Prisoner of War

[Naeem Mohaiemen], Sunday, July 23rd 2006, 14:30 - 15:00

It is almost banal to start by talking about the ongoing Iraq apocalypse. After thousands of lives, and many multiples more of ink and video have been spilt, what more remains to be said about this manifestation of permanent war? Those who marched in anti-war rallies can now feel some schadenfreude at the unraveling of the entire project for a New Century. But at what a terrible price we earned the right to say "we told you so". Even after all the interventionist fantasies have shattered, there is no post-war peace dividend. The madness of the Neocon project only replaced by the equally insane Islamist project of the Mahdi Army, and the ethnic cleansing and forced partition dreams of the Shiite and Sunni death squads.

by Naeem Mohaiemen

http://shobakorg.blogspot.com/2007/01/these-guys.html

Scenes From A Looking Glass War
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"Play some more Bach. We won't shoot."[i]

Scene 1: Mufathalle, Munich
The weekend event is part of a series called Dictionary of War. Twenty five artists and academics, presenting themes based on a word they had chosen about warfare. Camouflage, Declaration of War, Desertion, Heroes, Liberation, Mobilization, National Anthem, Negotiation, Resistance, the list was exhaustive (my word: Prisoner of War). As we present our concepts, the Lebanon war is in its second week. There are accommodations made to reflect this rude insertion into our mannered program. Mansur Jacoubi joins us from Beirut for some clunky IRC chat (somebody asks him "can you describe the situation there?", I wince). Akram Zaatari flies in from Paris to present some earlier work??stranded outside the country, he's available to us. E-flux brings in all their Lebanese videos.

I feel the cramp of anxiety. Will all these well-sculpted words have an impact outside this room? Somehow I'm missing the codec to transmit all this theoretical, creative energy into real world action. I've been scolded for seeking use-value in art, but I can't restrain this tourette-like impulse. Back in Dhaka, friends are organizing rallies to protest the war. But they are worried because the main organizers are Islamist groups. I send them the announcement for Dictionary and get a withering response by e-mail "Sitting in a room discussing war, while the Middle East burns down?? a luxury indulgence."