Oliver Ressler, Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies, 2007
The Typhoon Continues and So Do You
Introduction
The Typhoon Continues and So Do You is borrowed from Kenneth Koch’s 2003
poem, “To World War Two.” Koch references the drive to continue life as
usual during wartime, describing this phenomenon from the perspective of a
soldier in a foxhole:  balaclava facemask explore both sides of the conflicts and their historical
I could write poetry
Fall in love
And have a daughter
And think about these things
From a great distance
If I survived.
When organizing this exhibition, we focused on the natural desire to
transcend material reality (whether experienced through a newscast or on
the frontlines) in selecting the four “artifacts” of war. The artifacts we chose
carry great social and historical weight, and are expressions of conflicts that
lack resolution, closure, or certainty. These objects exist today in contexts
slightly removed from their origins; they act in a different way and allude
to various shifts that demonstrate how societies understand and process
conflict.
Featuring
Vahap Avsar, Hector Canonge, Joseph DeLappe, Patrick Dintino, Nick Fevelo,
Yevgeniy Fiks, Gregory Green, Harvey Loves Harvey, Pablo Helguera &
Colectivo Mishima, Yael Kanarek, Kristian Kozul, Julia Kul, Elizabeth Larison,
Brian Leo, Paolo Pedercini, Public Studio, Ryan Roa, Christopher Robbins,
Sayeh Sarfaraz, Aida Sehovic, and Matthew Sleeth.   Opening: Friday, April 1, from 6 pm on
With reader contributions by Rodney Dickson, Pauline Julier, Biko Koenig,
Nick Kolakowski, Carin Kuoni, Morgan Meis, Catherine McMahon, Gregory B.
Moynahan, Oliver Ressler, A.E. Souzis, Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor.
Reader edited by Elizabeth Larison, designed by Douglas Paulson
Scheduled presentations, screenings and performances:
Saturday, April 9th, 6pm: Objects of War and Their Reappropriations.
Performance by Pablo Helguera & Colectivo Mishima and presentation by
Anya E.V. Liftig.
Thursday, April 14th, 8pm: Geographical and Social Landscapes of Conflict,
Both Real and Perceived. Short film by Owen Mundy and documentary by
Jayce Salloum. To occur in conjunction with Flux Thursday, Flux Factory’s
monthly potluck dinner and arts salon.
The responses we received from the participating artists evoke pop culture’s
ravenous appetite, which can manipulate and consume almost anything.
As is the case with the recruitment video game America’s Army or the
North Korean “Hell March” video posted on YouTube, eccentric evidences
of modernity collide to perpetuate a kitschy militaristic culture. Alternately,
many of the artworks that respond to the Slobodan Miloševic trial and
contexts, although rarely from an impartial standpoint. In all cases, a new
contextualization of these artifacts shift how a collective consciousness
absorbs the trauma of conflict and attempts to move beyond—or at least
with—it.
The artists’ responses have an improvisational quality that questions
the residues, implications, and shadows of objects or images that were
intentionally made to establish and enforce a political perspective. While
people are killed, property is damaged, and humanity is degraded, there is
still an impulse to continue through the typhoon.
- Elizabeth Larison, Douglas Paulson, Ginger Shulick, Chen Tamir,
and Christina Vassallo
April 2011
Sunday, May 1, 3:30pm: Knowledge Creation and Propagation: Justifying
Choices in War and Reparation. Short film by Nadia Awad and presentation
by Maxwell Neely-Cohen.
Preparations for Existing in and Surviving through Zones of Conflict. Short
film by Alana Kakoyiannis and short film by Oliver Ressler.
Exhibition information:
Exhibition dates: Saturday, April 2 through Sunday, May 8
Hours: open weekends, 12 – 6 pm or by appointment
Location: Flux Factory, 39-31 29th Street, Long Island City, Queens
Special thanks to Brendan Coyle, Amanda Curtis, and Marion Arnaud.
Flux Factory is a non-profit arts organization whose mission is to support
and promote emerging artists through exhibitions, commissions, residencies,
and collaborative opportunities. Focused on generating collaborative work
processes, Flux Factory is a public and community space with an open
office, exhibition space, printmaking studio, woodshop, and craft-room for
its collaborative Flux Artists-in-Residence (FAIR) program and the public. In
addition to exhibitions of new commissions and events, it produces unique
projects around the city and the world.
www.fluxfactory.org
 This Tragic Text Is A
MILOSEVIC
Supreme Absurdity
A.E. Souzis
We speak in metaphors, because metaphors are a way we attempt to
understand. Here’s one: the transcript for The Hague’s 5-year trial against
Slobodan Miloševic for crimes against humanity during the 1991-1995
Yugoslav War is 49,615 pages long. Stacked up vertically, the entire
transcript measures a whopping 49.26 feet, or roughly the height of a
5-story building. In my mind, that building is decrepit, abandoned, unfit for
human habitation. You enter at your own risk, scuttling past the holes in the
floor, the rats, the decaying beams. You head up the creaking stairs in the
darkness, pausing at each floor (or every 10,000 pages of the transcript),
which, like a reverse Dante’s Inferno, leads to more horrors the higher you
go. Open the doors on each landing to revisit the crimes Miloševic has been
charged with: the ethnic cleansing of the Albanians in Kosovo in 1990; the
bombing of historic Dubrovnik, Croatia in 1991; the massacre of nearly
9,000 Bosnians in Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995. By the
top floor you are panting, numb, and there’s an ominous tingling shooting
up your left arm. But it’s too late: as you step off the stairs, they collapse
beneath you, like the trial abruptly did when Miloševic’s heart stopped on
March 22, 2006.
But you may prefer this metaphor: the transcript as a screenplay for a
50,000-hour epic drama. The characters leap off the pages: the stern
but impartial Judge Robinson, the serious but sultry prosecutor Carla Del
Ponte, her prim, upright British associate Geoffrey Nice, and, of course,
Miloševic, saddled with the Kafkaesque moniker “The Accused,” arguing
voraciously against the legality of the trial, the veracity of the witnesses’
statements, seeking every opportunity to attack and deny. He is a fighter,
the most dangerous kind. Perhaps you want to add a personal detail for a
dramatic touch: a man, sitting in the back of the courtroom day after day,
who has lost his family in the conflicts. In the Hollywood version, the man
is still ruggedly handsome, still hopeful. In the European art house version,
he is missing teeth and visibly scarred. The films’ endings vary, based on
the production, on the final day in court when Judge Robinson announces
Miloševic has died. In the Hollywood film, we see the man smiling to
himself -- somehow he is responsible for Miloševic’s death, cosmic justice
and retribution reinforced. In the European art house film, the camera
slowly pans over the man’s sunken, lost face. Aghast at the futility of it all,
he stumbles out of the courtroom, shoulders hunched, into the blinding
sunlight.
But perhaps these metaphors can only go so far in making peace with war.
For every attempt the transcript makes to restore our sense of morality and
humanity, the blankness opens up behind. Ultimately, the horror of Kurtz’s
heart of darkness is what 50,000 pages of words documenting one of the
most brutal wars in recent history can only hint at.
- A.E. Souzis is a writer and media artist living in New York City. Through her writ-
ings, multimedia installations and site-specific tours, she creates narratives that
explore the real-life networks of power that exist in politics, underground and
“alternative histories” and public spaces.
Piercing the White Noise
of Transparency
Carin Kuoni
“Bringing war criminals to justice. Bringing justice to victims.”
(http://www.icty.org/) Before the conclusion of the trial for crimes against
humanity of former president of Serbia and Yugoslavia Slobodan Miloševic,
the accused died in his cell in The Hague in 2006. It was five years after his
arrest, and four after the beginnings of the proceedings of his case, part of
the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
What remains from the most prominent trial of the most violent war in
Europe after World War II – apart from insurmountable trauma and suffering
– are the video files and 50,000 pages of transcripts of approximately
four hundred days of the Miloševic trial on the website of the International
Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia.
In recent years, there have been famous incidents of public accountability,
where different parties opened archives in response to calls for transparency.
The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commissions’ proceedings
are entirely online http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/. The Guantánamo Bay
Combatant Status Review Tribunals are at http://www.defense.gov/news/
combatant_tribunalsarchive.html. The 500-page Tower Commission Report,
ordered in response to the Iran Contra Scandal and holding Reagan
“accountable for a lax managerial style and aloofness from policy details”
can be bought on Amazon. And significant details of the 2010 Deepwater
Horizon Oil Spill, as analyzed in the independent commission’s “Summary
Report for Fate and Effects of Remnant Oil in the Beach Environment” can
be found here: http://www.restorethegulf.gov/release/2011/02/11/federal-
science-report-analyzes-environmental-risks-and-benefits-additional-clean.
The vastness of such archives is both exhilarating and forbidding. To visit
www.icty.org, and to hear and see the victims, the accused, and judges
of a war two decades back is jarring. How do we digest such an immense
amount of data? How do we bring the archives to the present? WikiLeaks
(“Keeping You Informed! All Released Leaks Archive! Afghan or Iraq War
Documents! Secret UFO Information! Classified US Army Videos!” at www.
wikileaks.org) has opted to make approximately 20,000 of 500,000 cables
available, to great effect. In 2009, a group of artists mined the Guantánamo
Tribunals and produced a multipart video installation that implicates every
gallery visitor: “9 Scripts from a Nation at War” by Andrea Geyer, Sharon
Hayes, Ashley Hunt, Katya Sander, and David Thorne consists in part of
reenacted tribunal scenes (http://www.9scripts.info/).
The aborted trial of Miloševic did not yield a pronouncement of guilt, and
therefore not “justice” in a conventional sense. However, perhaps just as im-
portant as final closure – in itself an illusion – are the proceedings of trying
to get there. Aren’t we witnesses to such developments now, one month after
the uprising in Egypt has begun, when information swamps the Web, and
Wisconsin attempts to emulate Cairo?
- Carin Kuoni is an independent curator and director of the Vera List Center for Art
and Politics at The New School.
Representative Miloševic – The Trial
Transcripts from the International Criminal
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
Gregory B. Moynahan
The forty-six thousand page transcript of Prosecutor v. Slobodan Miloševic indexes the
times and places in which people, historic monuments, and villages were destroyed.
Understanding the transcript as an “object of war” provides a frame in which to
consider this vast database of information as an unintentional memorial to the war,
to genocide and to their complex refraction through the trial itself. Even if ultimate
justice seemed impossible long before Miloševic’s death brought a sudden end to
the trial in 2006 – and thus appeared to make this enterprise technically of limited
value – for hundreds of individuals the trial transcript was the only means to learn
the circumstances in which a sister, a son, a father or mother was murdered. The
transcript can thus be considered from the onset a memorial that contrasts the
complexity of war and the quest for justice with the individual fates of those within
it. Within the transcript, however, as a sort of living memorial, we also find an
illumination of the new challenges of the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention
illuminated in the interplay of political, legal, and technical representation.
As the political philosopher Hanna Pitkin observed, representation is one of those
terms that appears simple until it is approached and recognized in its multiplicity
of meanings. As a general definition, she suggested simply “presenting something
again.” The various meanings of aesthetic or epistemological representation, legal
representation by a lawyer, the political action of a “representative,” or the original
face-to-face “representation” of vassal to lord can all be understood as distinct but
often overlapping forms of representation. For Pitkin, working in the tradition of
Wittgenstein, the advantage of this broad approach is to emphasize that each form of
“representation” is an action of translation or transposition, and none a simple “copy”
of reality. Each form of representation indexes events with different rules of evidence
and engagement, even as the often-opaque manner in which these meanings occur and
overlap is itself deeply political.
In this context, the transcripts are not simply a direct representation or
memorialization of acts of war. A fateful conjuncture of representations is at play
in a figure such as Miloševic (who at different points fits nearly every form of the
definition), in the trials themselves, and in attempts to ascertain events “on the
ground.” This is of course clear in the transpositions that occur even in the transcript’s
material form, which is the written representation of a spoken testimony (itself often
translated between several languages), and often even further archived and accessed
through several forms of digital representation. The military war as such is several
steps removed from these triangulations.
The particular character of the trial was the new claim to charge the former leader
of a nation with “genocide” by representing this act through its multiple specific
instances. This problem was made considerably more complex by the multiple motives
and contexts of the atrocities. Even as an epistemological problem of representing a
whole by its parts, then, the case is not simple. Under the 1948 Genocide Convention,
the prosecution had to demonstrate that there was a targeted murder of members
of a racial, national or ethnic group “as such,” and that this murder was intended
to destroy in whole or in part this group – apart from military objectives of control
of territory. Ultimately, the ICTY found that in international law only the massacre at
Srebrenica in July 1995 fit this criteria, since the more than 8,000 murdered victims
and more than 20,000 “ethnically cleansed” refugees were so clearly targeted.
Linking Miloševic to such atrocities (as opposed to other Serbian leaders tried by
the ICTY) hinged on his role as a political representative of the Republic of Serbia.
Since Serbian forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina were not directly under the control of
the national forces Miloševic institutionally represented, the ICTY used the term
“joint criminal enterprise” to explain his role outside the boundaries of Serbia in the
territory of Bosnia- Herzegovina. Miloševic’s argument was that he was the legitimate
representative of a Serbian nation that was in his view under attack by NATO generally
and, as he clarified in his introductory remarks, long-standing German national
interests specifically. He claimed to only have acted as a national leader within national
boundaries: “I have been indicted,” he argued, “because I defended my people legally
and with legitimate means on the basis of the right to self-defense that every nation
has.”
In this regard, Miloševic claimed that the trial itself was illegitimate. “I consider this
tribunal,” he contended, “a false tribunal and the indictment a false indictment…
so I have no need to appoint counsel to (an) illegal organ.” As a trained lawyer,
however, he in fact legally represented himself. Miloševic’s unusual role as his own
legal representative or counsel was in this context also a means to call the trial itself
into question, not only legally, but extra-legally through his personal engagement. In
his often-hectoring treatment of those he was cross-examining, he appeared to step
outside his role as merely a legal representative, into a theatrical role as a national and
symbolic representative of Serbian grievances.
Despite the challenges of this tangled web of representations within the vertiginous
tedium of the trial, it can ultimately be seen as advancing the treaty on genocide. As
Hegel declared, the “law is alive”: progressive instantiations of the law mark one of
the few means for organizing and shaping human conduct. When the Polish-Jewish
jurist Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide, he intended to create an awareness
of a crime that, as he quoted Winston Churchill in declaring, was “without a name" –
the planned destruction of entire nations of peoples. Just as almost all murders in a
modern country are somehow “remembered” in police reports, insurance registers,
newspapers, and local gossip, so even the apparently forgotten victims of genocide
could hope for some commemoration within the register of this new form of crime,
even if only as representative numbers. In this regard, the Miloševic transcripts have as
an ethical and aesthetic representation a visceral importance in their very complexity
and ambiguity. The documents suggest a sense of what should be, how humans should
conduct themselves, and the efforts that should be made to mete out just punishment,
even if this punishment only finds realization in a vanishingly small percentage of
cases. For those who sought out their loved ones in the registers of the Miloševic trial,
there is some small comfort that even if they will not have justice, there is such a thing
as justice and its potential for future generations.
- Gregory B. Moynahan is Assistant Professor of History and Co-Director of the Science,
Technology and Society Program at Bard College.
 Hop-March
HELL MARCH
Morgan Meis
In the mid to late 1990s, somewhere between one
million and four million North Koreans died of star-
vation. There was famine in a closed, totalitarian
society. Generally, putting those two things together
equals mass suffering. And that is exactly what
happened. It is a terrible and terrifying story. I say
this to acknowledge the obvious—something hor-
ribly wrong is going on in North Korea, and it has
been going on for a long time.
And yet, there is something fascinating about this
closed society. In a global and interconnected age,
the North Koreans are living in an alternate reality.
Not just an alternate reality, a radically alternate
reality. The whole society is like a finely tuned
instrument for singing praises to the Supreme
Leader. What it means to be a human being is
vastly different in North Korea than it is everywhere
else on the planet. That is downright interesting.
Troubling, unsettling, and interesting. The very fact
that North Korea exists makes a person wonder
what is possible. Can it be the case that some
people thrive in North Korean society? These are
dangerous questions to ask. We are supposed
to believe in human freedom as something
fundamental, inalienable. The North Koreans do,
Daily Dialogue (an excerpt)
Pauline Julier
SCENE 9 – GAS STATION – EXT. DAY – THE CASHIER
Birds flock in the cloudy sky.
A car horn honks outside a gas station in the middle of
nowhere. From inside the station’s convenience store,
THE CASHIER (ECCENTRIST) looks up through the
window. A driver stands next to his car, with his arm
resting on the open door. A man sits inside the car,
tapping on his smartphone. It begins to rain.
THE CASHIER exits the convenience store to approach
the vehicle.
SCENE 10 – STATION – INT. DAY – THE CASHIER
Inside the empty store, the music of “Hell March” plays.
The computer browser is opened to a page on YouTube.
com, showing video of a military march in North Korea.
JPRESCOTTI: This video is soooo fucking coool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
TEXASWHATITDO: NORTHKOREA IS BEST KOREA
THE CASHIER comes back inside the convenience store
and settles himself at the counter. His fingers type on
the old keyboard. On YouTube.com text responses ag-
gregate rapidly.
ECCENTRIST: This is absolutely terrifying.
DANSEB1337: It’s star wars attack of the clones, no
offense..
LAZOMANIAC: what a waste of women
XSTONYMAHONYX: why do these fucking communist
monsters got russian weapons?!
THE CASHIER looks out the window. It's raining heavily
now. Car headlights pass by on the road outside.
SCENE 11 – METRO – INT. NIGHT – THE OLD MAN
On an iPhone screen, THE OLD MAN (ZUNBANDEE)
types a response on YouTube.com.
ZUNDANBEE: To @xStonyMahonyx maybe because rus-
sia and china sold them???????????
The blue light of the iPhone illuminates THE OLD MAN's
face. He is on a metro train. Some passengers are sleep-
ing. A beautiful woman naps, her head on his shoulder.
He writes on YouTube.com.
ZUNDANBEE: It doesn't matter that north Korea has
3times the amount of troops as us. They force people
to join their army, we don't. They have no navy while we
have 11 air craft carriers. we could completely block-
ade that country and win without even invading them.
we believe, yearn to breathe free. But we should
also have the strength to ask ourselves, what if they
don't? What if human beings can accept almost
any reality, attune themselves to almost any set
of conditions? What if we have no real basis upon
which to claim that the people of, say, Belgium are
happier than the people of North Korea? What if
North Korean society does, in its own ways, serve
human needs?
I'm joking, of course. I must be joking. We shouldn't
take these questions seriously. It would be a mock-
ery of everything we hold sacred, of our deepest
convictions. On the other hand, how deep is the con-
viction? How real is a truth if you cannot bear, even
for a moment, to imagine it to be otherwise? Isn't
that where truth bleeds over into desire?
It is, anyway, in the rigor of ritual and public display
that the North Korean state achieves its highest
level of synchronized beauty. The military displays
in North Korea are the most beautiful of all, the
military being the place of extreme discipline. I call
this beauty because, like all displays of organized
and synchronized human activity, it is deeply
pleasing to behold, whatever our revulsion at its
cause and purpose. I am, thus, not at all surprised
that people outside of North Korea are fascinated
with its military displays and have created all sorts
of mash-ups on YouTube and in other places.
"Hell March" takes an industrial music track from a
video game (Command and Conquer: Red Alert) and
uses it as the theme music for a military march in
Pyongyang. The hardness of the music, the driving
99% of their country is starving. People think they have
nuclear weapons and could nuke us, The fact is they
don't even have a missile that could hit us. any planes,
boats, tanks that they have would just be demolished in
the first week of the war.
MRSLONOED: to @Zunbandee win like in Vietnam?
ZUNDANBEE: to @MrSLonoed: different type of army.
we lost mainly due to guerrilla tactics used by the Viet-
cong.
THE OLD MAN reads one comment after another. He
sighs loudly. The woman barely moves.
USAMERICANPATRIOTCA: ... good idea I prefer a ham-
burger rather than talking with an imbecile. I guess you
do have the army since it is obliged hahahhaahha. you
make me laugh with your bullshit. go in the breakaway
Caucasus waiting for you, shred
LAZOIZATION: to @USAmericanPatriotCA hope 1 day
usa gonna feel war on their territory. then u will kno
how it feels to run into bunkers to save ur head while
bombs r fallin from the sky.and i have to say,i was really
disappointed with the americans in 1999 instead of
sending nato ground troops,u bombed Serbia for 3
months and sent albanians as cannon fodder..at least u
could train them better cause they fought like shit. but
ive seen how brave usa soldiers r in iraq.killin civilians
and tapeing it.good job usa!
USAMERICANPATRIOTCA: to @lazoization sorry but I'm
tired I have not read your story but I'm sure it's bullshit
good for you bye ;)
SCENE 12 – BAR – INT. DAY – THE WOMAN AND THE
YOUNG MAN
THE WOMAN (THEULTRABODY) sits at a bar, which is
filled with summer light. The street outside is crowded.
Close up to her blue eyes wide open. “Hell March”
blares in her earphones, coming from her smartphone.
Colored fingernails begin to tap the screen.
THEULTRABODY: this video is awesome, but unfortu-
nately it is racist. why do they have no black soldiers? is
all of north korea racist??
Nearby, THE YOUNG MAN (NUCLEARLION73) is
standing at a counter that looks outside the bar’s
window. His eyes are carefully fixed on something
outside: the sea and the accompanying horizon. There
is a fake palm tree on the beach. All of a sudden, the
window reflection of a passing metro is seen. It rumbles
by, fast and noisily on the tracks which lay on the other
side of the street.
SCENE 13 – THE OFFICE – INT. DAY – THE MAN IN
SUIT
riff of the electric guitar, would seem to emphasize
the brutality and inhumanity of the North Korean
militarism we are observing. It does. But there is
a catch. The North Korean army has developed an
incredible marching style. There is a little kick in
the march, a hop that happens just as the other
leg comes down from being extended straight out
in front. North Korean soldiers don't just march,
they bounce. You could almost call it jaunty. Here,
politics and ethics hit a brick wall. It doesn’t
matter what I think about North Korean society,
how I judge it. Aesthetically, I am mesmerized.
The hop-march is amazing, powerful, satisfying
and strange. The women soldiers with their yellow
tights make a particular impression as they march,
machine guns held close to their hearts. It evokes
the troubling fascination most of us have for
Schutzstaffel uniforms. Watching this video, we
feel the attraction of these kinds of displays. The
music, which might at first have served as critical
commentary on the military display, actually serves
to heighten the power of the march. The fact that
the music comes from a video game about combat
and war furthers this point. Here in North Korea
something human is being satisfied, some human
need for the pageantry of war is being taken to its
highest aesthetic expression. Shake your head all
you like, you can't look away.
- Morgan Meis is the critic-at-large at The Smart Set and an
editor of 3 Quarks Daily. He has a PhD in philosophy and is
the founder of Flux Factory.
THE MAN IN SUIT (NEVERHOODYN) sits in front of a
computer, the same page is open on YouTube.com.
ARSHAVIN2007: Big respect to North Korea and Kim-
Young-Il from Russia ! The last place in the world where
Mac Donalds, Hollywood and Coca cola will never get to
poison the people. North Korea stand!
THE MAN IN SUIT is looking out his window, down to
the park below. One little girl in a red anorak stands
out against the green background. She acts paranoid,
looking over her shoulder repeatedly, as if somebody is
following her.
THE MAN IN SUIT's eyes wander back to the office. Big
white desks are full of activity.
NEVERHOODYN: to @arshavin2007, You would not be
able to watch this video and comment on it if it was not
for "Americanization" you dumb piece of trash.
GWINDAK: to @neverhoodyn--And one huge finger for
you americans, british and bla bla bla. FUCK YOU. A viva
comunismus, a viva komumunizm from Polska!
FROGBLASTTHEVENTCORE: INTERNET FIGHT
THE MAN IN SUIT smiles.
ARTISTICENTREPRENEUR: Firstly… FANTASTIC JOB!
Camera angles were perfect and all clips timed well to
the cinematically-rich visuals! Hats go off to the preci-
sion of the DPRK Military for such a flawless and syn-
chronous effort! Secondly - WHO IS THAT SMOKING
HOT NORTH KOREAN GIRL, WHO GIGGLES AT 1:51
INTO THE CLIP? I want to show her MY Juche ;)
SCENE 14 – PARK – EXT. DAY – THE YOUNG GUY
In the park, THE YOUNG GUY (NUCLEARCLION73) sits
on a bench. The wind displaces some white pollen in the
air. It looks like snow. He writes on his laptop.
NUCLEARLION73: I just turned 18 a couple weeks ago.
I'm more than likely about to be drafted. i have no words
to describe the shear amounts of anger I have.
- Born in 1981, Pauline Julier has presented her films mostly
in European collective exhibitions and film festivals, and
received the 2010 Swiss Art Award in Art-Basel for her last
film installation: Noah (http://mubi.com/films/37007).
She is interested in several complementary mediums of the
cinema, and works with PHP, a crossover group associated
with 104 in Paris (www.104.fr).
Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor. Soldiers Resting, 2011
 Detrás de Nosotros que escuchen, para que vean, para que nombren. workers, and the social violence against GLBTQ

BALACLAVA
El mañana que se cosecha en el ayer. communities. They know that while they only

Estamos Ustedes :
Behind Us, We Are You
Biko Koenig
(Italicized words are from the Remarks of the
General Command of the EZLN in the opening
ceremony of the First Intercontinental Meeting
For Humanity and Against Neoliberalism, July 27,
1996.)
This is what we are.
The Zapatista National Liberation Army.
The voice that arms itself to be heard.
The face that hides itself to be seen.
The name that hides itself to be named.
The red star that calls out to humanity and the world
to be heard, to be seen, to be named.
The tomorrow that is harvested in the past.
Behind our black mask.
Behind our armed voice.
Behind our unnamable name.
Behind what you see of us.
Behind us, we are you.
Behind us, we are the same simple and ordinary men
and women that are repeated in all races, painted
in all colors, speak in all languages and live in all
places.
The same forgotten men and women.
The same excluded.
The same untolerated.
The same persecuted.
The same as you.
Behind us, we are you.
Esto somos nosotros.
El Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional.
La voz que se arma para hacerse oír.
El rostro que se esconde para mostrarse.
El nombre que se calla para ser nombrado.
La roja estrella que llama al hombre y al mundo para
Detrás de nuestro rostro negro.
Detrás de nuestra voz armada.
Detrás de nuestro innombrable nombre.
Detrás de los nosotros que ustedes ven.
Detrás estamos ustedes.
Detrás estamos los mismos hombres y mujeres sim-
ples y ordinarios que se repiten en todas las razas, se
pintan de todos los colores, se hablan en todas las
lenguas y se viven en todos los lugares.
Los mismos hombres y mujeres olvidados.
Los mismos excluidos.
Los mismos intolerados.
Los mismos perseguidos.
Somos los mismos ustedes.
Detrás de nosotros estamos ustedes
“Behind us, We are You”: the Zapatista mask
hides and reveals the essence of Zapatismo.
Known as “pasamontañas” (literally “mountain
paths”), these masks, at first take, act to conceal.
In flouting a corrupt Mexico, the Zapatistas take
pains to hide their identity from a state that
would crush their rebellion, with the hope that it
inspires others to do the same. But behind this
straightforward understanding lies something
deeper and far more complex.
“Behind us, We are You”: in wearing the mask, the
Insurgent hides his or her personal identity while
simultaneously taking on a larger role. Insurgents
hide themselves to be seen, while striving for the
day when masks are no longer necessary. They
arm themselves to be heard, while yearning for
the day when their weapons are no longer needed;
they are an armed force that fights to make arms
obsolete.
“Behind us, We are You”: embodying the univer-
sal, the Zapatistas see in their own oppression the
violence against all indigenous people, but also
the subjugation of women, the fictional borders
of migrancy and immigration, the exploitation of
speak for themselves as indigenous people in the
mountainous jungles of Chiapas, they have deep
connections to oppressed people throughout the
world.
“Behind us, We are You”: it is a grammatical odd-
ity that rings of that other Zapatista slogan: Para
Todos, Todo. Para Nosotros, Nada. “For Everyone,
Everything. For Us, Nothing.” This is the product
of the moral outrage of oppression, the violence
of the capitalist machine, the hegemony of the
State. We are Us, and yet, We are You.
Brothers and Sisters of the entire world:
Welcome to the mountains of Southeastern Mexico.
Welcome to this corner of the world where we are all
the same because we are different.
Welcome to the search for life and the struggle
against death.
Welcome to this First Intercontinental Meeting For Hu-
manity and Against Neoliberalism.
Democracy!
Freedom!
Justice!
Hermanos y hermanas de todo el mundo:
Bienvenidos a las montañas del sureste Mexicano.
Bienvenidos a este rincón del mundo donde todos
somos inguales porque somos diferentes.
Bienvenidos a la búsqueda de la vida y la lucha contra
la muerte.
Bienvenidos a este primper encuentro intercontinen-
tal por la humanidad y contra el neoliberalismo.
¡Democracia!
¡Libertad!
¡Justicia!
- Born naked, blond and unable to cook for himself, Biko
eventually grew up to be a brown-haired PhD student. He
lives off your surplus labor but makes a mean tempeh
burrito.

A Wee Fuckin’
activity, it was problematic to purchase one, so
they were often homemade in a variety of ways.
One of the most comical ways to make a hood
- Rodney Dickson was born in 1956 in Northern Ireland,
Having drawn and painted since a child, he reacts to his
early experiences by considering the futility and hypocrisy of

Hood Job
war through art.
was to rip some holes in a big brown paper bag
from the liquor store.

The hood or balaclava was a symbol for The

Rodney Dickson
I was born in Northern Ireland in 1956, and as
a teenager experienced the worst time of violent
political strife in that country. It was a time known
as The Troubles, when civil disorder brought that
society close to collapse.
Troubles in those days, and was often depicted
in both Loyalist and Republican propaganda
paintings, such as the famous murals that were
spread throughout the country. Artists have also
used it in their commentary on The Troubles, as
seen in the work of well-known Northern Irish
artist Jack Packenham.

During this time, the balaclava was a well-known The Troubles are more or less over and the soci-
and much used object of war. It was, in fact, so ety is going though the aftermath of 25 years of
much associated with violence that it was rarely conflict. Deep divisions still exist and the scars will
worn as a regular item of clothing. Anyone seen take a long time to heal. Certainly this generation
wearing one would be liable to instill fear in will have to pass on before genuine reconciliation
others, and run the risk of being arrested by the has a chance. The hood will long be remembered
police or the British Army, or else shot by one of and feared, and I wonder how long it will be before
the numerous paramilitary gangs. The balaclava a balaclava could be worn as a regular item of
had multiple uses; for example, assassins would clothing in Northern Ireland.
wear one to conceal their identity. It could also
be turned around backwards or slightly modified
in order to render a victim unable to see the
assassins or where they were taken to be killed.
The balaclava was almost compulsory headwear
for rioters, as it concealed their identity from
police cameras, and from the enemy who might
remember a face and target that person at a later
date.

“Hood” was the name commonly used for the

balaclava in Northern Ireland in those days, and
it is likely that many of those who wore them did
not know its correct name. The hood was a thing
to be feared and a “hood job” was the phrase used
for a hit or an assassination. “We got a fuckin’ wee
job on tonight; bring some hoods,” would signify
the aim of the evening was to kill someone. Since
the hood was almost exclusively used in violent
 No Resets Playing War
AMERICA’S Nick Kolakowski

ARMY
Catherine McMahon
The other night I made it across fifty yards of enemy
In 1913 an instructional text titled “Little Wars,” was published in London, and written by
territory before a burst of automatic-weapons fire cut
the futurist, H. G. Wells. Wells had invented something he called "modern little warfare,"
me in half.
or a game for "Boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more
intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books."1 Gender essentialism aside, what
Hit reset.
is striking is the appeal to "intelligence" made in relation to the subject of game playing.
In general, games have long occupied a contested ground between the idea that they
Three minutes later, a sniper crouching atop a building
help the players develop certain skills and hone the mind's ability to think strategically,
shot me in the head.
and the thought that they are (at best) a waste of time or silly amusement and (at worst)
responsible for the propagation of perverse values. So the question remains, Can games
Hit reset.
teach us anything? And if so, what type of intelligence is gained by playing them?
A grenade riddled my torso with shrapnel.
As the condition of enmity is a primary characteristic of most games, they often have
their most successful real world corollary in warfare. Historically, there has been a long-
Hit reset.
standing relationship between games and the military whereby the former is seen as a way
to both train and plan for conflict. Nineteenth century Prussian Kriegspiel is perhaps one
I stood on that moonlit road, again, with four working
of the earliest examples of modern “wargaming” played both for sport as well as for the
limbs and a full clip of ammo, again, ready to kill or be
development of military strategy. In a large part, using a game as a substitute for actual
killed, again.
warfare is an abstraction that parallels the desire to scientifically control and predict all
aspects of combat. In the twentieth century, the convergence of the computer and conflict
Over the past twenty years, first-person shooter
simulation (no longer called “games” as their cost and complexity rise) has developed in
(FPS) games have evolved to a state of near-realism.
tandem with the attempt to fully automate the battlefield through advanced weaponry,
America’s Army—“The Official U.S. Army Game”—is no
vehicles, and robotics. Intelligence in this respect is now considered to be a quality that
different. According to the game’s website, its creators
resides within games, simulations, and machines, as well as humans.
“crawled through obstacle courses, fired weapons,
observed paratrooper instruction, and participated in a
It almost goes without saying that notions of warfare from the American perspective
variety of training exercises” in order to develop a feel
changed dramatically in post-nuclear context of the Cold War and in the ongoing age of
for soldiering. The end result imposes a game’s heroic
American economic imperialism. Beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, conflict simulation,
narrative onto the ambiguities of modern warfare.
operations research, and systems analysis became a way to rationalize both the cost
Exhaustion and boredom and uncertainty and fear have
and ethical implications of military involvement in a global theatre of operations. This
no place in that narrative. Neither does permanence:
managerial way of thinking was epitomized at this time by figures such as defense
When you “die” in America’s Army, the world resets.
secretary Robert McNamara, who was responsible for overseeing the conflict in Vietnam
When you choose to quit, the "war" disappears into a
and its neighbors.
hard drive.
Yet, as long as wargaming has been in use, it has also had many detractors both from
In real war, there are no resets. The dead stay dead. A
inside and outside the military. Unlike a game of strategy such as chess, wargaming
few button-taps will not reverse time, stitch skin and
implies the desire to closely mimic the terrain conditions, munitions capabilities, and
bones, remove shrapnel from brain tissue, exorcise
man-power possessed by both sides in order to ascertain potential advantages and
ghosts, make hearts beat again.
disadvantages held by each adversary. The component of “reality” is labor intensive to
produce, a high-level military simulation takes many months to prepare and weeks to
Back in college, I played first-person shooters with a
play; as time is stretched out, a half an hour of combat can take days to “simulate.” In
friend who later joined the Army. When I picked up a
1968 one author critical of gaming, Andrew Wilson, recounts an anecdote in his text, “The
game controller the other night, for the first time in
Bomb and the Computer,” in which a high ranking general constantly kept interrupting the
years, my fingers assumed their old twitchy grace: I
planning of the very real conflict in Vietnam in order to call and check on his players in a
dodged through the crumbling ruins of a virtual city,
simulation so that he could see how well he was doing in next year's (imagined) conflict in
firing clips left and right, feeling all the adrenaline
Bolivia. At a deeper level, many questioned what was gained through gaming when, in the
and none of the pain. I thought back to a few months
closed circuit of the game and the mind of the player, there are no true external surprises.
ago, sitting across from my old friend in a Harlem
Rather, what is produced is a rational maze that may bear little resemblance to “reality.”
restaurant. He had survived his tours of duty with few
scars, but the look in his eyes said all the things a
Furthermore, the closed logical systems represented in games are reflected in other
game can never convey.
realms of warfare. For example, how should we think about the drones in Pakistan being
operated remotely via video councils in Langley, Virginia? Or the disembodied voices
recorded in the now infamous video footage released on Wikileaks? Here, Iraqi civilians and
journalists are massacred by American soldiers from the alienated distance and relative
safety of a helicopter and remote command base. Wargaming is not a new phenomena,
- Nick Kolakowski is a journalist and editor based in NYC. His but through technology, speculative games, and actual tactics, it is converging in a new
writings have appeared in The Washington Post, Lost Magazine, and era of command and control. The America's Army video game, initially developed in 2002
eWeek.com, amongst other venues. He also shot a short film in as a part of a larger recruitment strategy to entertain and “inform” potential recruits, has
2010 for the Rubin Museum's "Talk About Nothing" lecture series. cost taxpayers approximately $32.8 million dollars and is now being hailed as a success
because it has also been utilized to train enlisted soldiers.

When “Little Wars,” was reprinted in the US in 1970, the science-fiction author Isaac
Asimov offered a short foreword to the text. He claimed that playing war games would
allow the “emotions” that find an outlet in conflict, “to be displaced from the realm of
violence to the realm of the mind.” In other words, wargaming would, by his estimation,
work to prevent wars. He writes that, “In the absence of reality, there is the driving desire
to find a substitute."2 Yet, it seems important to ask, How have games come to shape our
everyday sense of “reality”?

- Catherine McMahon is a graduate student at MIT studying the history, theory, and criticism of art and
architecture. Her research focuses on the history of computers as they have been used in the field of design,
as well as urban simulation, conflict simulation, and computer mapping.

1
Wells, H. G. Little Wars. London and New York: Arms and Armour Press and The MacMillan Company, 1970.

2
Asimov, Isaac. “Foreword” in Little Wars. London and New York: Arms and Armour Press and The MacMillan
Company, 1970.
From the curators:

One After Another

In 2009 I curated One After Another at the ironically
named and now defunct National Gallery of Saskatch-
ewan in Canora, a small town nestled in the Canadian
Prairies. I wanted to link the daily lives of the few people
in Canora with the banality of war and oppression, and
to consider the consumption of photographs of war in
North American culture. I invited nine artists to contem-
plate war and oppression by using one photograph as
a shared source of inspiration. The artists were Dean
Baldwin, Mirelle Borra, Kerry Downey, Kristan Horton,
Douglas Paulson, Jory Rabinovitz, Gabriella Vainsencher,
and Amy Westpfahl.

Image 0451 was chosen from thousands of photographs

that were just as inadequate in describing the conditions
of war, and just as banal as living under war actually is.
It is a fairly ordinary picture of “normal” things people
do to each other in times of war and oppression. The
image was taken a few months prior to the show by an
Israeli photojournalist named Albert Sadikov. It shows
Palestinian prisoners being led to an Israeli military
base near the Gaza Strip, against the backdrop of the
Separation Barrier still being built. In image 0451, the
prisoners are handcuffed with zip-ties and blindfolded
with flannel strips used to clean rifles—common
materials that I, too, used when I was a soldier in the
Israeli Army.
Image 0451 is typical not just of the Israeli occupation,
but of war and military oppression around the world.
It is not much different from the goings-on in Iraq and
Afghanistan, in Libya, in North Korea, and in so many
other places. With wars still raging and the world still
turning, I wanted to expand the scope of how conflict
was considered or “consumed,” and thus was born the
collaboration of The Typhoon Continues and So Do You.
- Chen Tamir
#starsandstripesofcorruption*
I’m not sure how to begin talking about war. What do
I know about war outside of what’s been sung to me
by my teenage idols D. Boon and Jello Biafra? This
exhibition was the perfect way for me to explore my
complete ignorance of the topic. While the teenage
me came to learn about war through punk rock
records, teenagers all over the world today are able to
immediately gain access to a wealth of information
through Twitter and Facebook, if they aren't already
caught in the throes of conflict as an everyday event.
Just over a year ago, the Department of Defense issued
its policy on social networking media in the military.
This was the first time America’s military allowed the
use of social networking sites by its soldiers. Today,
Facebook is actively used in the military’s recruitment
tactics, as the government is now able to put a real face
on “real time” American heroes. Since issuing its policy
on social networking media, the U.S. Army itself has
nearly 630,000 followers on Facebook, not to mention
one of the most technologically advanced pages I’ve
ever seen.
Special thanks to Albert Sadikov and to Ami Steinitz of the Frames of Reality photography forum.
Other Peoples’ Wars
I understand war only through other people’s stories
as a drama that unfolds without my direct involvement.
September 11th wasn’t real to me until I watched it
on the news. That morning in Brooklyn I saw sheets of
paper rain from a tremendous brown cloud that floated
across the East River, but it was the round-the-clock
repetition of Flight 77 crashing through the South
Tower that had the biggest impact on me. Days later it
was the heroic photos of rescue workers emerging from
rubble that shaped my interpretation of the attack.
This fascination with mediated war—war at a
distance—began with my grandparents’ stories of living
in air raid shelters for weeks at a time. Underground
mazes protected them during some of the harshest
spit-fire battles of the second World War, and their
descriptions of the cramped quarters have become
family legend. Most notably, the experience resulted in
my grandfather’s dislike of minestrone soup (the air
raid shelter special) and the first award of a collective
St. George’s Cross to an entire country.
In 2004 I visited the shelter that my grandparents
shared with hundreds of others in Mgarr, a tiny isolated
village in the northwest of mainland Malta. The protec-
tive structure was dug into layers of soft limestone rock
by hand during the feverish anticipation of self-preser-
vation. Today it is maintained by the owner of Il-Barri,
the restaurant that sits above the shelter and is known
for its rabbit stew. Curious diners receive an admission
ticket that lists statistics of the Second Siege of Malta
in April 1942, the most desperate period of bombard-
ment and starvation in the British colony’s history. The
ticket states that Malta had been on alert for twelve
days, ten hours, and twenty minutes, and that over
60,000 tons of bombs were dropped in that month
alone.
Part of my tour included a film that opened with a
predictable scene of a Luftwaffe plane gliding over the
Mediterranean Sea—a standard beginning to many
WWII documentaries. The English accented voiceover
explained that free Europe owes a debt to the Mal-
tese people, who prepared against attacks they would
suffer for being a strategically important base of the
British Armed Forces. Clips of soldiers and aerial
combat were interspersed between shots of families
stuffed into tessellated chambers.
After the film my tour guide pointed to burn marks
on the stone walls that came from torches used to
navigate the labyrinth. Closer to the center, cabinets
were dug inside the walls and high off the floor, lined
with stacked empty bottles. Inside the small rooms
altars with religious statuettes were recreated to
illustrate the pervasive Catholic legacy during a time
of distress. Near the exit a sign read, “This shelter is
dedicated to the children who have suffered due to
the conflicts of others.” The sign gave me an entirely
different perspective of my grandparents’ time there.
Somehow it made their ordeal less personal and a
little more distant, even though the intention was to
memorialize my ancestors.
My visit to the Mgarr air raid shelter made me very
aware of the myth of war and how it changes depend-
ing on the nuances of its recitation. War correspon-
dent Chris Hedges vividly recounts his adrenaline-
pumping experiences on numerous battlefields in
the book War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. For
him and the many soldiers, journalists, and civilians
he profiles, there exists a self-perpetuating machine
in which “the myth of war sells and legitimizes the
drug of war.” It is through this mindset that my own
knowledge of war is transmitted. Much like with my
grandparents’ stories, Hedges guided me through
other peoples’ versions of war, sometimes with telling
inconsistencies. Distortion, exaggeration, and perhaps
even a fondness for living under incredible circum-
stances have informed my experience of this epic
thing that I hope to never truly understand.
- Christina Vassallo

There are now hundreds of Facebook and Twitter pages

dedicated to the armed services, including a Facebook
page specifically for the America’s Army recruitment
game which itself has over 39,000 fans. This game has
proven to be an efficient strategy in disseminating the
army’s tactical agenda, as demonstrated by several
pieces in this show. The military’s use of Facebook
can’t all be bad though. Those with the misfortune of
being called for active duty are able to have a virtual link
between themselves and the rest of the world. At least
soldiers’ families and closest friends can now measure
their loved one’s activities by the number of times they
use Facebook each day, just like the rest of us.
you @in the driver's seat (@GilScottheron)
You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on & cop out.
You will already be @home, brother.
You will already be plugged in, turned on & copped out.
You will control an image of you and Willie Mae
hacking that shopping cart down the block on the dead run
and trying to load that stolen image into a mini SD.
State Council on the Arts, celebrating 50 years of building strong,

You will push a button in #DC and destroy a house in #pakistan

Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York
Foundation for the Visual Arts; Materials for the Arts; and by
public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural

- Ginger Shulick You will skip out @beer and commercial breaks
be home in time for dinner & catch the instant replay
This program is supported, in part, by The Andy Warhol

* title taken from 1985 song by Dead Kennedys

RT & catch the instant replay
creative communities in New York State's 62 counties.

RT @msnbc & catch the instant replay

RT @maddow & catch the instant replay
RT @cnnbrk & catch the instant replay
RT @GlobalSoulTruck & catch the instant replay
About the Curators:
RT @libya & catch the instant replay
- Elizabeth Larison is an interdisciplinary artist and a Flux RT @libya & catch the instant replay #Egy
Factory collaborator. RT @libya & catch the instant replay #jihad

- Douglas Paulson is an artist whose work is focused on
creating the space within which culture happens.  He’s a
longtime member of both Flux Factory and Parfyme, as well
as other enduring and impromptu collaborations.
- Ginger Shulick is the Managing Director of Flux Factory, and
holds an M.A. in Socio-Cultural Anthropology from Columbia
University, and a B.A. in Art History from DePaul University.
- Chen Tamir is Flux Factory’s Executive Director and Pro-
gram Manager at Artis. She holds an M.A. from the Center
for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, and recently organized
exhibitions at the Israeli Center for Digital Art, Art in General,
the Museums of Bat Yam, White Box, TPW, and the University
of Toronto.
- Christina Vassallo is the Adjunct Curator at Flux Factory and
also organizes projects independently through her curatorial
platform Random Number.
There will be no highlights @the 11 o'clock news
The theme song will be written by private generals, El Generale,
Mohamed Ali Ben Jemaa, your ringtone, those studios in LA,
and your sister lipsynching into the mirror while holding her phone
not @Francis Scott Key, nor sung by @Glen Campbell, @Tom
Jones, @Johnny Cash, @Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare whtvr.
Green Parties, The Beverly Hillbillies, & @hooters are no longer so damned relevant,
and we're who's plugged in logged in and not who's plugged out.
Our #conflict has new fonts new fronts and no faces because
our #conflict puts you @in the driver's seat.
This #conflict will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
This #conflict is no re-run brothers;
This #conflict is recorded and updated LIVE.
- Douglas Paulson