Miracle Mile, Elektra/Musician, 1992
In 1990, while thousands around the country were marching in protest against U.S. troops being sent to Kuwait for deployment there and in Iraq, Blue Mountain Center former Resident composer Wayne Horvitz invested his own antipathy to what became known as the Gulf War with his composition An Open Letter To George Bush, featured on the album Miracle Mile. Two wars later, the continuing relevance of the piece is hauntingly clear.
Windows and Mirrors: Reflections on the War in Afghanistan is a traveling mural exhibit comprised of 45 large scale paintings by artists from all over the country that memorialize Afghan civillian casualties as well as images collected from Afghan high school students. The project, curated by 10YAC partner American Friends Service Committee, works to make the human costs of war visible to our nation at war by presenting visual representations of a “nearly invisible reality.”
Artist, teacher, and Blue Mountain Center alum Beverly Naidus has invited interested people of all backgrounds to submit images and text for an exhibition called “Imagining the Future We Want.” 10 Years + Counting recently interviewed Naidus about the project, with a particular interest in how it dovetails with raising awareness of the costs of war .
1. Please describe your project. What inspired you to tackle it?
I have invited more than 2000 people on Facebook to contribute to “Imagining the Future We Want.” Here is the text from Facebook: “I’m inviting all my Facebook friends to come up with an image and/or text that focuses on a reconstructive vision of the future. In other words, as the old system of dominant culture is collapsing, we need to be imagining the world we want to live in, and I want everyone to spend some time developing that vision. I will make a blog of the work and it may travel to other exhibition sites if there are folks who want to host it. You do NOT need to be a professional visual artist to participate in this exhibition. Local performers are welcome to suggest other forms for an evening or afternoon of visionary intermedia adventures.”
When I was asked by a colleague on Facebook for more clarification regarding what system is collapsing, I elaborated in the following way: “Our dominant culture, as we now know it, is imploding – neo-liberalism as a system has not worked for anyone except the filthy rich, and it is collapsing, as is the delicate balance of the ecosystems that determine the abundance or lack thereof of clean water, air and food. The systems that we have been using for education, creating energy, health care, solving conflict, offering equity, etc. are all in disrepair and need to be reshaped in profound ways if our species is going to survive and thrive (in balance with other species). Many options that have been imagined over the past century or so, need to be put back on the table, the wall and the web so that we can engage the imaginations of the public and develop more momentum. I hope this explanation generates some fuel for your muses.”
2. What have you learned from this project so far?
I’ve learned that people are really interested in developing their visions for the future, and that it has given those who might be leaning in more cynical directions permission to dream big. The deadline for submissions is August 20th, and I have already received 40 pieces, and some come from as far away as Egypt and Germany. I am looking forward to stewarding the exhibition and developing the blog as a resource for activists and artists around the world.
3. How do you wage peace each day?
My mindfulness practice, art practice and walking in the woods are the only ways I could manage the rage and fear that sometimes creeps up in my consciousness. When I start being mean to myself, I know that it is an easy step to imposing that meanness on others. Watching those feelings and having compassion for them or making art about them, usually changes their chemistry and allows the conflict to unfold in a non-violent way.
4. How can people get involved in your project?
They can send their image/text that is a reconstructive vision of the world (it could be a small gesture to transform the current dominant culture, or a large one). Images need to be 300 dpi, 8.5×11, and can be sent to POBox 13126, Burton, WA 98013. The deadline is August 20th.
5. Anything else you’d like to share with us?
Of the curriculum I have created since 2003, most relevant to 10YAC is my course on Art in a Time of War. I work at a non-traditional, urban campus, where many of our students are connected with the military in some way (Tacoma, Washington, is surrounded by military bases). Working with veterans, spouses and children of soldiers, and citizens who are seemingly disconnected from the war industry has been one of the most profound experiences in my work as a teacher and artist. My work with Thich Nhat Hanh, the anti-war poet and Buddhist monk, prepared me for this work and allows me to create a safe space in which stories can be shared.
I have been teaching various forms of socially engaged art since the late 1970’s, starting in grad school in Nova Scotia and then as a visiting artist at many colleges. My book on this topic of teaching art for social change, Arts for Change: Teaching Outside the Frame, contains the stories of 33 other teaching artists from North America, Canada and the UK. It is written as a collage of memoir, history, theory and fable, and it offers many resources to the uninitiated as well as those who are aware of the field.
As for as imagining the future we want through art making, my influences have been many. Eco-feminist literature by Marge Piercy, Starhawk, Ursula LeGuin, Octavia Butler, and many others gave me a sense of possibility, as did working with Joanna Macy (whose work I first discovered in the Blue Mountain Center library in 1983). In the early nineties, when I was a visiting artist at the Institute for Social Ecology, I first learned about “reconstructive visions for the future” and that ability to move beyond critique into the world of imagining what we want – all of these influences, as well as becoming a mother, have galvanized my practice as an artist and teacher ever since.
Beverly Naidus is an internationally recognized artist on the faculty at UW Tacoma where she teaches interdisciplinary studio courses in art for social change and healing. Conceptually-based and socially engaged, she works in many mediums, allowing the content to determine the form. Themes in her work include the ecological crisis, fear of difference, nuclear nightmares, body image and her dreams for a reconstructed world. She is the author of Arts for Change: Teaching Outside the Frame, New Village Press, 2009 as well as two artist’s books, One Size Does Not Fit All and What Kinda Name is That. She lives on Vashon Island and in Seattle with her husband, Bob Spivey (founder of SEEDS, www.socialecologyvashon.org) and their teenage son. She is currently completing an eco-art project, Eden Reframed, that involves bio-remediation of toxic soil, an archive of farmers’ and gardeners’ stories housed in sculptural story hives and the creation of a permaculture-designed food forest. She also has been stewarding a project that deals with the legacy of nuclear energy called NUKED NOTES: The Journey of a Free Radical that will be exhibited this coming year. Her websites are beverlynaidus.net and www.artsforchange.org and her blog for her one of current projects is www.edenreframed.blogspot.com.MUTANABI STREET
In March 2007, a car bomb exploded in the heart of Baghdad’s centuries-old literary center, igniting bookstores and stationery shops.
Pages flit above the ruined bookstalls.
Blank or dark with words, it doesn’t matter:
paper is as dangerous as ink—as thought.
And as for the student who was reading
in a dim café, the old men buying envelopes
across the lane, flames turned them to light,
then ash, with chemical indifference.
War tossed a match and stayed to watch
the old block burn—journals, histories,
novels, verse, dictionaries, textbooks,
anatomy primers with charts of the body
like maps of a familiar country—shops on fire
with what’s been written and what hasn’t:
the script in which mercy might repeat itself.
– Jody Bolz
Used by permission.
Jody Bolz is the author of A Lesson in Narrative Time. Her poems have appeared widely in literary magazines–The American Scholar, Indiana Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry East among them–and in many anthologies. She taught creative writing for more than 20 years at George Washington University, and in 2002 became an executive editor of Poet Lore, America’s oldest poetry journal, founded in 1889.
Stanley Kirshner Breen
$1,216,539,560,417 or — for those of you who are like me and can’t process numbers instantly in their head — one trillion, two hundred and sixteen billion, five hundred and thirty nine million, five hundred and sixty thousand, four hundred and seventeen dollars.
This is the total cost, and rising, of what America has spent on war in the past decade. I think that when
people see such a large number as this, they have a hard time connecting it to their lives. So I considered the most important things in my life.
As hard as it is to admit in the middle of summer, school is one of the most influential things in my life. I go to a Minneapolis public school, and the lack of money has been noticeable, mainly in class sizes. While my school has been lucky with funding, I know schools that are not. Schools in the poorer area of the
city have had their arts funding cut to where its basically nonexistent. This is terrible! Our taxes are being used to support violence and terror in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet America’s youth don’t have creative outlets in school.
Child Antiwar Project Photograph: Ena Timor
Creative outlets provide students with healthy and innovative ways to express themselves. Many experts believe that art programs help low-income youth become more successful academically in high school.
While I am writing this, we (the state of Minnesota) are currently in a government shutdown. The Minnesota legislature wants to cut the funding of public services rather than increase taxes on the wealthy. Public school funding is being hit hard by this. Last year, $1.4 billion was cut from public school funding, and there is no plan to pay it back. This year, Minnesota politicians want to cut even more, targeting integration, special needs and children living in poverty. Schools are getting less and less money, and the first thing to go are the art programs.
Ten years ago, the U.S. Senate vote on initiating the war on Iraq was 77 for and 23 against. While the U.S. Senate supports the colossal spending on war, the elected officials in my state are opposed to giving schools the basic funding they need. This makes me think: What is our government teaching our society? That war is more important than knowledge? How can America count on a better future if our youth don’t have the tools to grow?
This fall I’m partnering with 10 Years + Counting, an organization that seeks to create something positive out of the devastative war, by connecting a community of people through art. At a time when the arts are being cut and much of our funding is going to war, the voice of students is needed more than ever.
Visit www.10yearsandcounting.org to learn of ways you can get involved.
Art engages students in a way that nothing else can. Art brings out creativity and allows students to view the world and approach problems in a completely unique way. Involvement with art increases concentration, motivation, confidence, and critical thinking, and expands the imagination. This is why art should be the backbone of any high school education.
I hope students across the country will get involved with 10YAC – and use creativity to imagine a world where education is more important than war.
Resources:
http://www.edutopia.org/arts-music-curriculum-child-development
This week The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis featured a piece by writer and artist Wendy Brown-Báez on their blog which discusses the power of poetry as a means for peace. The author’s opening includes a mention of a shocking absurdity involving William Butler Yeats’ “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” Here is that iconic poem to refresh your memory of it, followed by the blog.
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
By W. B. Yeats
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
Poetry as a Weapon for Peace and Freedom in the Middle East by Wendy Brown-Báez.
DAISY CUTTER
Pause here at the flower stand-mums
and gladiolas, purple carnations
dark as my heart. We are engaged
in a war, and I want to drag home
any distraction I can carry. Tonight
children will wake to bouquets of fire
that will take their breath away. Still,
I think of my life. The way you hold me,
sometimes, you could choke me.
There is no way to protect myself,
except by some brilliant defense. I want
the black iris with their sabered blooms.
I want the flame throwers: the peonies,
the sunflowers. I will cut down the beautiful ones
and let their nectared sweetness bleed
into the careless air. This is not the world
I’d hoped it could be. It is horrible,
the way we carry on. Last night, you catalogued
our arsenal. You taught me devastation
is a goal we announce in a celebration
of shrapnel. Our bombs shower
in anticipation of their marks. You said this
is to assure damage will be widely distributed.
What gruesome genius invents our brutal hearts?
When you touch me I am a stalk of green panic
and desire. Wait here while I decide which
of these sprigs of blossoming heartbreak I can afford
to bring into my home. Tonight dreams will erupt
in chaotic buds of flame. This is the world we have
arranged. It is horrible, this way we carry on.
-Camille T. Dungy
“Daisy Cutter” in Washington D.C. Poets Against the War, 2nd ed., reprinted on From the Fishouse. Forthcoming July 2011 in Smith Blue (Southern Illinois University Press), winner of the 2010 Crab Orchard Open Prize.
Used by permission.
Camille T. Dungy is author of Suck on the Marrow (Red Hen Press, 2010), What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison (Red Hen Press, 2006), and Smith Blue, winner of the 2010 Crab Orchard Open Prize (forthcoming from Southern Illinois University Press, 2011). She is editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (UGA, 2009), and co-editor of From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great (Persea, 2009). Dungy has received fellowships from organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, Cave Canem, and Bread Loaf. She is associate professor of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. Dungy’s poems have recently appeared in print and online journals including, American Poetry Review, Poetry Daily, Drunken Boat, Verse Daily,and Electronic Poetry Review.
In her installation piece What Matters, artist and activist Judy Byron pairs women in conversation to discuss “what matters” to them. Byron then produces 3-D portraits of her participants, accompanied by audio recordings of their dialogue, which are displayed together in an installation inviting audience members to further discuss the topic . Here two women, Marianne and Joan, talk casually about the costs of war.
Marianne and Joan. Colored Pencil And Crayon On Handmade Linen Paper. Attached To Arches Drawing Paper Surfaced W/Color Pencil, Charcoal, And Punch Holes. 72″ X 52″. 2007.
Red Brocade
The Arabs used to say
When a stranger appears at your door
feed him for three days
before asking who he is,
where he’s come from,
where he’s headed.
That way, he’ll have strength
enough to answer.
Or, by then you’ll be
such good friends
you don’t care.
Let’s go back to that.
Rice? Pine Nuts?
Here, take the red brocade pillow.
My child will serve water
to your horse.
No, I was not busy when you came!
I was not preparing to be busy.
That’s the armor everyone put on
to pretend they had a purpose
in the world.
I refuse to be claimed.
Your plate is waiting.
We will snip fresh mint
into your tea.
– Naomi Shihab Nye
Used by permission.
Naomi Shihab Nye is the author and/or editor of more than 30 volumes. Her books of poetry include 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, A Maze Me: Poems for Girls, Red Suitcase, Words Under the Words, Fuel, and You & Yours (a best-selling poetry book of 2006). She has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Witter Bynner Fellow. She has received a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, four Pushcart Prizes, and numerous honors for her children’s literature, including two Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards. In 2010 she was elected to the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets.
Blue Mountain Center’s Costs of War Focus Session, which fostered 10 Years + Counting, included two Residents from Iraq Veterans Against the War: Organizing Team Leader Aaron Hughes, a visual artist, and Director of Development Amadee Braxton, a writer. Thanks to them, IVAW, whose mission is to mobilize the military community to withdraw its support for the war and occupation in Iraq, became a powerful founding partner in 10YAC.
IVAW’s Warrior Writers program, which brings together recent veterans and current service members to express themselves through art, has culminated in the book Warrior Writers: Move, Shoot and Communicate. The following essay from the collection is by Paul Abernathy.
A Brotherhood
In American Society, the U.S. military is often classified as a “brotherhood,” indicating the level of relationships soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen share with one another. Of course placing human persons in a situation as stressful and horrific as war will most certainly lead to very memorable bonds. Since I have returned home from the war, however, I have asked myself, “Does the content of the bond influence the depth of such a personal relationship?”
If one were to define the word “brotherhood” simply by its common English meaning, he or she might find it to be defined as a mere “organization of men united for a common purpose.” Though grammatically correct, reducing the concept of “brotherhood” to a simple union of convenience greatly undermines the reality and depth of human relations. As I found in Iraq, it is not simply a unity of purpose that creates a brotherhood, but rather companionship or even a “communion of persons” brought together by a fellowship of goodwill toward all human beings.
Upon reflecting on those individuals I served with in Iraq with whom I shared such a connection, I can only recognize that it was not our rifles that united us in such a strong and mysterious way. Much to the contrary, it was our love for our fellow humans and willingness to communicate to all, Iraqi and American alike, despite consequences that gave us the connection most can only hope to attain in their lifetimes. No matter how much we trained together or shared our experiences with one another, we gradually learned that we could not achieve the goal of “brotherhood” until it included all who suffered. It was the mystical connection that was only fully realized when we shared our food with hungry Iraqis, cared for Iraqi children, and tended to Iraqi wounded. it was only while sharing the love we had for each other with the poor, suffering, and destitute Iraqis that we ceased to be individuals united by war and became a communion of persons, a brotherhood in its truest sense.
Since returning home, I have experienced the true concept of brotherhood time and time again. It was always unmistakable and equally profound. I see it when gathered around a celebration of the Eucharist in my church, or when I have been in a soup kitchen with those living on our streets. I have seen it when people have comforted those mourning for lost loved ones, or when a child shares his or her snack with another child. It is something I have experienced at teach-ins and anti-war protests when I have witnessed countless thousands come forward saying, “Not in our name.”
Never again must we fall into the belief that a “band of brothers” is something only achievable while making war on others, for nothing can be further from the truth. We must see a brotherhood for what it truly is, an ultimate expression of love, and we must remember it is not something we can enforce and foster with a rifle. This war must remind us of how greatly we have perverted the term “brotherhood,” and if we fail to correct our understanding of such a beautiful concept, all the suffering this war has caused will surely have been in vain.
—Paul Abernathy
In January 2003, Paul’s army reserve unit was mobilized and he was sent to the Middle East to serve with the 3rd ID. He crossed into Iraq the first day of the ground war and went on to complete various missions in Baghdad, Al Anbar, and Balad until 2004. Paul joined IVAW in September 2005. This piece was written in February 2007 in Pittsburgh, PA, where he currently resides.
10 YEARS + COUNTING 