
and disseminate oppositional projects, developing them collectively and coordinating them, often globally. The Internet allows the social actions in electronic
space to be organically linked with social actions in urban, suburban, and distant
environments.
In addition, todays oppositional projects and protests do not always need to
take the form of massive street demonstrations or marches on Washington. The
actions that take place between these big gatheringsactions prepared through
the use of digital media and communication technologiescan be effective.

The War Silence

The U.S. populations silence is in part a result of vast war fallout at home
the rapid spread of the secondary trauma transmitted by returning soldiers to
their families. Soldiers psychologically and socially harmful (posttraumatic
stressrelated behavior) directly affects their close and extended families.
This war is unprecedented in U.S. history for its excessive use of the National
Guard and military reserves and for recalling older individuals, who typically have

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large families, three or four times. Each traumatized soldier retraumatizes five to
nine members of his or her own family. Secondary war trauma is spreading so
rapidly across the country that it will cripple and destroy the lives of a third of the
U.S. population. The soldiers families are as much war veterans as the soldiers
themselves. For too many back home, the peace is a continuation of war by other
means.
As a result of new boot camp desensitizing techniques, 80 percent of U.S. soldiers are trained and armed to kill in Iraq and Afghanistan (only 20 percent did
so in World War II). In this situation, it must be very difficult for returning soldiers
to resensitize themselves back home, and there is no comprehensive and effective
government program for such reintegration.
For every U.S. soldier killed, there are sixteen wounded comrades, an
unprecedented ratio of survival, which means an enormous number of veterans
will suffer deep physical and mental wounds. New kinds of brain, bodily, and emotional injuries are multiplying. These emotional, moral, and physical injuries
affect the lives of veterans as well as those of their children and grandchildren.
Those soldiers recalled several times to Iraq are not only traumatized, but
also retraumatized, and in turn they traumatize, retraumatize, harm, and even kill
others or themselves.
The Iraq human trauma is, of course, far greater than the one among U.S.
soldiers and families. Eighty percent or more of the children in Iraq suffer posttraumatic stress, joining the vast majority of Iraq as a traumatized population.
Countless Iraqis have lost their lives; countless Iraqis have lost their closest kin,
their friends, and their community; countless Iraqis live wounded and impoverished, and seek uncertain and traumatic refuge abroad.

The Tasks
There is enormous emotional and political illiteracy about the scale of todays
war and the spread of war trauma, about war as a lived-through experience, as an
experience with resulting generational and cultural fallout.
The silence of those who know what the present war isthat is, the silence
of one-third of the U.S. population, and the silence of the entire population of
Iraqis reinforced by the common sense passivity on the part of cultural, artistic,
and academic worlds.
In this situation it is difficult, if not impossible, for the younger generations,
artists among them, to learn and comprehend the existential dimension and scale
of the present war. They do not know what war is from the point of view of Iraqi
civilians or Iraqi insurgents, nor from U.S. soldiers and their families. There is
no agonistic democratic discourse, based on fearless speech by all parties.
Young people do not have any cultural base from which to develop their ethical and political acts of public speech and art in opposition to the war. The war

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impact will soon be so large that they will have many everyday experiences with
the social epidemic of secondary trauma, but without a larger social discourse they
will have no equipment to understand the scale and depth of its existential fallout. The younger population has no idea what war is.
Since 2001, I have been engaged in teaching workshops and seminars as a
part of my Interrogative Design Group at MIT. The courses explore public art,
media art, methodologies in advancing designs and technologies of protest, dissensus and social inclusion, and critical and agonistic memory; I have focused
more recently on the design of communication and mobility equipment design
for todays war veterans.
Each year I receive more student demand for images and information on soldiers and civilians lived war experience. War veterans are invited to speak to the
students, alternative films from the war are shown, and the Internet communications about the war and its falloutand online antiwar art and cultural projects
are reviewed.
In the isolated academic environment, it is almost impossible to break the
wall of silence, reinforced by the media and cultural worlds, that separates two
alienated populations: those who know what war is and those who do not. The
wall of silence, passivity, and ignorance must be dismantled. Tactical cultural projects must be urgently developed with those who know, with the veterans, their
families, and those who work directly with them.

Art for the Political

If, since the 1990s, our objective has been to contribute to the political,
rather than to politics, to the polis rather than the police, to that which is potentia and multitude rather than potentates, to revolt rather than revolution, to agon
and dissenus rather then consensus, to Democratic parrhesia and public interpellation rather than patriotic or civic responsibility, to nomadology rather than
the state apparatus . . . let us then continue our effort in inventing art for the political. There have been new and versified methodologies developed in this direction
by artists, artistic and cultural groups, collaborative networks, and coalitions.
Lets hope they will focus on the methods of war against war as a new, postdeconstructive project. In this context, I would like to mention some names of
oppositional artistic groups and projects (some of them are among the respondents to the October questionnaire):
Walid Raad and the Atlas Group, Critical Art Ensemble (Electronic
Civil Disobedience and other projects), Todd Hirsch and works by
Autonomedia, 16Beaver, the Yes Men, Naeem Mohaiemen and the
Visible Collective, John Melpede, and the programs and projects of the
Vera List Center for Art and Politics, the projects and teaching of MITs

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Interrogative Design Group (including the War Veteran Vehicle Project

presently under development), and many others.
It is my conviction that if these and other artists, artistic groups, networks,
and coalitions further focus their attention on the present war and on fallout for
later generations, we will contribute not only to the end this war, but to a situation
in which it will be much more difficult for society to allow an unjust, irresponsible,
interventionist war to reoccur.
Developing my Interrogative Design Group and the War Veteran Vehicle
Project in collaboration with Theodore Spyropoulos, preparing new interior and
exterior public projections with war veterens, as well as learning and teaching the
methods and techniques of oppositional art, I try to contribute in this direction.

August 2007

KRZYSZTOF WODICZKO is an artist who lives and works in New York and Cambridge, Massachusetts.