Capturing the movement: antiwar art, activism, and affect.

On March 20, 2003, just over a month after an all-day, global antiwar rally, "Operation Iraqi Freedom"--the American invasion of Iraq not sanctioned by the United Nations--began. Led by the American and British armies, the "Shock and Awe" campaign lasted less than a month. By April 2003, the Iraqi Army had collapsed, Baghdad had fallen, and former dictator Saddam Hussein was on the run. (1) What initially appeared as success, however, quickly morphed into a much more complicated situation as the American-led coalition was bogged down in a series of political and military conflicts far different from the initial invasion. As the quick solution of "shock and awe" fell apart within a matter of months, the United States government and army were rapidly caught up in the fermentation of a potential civil war and a growing insurgency and unrest--all complicated on an international scale by the inability to find any Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (the stated reason for the invasion). A hot global war of positioning was underway, revolving around oil, the trauma left by the attacks in New York City and Washington, DC, on September 11, 2001, and profit. (2)

At each step, the war and occupation of Iraq has been greeted by global resistance, or perhaps more accurately, by global resistances. In this essay, I focus on this opposition, and on a number of antiwar artworks that explore the point where "shock and awe" dissolves into what philosopher Brian Massumi has called "shock to thought"--that is, a moment of thought that encourages an interpolation of the viewer with the image, and a subsequent critical rethinking of its (political) context. (3) I use as examples primarily works that compel the (North Atlantic) viewer into an affective confrontation through the contrast of familiar and comforting materials with the hyper-technological circulations of capital, information, and media that define the current context of war. I argue that the result of this contrast, combined with the emotional impact of the works and, importantly, their tactility, offers a potentially more nuanced response than the simple reiteration of antiwar sentiment. The contrast creates, in addition, the opportunity for rethinking one's own participation in the global conditions that perpetuate conflict. In order to unfold these ideas, the chosen works use as material what lies close to the body--clothing, fabrics, and wool. Using as examples knitted landmines, a cosy for an army tank, and a series of graffitied garments, my purpose is to contrast the low-tech simplicity of materials with the high-tech complexity of the military-media-industrial-entertainment complex of war, and also to suggest how both are implicated in a series of simultaneous biopolitical relations that define the contemporary movements of bodies, communications, and conflict.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the theory behind "Shock and Awe" developed directly out of the study of the networked and technologized conditions that have defined many recent studies of globalization. War is part of a network of circulating flows of power, influence, and profits. According to a number of theorists, it is increasingly less a "state of exception," and more a military-media-industrial-entertainment complex that strives toward inexhaustibility. (4) Although war flares up in specific locales, seemingly disconnected struggles are linked through networks of profit, communication, and instant mediation that consume any boundary and extend the war's impact across global, cultural, social, and political spheres. "Shock and Awe" is a manifestation of the perceived need to control this situation.

As defined by its authors Harlan K. Ullman and James Wade, who together wrote the theory of "Rapid Dominance" in 1996, "Shock and Awe" is a blitzkrieg-style mass dropping of bombs and rapid invasion, combined with complete knowledge of the territory and infrastructure. This supposedly results in confusion, fear, and wonder at the power of destruction and ultimately a submission and lack of will to resist. "Shock and Awe" produces total control, not only of geography, but also of the physical and psychic situation and event. (5) Rapid dominance is hence not only a military control, but also the knowledge of and dominance over all cultural, social, geographic, and military elements of the area under siege. Ostensibly, the rapidity of the campaign results in few casualties to either side, while already established global networks of capital and entrepreneurship make rapid social, infrastructural, and cultural rebuilding possible in the aftermath.

The outcome expected of a "Shock and Awe" campaign did not materialize in Iraq, and according to some critics, rapid dominance of another sort was used on the home front, resulting in the sidelining of critique and resistance, particularly in the U.S. Thus, the conditions of the war and its resistances are in fact closely intertwined, leaving a question for political artists of how to work both within and against these conditions. In other words, how does one critique a system of which one is intrinsically a part? What is the antidote to "shock and awe"? Or, more precisely, how might one activate a resistance that both takes into account the acceleration of technological change in current day war, and also takes account of its own position within the increasingly networked communications that underlie both recent war(s) and resistance(s)?

In making this argument, I am not suggesting that war affects all equally, for however it is characterized, a war always has (at least) two sides. This is not necessarily the same as stating that there are two sides fighting any given war, for where allies and alliances, enemies and victors, might dissolve in an instant, there is always a necessary experiential division between those who are there and those who are not. War inevitably affects differently, but in questioning the distance between and within those vectors of difference, spaces of resistance can be opened.

Take, for example, the work of Pakistani fashion designer Zain Mustafa, whose recent installation "Clothesline" (2003) uses twenty-one kurtas (the traditional unisex clothing of Pakistan) that were unstitched and inscribed by protesters at a massive antiwar rally in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in February 2003. (6) The fraying kurtas were then hung from a clothesline and displayed as part of the sixth Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates. The kurta, writes Mustafa, is itself a garment that denies hierarchies: worn by rulers and peasants, by women and men, it is "a tangible manifestation of ... yin yang concepts, east meeting west, the interplay, clash, intercourse, education of one with the other, trade, dialogue and the need to realize that we are one...." (7) Mustafa calls the kurtas a "utopian architecture," and it is the slow movement of the garments on the line, swaying in the breeze, and the bringing together of East and West through the simple strategy of writing on fabric, that is of interest. Capitalism, conflict, globalization, and protest came together in an ambiguous relationship that carries with it a powerful antiwar message in the signatures of protesters in Santa Fe who signed traditional Pakistani garments for display in one of the numerous biennials that make up the contemporary global art world (and market). Though the work of a single artist, "Clothesline" implicates many in its oppositional yet unifying statement, while its simplicity contrasts markedly with the hyper-control of rapid dominance.

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The strategy of "Shock and Awe" is, in essence, the control of the network. What I am interested in here, however, are the numerous points and nodes where the flows of information are slowed down, halted, or even reversed. Although the antiwar art I describe is viewed thousands of miles from the actual fighting, its impact can offer a way of collapsing geographic and psychic distance and, for an instant, a way of bringing the traumatic impact of the actual war directly into the body of the distanced viewer. For this reason, I see the network described above as less like a grid, and more like a piece of fabric, where the fluid folds and wrinkles offer the potential of connection across distance, as if they are two corners of cloth brought together. As Michel Serres suggests, in the pliable forms of textiles, philosophy might find a "metaphorical matter" with which to think through, and to unravel, the tangled and fluid concatenations of power and communication. (8) The way fabric folds in on itself suggests a metaphoric link to the open communications systems that define the contemporary spread of power. Though a war obviously cannot be experienced by someone who is not there, the question that I ask is whether an empathic moment can be created through art that connects two sides through a fold that encourages empathy and consequent action against conflict. (9) In Mustafa's "Clothesline," for example, two sides of the globe are brought together through the marking of text on textile, and a moment of potential empathy is opened through shared knowledge.

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Thus, while there are many ways of approaching, defining, and analyzing moments of suspension in the flows of information, for the purposes of this essay, I focus briefly on a series of works that depend on their affective impact to engender shared critical emotion across boundaries. Though I am interested in the slip between the textile as material, and the textile as "metaphorical matter," I am also interested in the way that the use of textiles in contemporary antiwar art necessarily involves rethinking the use of new media and new technologies. The chosen artworks make use of old clothing, used army boots, unraveled sweaters, worn kurtas, and recycled wool. The use of textiles, and of knitting in particular, offer ways of considering artistic production at the cusp of the new and the old. Knitting, for example, has a lengthy history within both prowar and antiwar movements--from the knitting of socks and balaclava for soldiers, to the knitting of antiwar banners. But knitting also uses a binary code (K and P) identical to the zeros and ones underlying the systems of communication that define the network of circulating information, conflict, and profit.

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In a 2004 exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, Canadian artist Dominique Blain restaged her 1992 installation "Missa" by arranging one hundred pairs of used combat boots in rigid rows above the gallery floor. The boots were suspended from the ceiling by nylon thread, the left one of each pair slightly raised. As visitors moved through the space of the gallery, the air currents of their presence stirred the installation, making the boots swing eerily in the dark space of the gallery. Through the gallery marched the haunting presence of an invisible army, incorporating the viewer into the artwork through the effect of the echo of a pervasive but unseen military power. The emotional reaction tied the visitor into much wider currents of the antiwar movement, as well as the consequences of a military-economic machine on contemporary life. Blain's work comments not only on the seductive power of military organization and the atrocities of war, but also on the basic involvement of all viewers in the currents of conflict (and current conflicts) in the contemporary world. As the viewer moves through the space, and the exhibit moves in response to the viewer, a reciprocal reaction is set in place. And while the boots move slowly back and forth, what is perhaps most important is that which is missing. The exhibit is silent, and in its silence it marks the unspeakable act of war, while the missing bodies of the soldiers who wore the boots creates the space as one that is haunted. The hanging boots are effective precisely because they are uncanny--because they move even though the bodies of this army are missing.

The antiwar message here is not direct, and it slips by the "shock and awe" techniques of the war itself. Rather, foregoing explicit reproof, the installation forces the viewer to think through the issues. And in thinking through them, the viewer becomes participant, linking the original steps of potential violence taken in the boots with the quiet contemplation of their silent movement in the gallery. This is a haunting that could take place anywhere, and the contemplation of Blain's work necessitates the consideration of other wars, and other soldiers, including the ongoing occupation of Iraq. By implicating the audience within the artwork, a feedback loop is created that infolds viewers into conflicts from which they might appear distanced.

In these works, it is at least in part the simplicity of materials that makes the incorporative antiwar statement possible. Unlike photography or posters (more traditional materials for antiwar art), works such as Blain's and Mustafa's supplement the purely visual with the tactile, and in doing so contrast the embodied presence of the viewer with the missing presence of the artist and of those directly involved in the war. Given this, it is not surprising that the combination of absent presence, traumatic haunting, and either used clothing or knitting are present in a number of recent antiwar works. From the accurate pink knitted landmines of Canadian Barb Hunt's antipersonnel (1998) and the knitted Tank Cosy (2005) of Dutch artist Marianne Jorgensen to the felted bombs of Bomboozled (2003) by Maria Porges of New York City, a number of North American and European artists have combined cloth with antiwar messages. In part, this comes down to a juxtaposition of the apparently feminine arts, such as knitting, with the masculine world of war. However, I suggest that there is more to these works than a simple male/female dichotomy.

Intimately woven into the very fabric of these works is the shocking, the traumatic, and the affective. Beyond the mere distressing, a number of recent antiwar artworks rely on metaphorically performing the trauma of the war in the bodies of those on the home front. Many do this through the use of movement--the repetitive stitches of the knitted works, the slow movements of Blain's boots and Mustafa's kurtas--that creates a feeling of unsettlement in the viewer. As such, I suggest that there is a slippage here among the antiwar movement, the movement of information through the channels of Internet and viral communications, and the kinetic and affective energy that is used to incorporate viewers into traumatic antiwar activist artworks.

Hunt, Jorgensen, and Porges all engage with a feminine/feminist rhetoric of knitting to question the easy incorporation of military logic into the social fabric. In all three cases, the odd juxtaposition of wool and weaponry brings together the expected separation of war and daily life, while the recorded act of knitting engages the viewer in a participatory relationship. Knitting as process is both visible and tactile; the softness and fuzziness of recreated bombs create a connection between maker and viewer, even if not actually touched. Hunt suggests that viewing knitted objects slows the viewer down, engaging him or her in a textured relationship with the soft weapons. (10)

Through their very softness, Hunt's and Porges's landmines and bombs evoke a traumatic reaction in the body of the viewer, their tactility offering the potential of sustained sensation in the body, that is, a "shock to thought." (11) Through wrapping a tank in knitted pink squares, for example, and by using soft, "touchable" fabrics, Jorgensen makes the tank, and all that it stands for, acutely visible. Without relying solely on conveying explicit meaning, Hunt's, Jorgensen's, and Porges's weapons nevertheless convey pain and suffering to the viewer. Held within these anthropomorphic and seemingly unthreatening creations are the battered victims of conflicts that hover on the periphery of mainstream consciousness in North America. The agitated stitch marks work as brail that connect home and war fronts through knit and purl stitches.

Blain's boots swung in the contemporary art museum only weeks after hundreds of thousands of Montrealers marched in the largest antiwar demonstration in Canadian history (and, when combined with protests in other cities, world history). Though the work was originally created in 1992, when it was shown in 2004 the concatenation of events between 9/11 and the then new invasion of Iraq led to an intimate meeting of the war with current antiwar sentiment. As with the knitted works, and with Mustafa's kurtas, comfort and the uncanny work together to suggest the implication of viewers in contemporary war, and through the gaps and absences, the distances from it. The works of Blain, Hunt, Jorgensen, and Porges act in direct contrast to the images of the invasion of Iraq broadcast on global media. They refuse a repetition of the imagery and technology of war, and of any scopo-necrophilial pleasure of violence and death.

Ullman and Wade write, "Rapid Dominance will strive to achieve a dominance that is so complete and victory that is so swift, that an adversary's losses in both manpower and material could be relatively light, and yet the message is so unmistakable that resistance would be seen as futile." (12) What they fail to take into account is the fact that as networks spread out, so too do front lines. The war could not be contained by the geographic area in which it was fought, but rather it spread out across social and cultural networks. And if war is everywhere, so too is resistance. While art is, of course, far removed from actual conflict, what I have outlined here are the efforts by a number of artists to collapse this distance, and to involve viewers in participatory relationships that encourage mutualities of antiwar sentiment.

KIRSTY ROBERTSON recently completed her doctoral dissertation, "Tear-Gas Epiphanies: New Economies of Protest, Vision and Culture," at Queen's University in Montreal, Canada. In the fall, she will begin a postdoctoral fellowship at Goldsmiths College, in London, United Kingdom, investigating textiles, wearable technologies, and activism.

NOTES

1. Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1996), 20. It should be noted, however, that Ullman claimed (in the aftermath) that the invasion of Iraq was not a "shock and awe" campaign. See Oliver Burkeman, "Shock Tactics," the Guardian, March 25, 2003, www.guardian.co.uk.

2. See, for example, Naomi Klein's columns in the Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk) and Robert Fisk's column for the Independent (http://news.independent.co.uk).

3. Brian Massumi, ed., Shock to Thought: Expression After Deleuze and Guattari (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), xiii-xxxix.

4. See Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism, Chris Turner, trans. (New York: Verso, 2003); Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: Penguin Press, 2004); Paul Virilio, Desert Screen: War at the Speed of Light (New York: Continuum, 2002).

5. Ullman and Wade, 9.

6. Zain Mustafa, "Inspiration"; available at www.zain-mustafa.com/inspiration.html.

7. Ibid.

8. Michel Serres, Atlas (Paris: Editions Julliard, 1994). See also Steven Connor, The Book of Skin (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004).

9. See Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992).

10. Barb Hunt, personal communication, 2004.

11. I use "affect" in much the same way Bennett does: "In highlighting the workings of affect, I shall address responses that subtend those subject to conscious reflection responses that are, in some sense, autonomic. But this does not entail construing the affective response in narrow cause-and-effect terms, as if the image functioned simply as a mechanistic trigger or stimulus [as it does, for example, in horror films]. Thus, I use specific examples to show that art does not merely assault us, or, conversely, offer a corrective interpretation. When it shocks us, it is in the manner of what Brian Massumi has called 'a shock to thought': a jolt that does not so much reveal truth as thrust us involuntarily into a mode of critical inquiry" (Jill Bennett, Empathic Vision: Affect, Trauma and Contemporary Art [Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005], 11).

12. Ullman and Wade, 11.

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