Vol.6, No.6
(June 2001)
by Emil Memon
I can imagine Joy Garnett’s mood
switching from ecstasy to horror and
back if she were listening to
the recent speech of the new Secretary of
Defense Rumsfield. A strange
affair that brought to mind a cross between
"Dr. Strangelove,"
"Star Trek," and "Starship Troopers," just to mention
a few. Looks like the
military-industrial complex is taking cues from the art
world, by making a parallel
merger with the entertainment industry. In his
speech, the Secretary of Defense
announced forming a new department, run by
a four star general for war in
space. Training space troopers with military
spaceships, developing new for
space wars hardware like laser guns to knock
down enemy satellites etc. For
an artist whose source material and inspiration
are the madness and inner
workings of global military-industrial complex,
literally, the sky is the limit.
How many artists are guaranteed trillions of
dollars many times over to
develop and nurture their muse. Well, this
connection between art and
military technology has an illustrious history,
especially in the Renaissance
when Leonardo and Michelangelo were not just
passively recording, but
actively developing technologies of mass destruction—
think of that as a "social
sculpture." I wonder if this connection with art
history is the reason for Joy’s
use of oil painting as the medium she presents
herself with. The choice of oil
painting is interesting, especially after you
submerge yourself in her work
and realize that it is comprised not only of
paintings, but the web listings
in the index on the last page of her catalog.
When you follow those
instructions you enter a very disturbing world
of war, conspiracy,
institutions, sites for "soldier of fortune" types, official press
briefings of Nato officials
during the Kosovo conflict, photos including mpegs
produced by smart bombs in Iraq,
Kosovo, Serbia etc. You stumble onto the
propaganda war between Nato and
Yugoslavia. Very fascinating are posted
(on the net) leaflet's dropped
by Nato on their air raids over Yugoslavia and Kosovo,
messages to Serbian soldiers
assuring them death if they don't stop following
their "fuhrer"
Milosevic on his rampage of ethnic cleansing. On the other side,
the official sites of the
Yugoslav army and government try by using the internet
to convince the world that they
are just poor and innocent victims of Western
imperialistic aggression.
There’s also a web site from an American soldier
posting his private photographs
from the Persian Gulf war -- showing the need
of an individual to express and
exorcise an experience such as war by making
it public. This is a telling
example of the nature and power of new technology.
By exploring those issues, Joy
is giving us the key to understand where her work
is coming from. They are
providing her with images, and taking her, and us, on an
incredible ride that can be
frightening to death. By doing this, she is successfully
fulfills one of the very
important functions of art, and that is to educate. But
being didactical is not the only
element of her work. In her artistic practice in
general she is also using other
media, (very interesting is her ongoing online
piece The Bomb Project), but the
show at Debs & Co. is oil paintings. The
aesthetic of the imagery she
uses, like infrared night vision images of military
operations; images from video
cameras mounted on smart bombs in their sterile
detached blues before the impact
that probably stop the hearts of human beings;
the death of the Challenger crew
in those pictures of spectacular pyrotechnics;
in-flight formations of stealth
bombers, the ultimate machines of death. The
aesthetic of these images calls
for actual use of the source material which comes
in the form of various types of
prints, digital videos etc, but she is using oil
paintings. When you, as an
artist, choose a particular medium you bring
along its whole history.
Obviously oil painting has a long tradition of martial
images, but it also has a
certain sensuality. This sensuality is the tricky part.
Here is where the obvious
moralizing, pointing to the evils of military-
industrial complex is bumping
into something that cuts into the heart of art
activity, and that is its
ambiguity. When a horror that one image represents
gives way to the aesthetic
pleasure, tactility, sensuality of the object, it can
go forward into the perverse or,
if you want, sublime complicity -- into the
gray territory that art
inhabits. It makes me think of Passolini, Visconti,
Pound, Wagner, Heidegger,
Celine, Beuys, Kiefer, Mishima, Majakowsky, just
to mention few. When Beuys
suggested that through art and by everybody
becoming an artist you can
change politics and the social, the proposition of
art running politics can be even
scarier than the already totally fucked up
situation we are in. Joy
Garnett’s is an excellent show, because it brings up
all these issues that are
complex and have different readings and faces -- but
that is
the nature of art itself.