My friends and I did our waterboarding simulation at the big Peace March in Washington last weekend. It went pretty well, and we plan on enhancing it some and doing it again in March. One of our goals is to provide images that help illuminate the anti-war and anti-torture effort. This is important, as demonstrated by our success in getting a nice, big picture in the Washington Post, etc. Of course, once an image is created and disseminated, you have to come up with a new image to move forward. Nobody is going to pay any attention to something they have seen a hundred times before. I'm posting to ask for help from my creative old friends in generating fresh ideas for actions and images. My vision is to bring forward the idea of "Blood On Our Hands", and to humanize the effects of war. One idea I have is to make a video of a simulation of someone blowing up their own hand by placing it over a small explosive device. Another idea is to use buckets of blood and gore, and allow viewers to accept that we all have blood on our hands, and that we can move forward as humans with the humility and restraint that such a condition must imply. Another idea is to apply bloody handprints in appropriate places, such as Joe Lieberman's and John McCain's senate offices. If any of you have any good ideas in these directions, please pass them on to me. As you know, we aren't just playing around here. Ain't no Fal-De-Ral, if you know what I mean.
Don't you know that it's the children we're killin' ?
jim
7 comments:
Public nudity always grabs headlines. How about something graphic to illustrate the concept of "coming clean"?
Our President is always full of fresh ideas, such as that the appropriate response to a terrorist attack is to Go Shopping. How about happy shoppers finding blood & gore in their shopping bags?
Maybe that's too much like a hokey haunted house. The shadow over my bed was pretty scary. How about a big cloud hovering overhead that rains blood? Or if you have time for a longer more theatrical piece: mayhem and torture. Bystanders react variously, with concern or indifference. A shadow begins moving over the area; the bystanders become increasingly concerned about the cloud hanging over them. Men in suits tell the bystanders to ignore the cloud and the soldiers to be more brutal. The cloud begins to rain blood. The men in suits shout, “We’ll protect you!” and order the soldiers to fire into the cloud. It only comes down harder and the brutality and mayhem become worse. All sink to the ground moaning and covered with blood.
I like having collective expiation as well as collective guilt though. Maybe you can have some kind of cleansing to rid us all of blood, raining down upon the formal heap as it were. But Jim’s right about public nudity. You can’t beat it for flavor, as Joe Bean would say.
But did you have bring up the heartbreaking image of Baby Davey with his head laughing, rolling on the ground?
Thanks for the help. There is already a "Breasts Not Bombs" girl-group. They take off their shirts in front of the White House, etc. I like it, but they don't get their picture in the paper and they are relatively easy to ignore. I'm leaning more towards blood than nudity, although they are certainly not mutually exclusive. What I'm really looking for are ways to take people to places that they have never been before, and to take them there very quickly, before they can change their mind about the trip. You remember the Fear that has no name. It's just a short trip, if you can find the right path. I like the expiation component. We generally leave that as an implied part of the experience, kind of like the "Go into the world in peace" closing to a church service. I'm thinking I can simulate some explosions with compressed air. Fill some gloves with hamburger and stuff and then blow them up. Sound tasty?
Bloody flying meat is very good - but must be exploded on the unsuspecting "innocent" to induce proper shock and awe reaction
How's about a whole Exploding Meat Dummy?
I think that we are coming to a good consensus here, and I greatly appreciate your support. I think we'll work on the exploding meat scenario for a while, and do some mass nudity stuff later in the Spring. That will work much better with a few thousand people, no?
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