The passing birds.

"Shame on he who could sing while Rome was burning!" Shame on anyone who sings, makes art, while the world around them is burning? The truth is there is always a burning Rome, somewhere. Should we all stop making what we make, doing what we do, to put out the fires, rather than give ourselves an excuse and turn our heads away. "How can we make art after Auschwitz?" Art has a healing power and focuses on creation rather than destruction. Art has a cathartic power as well as a broader therapeutic one. Action, and not art, can address issues and solve them, as long as the solutions exist, and as long as the chosen solutions are the right ones. Who knows, if Hitler had been more successful as a painter, he might have left politics and the rest of the world alone. On the other hand, Nero's love for lyrical poetry did not stop him from being a tyrant.

Should a photographer, and should artists in general, be "concerned" in order to be relevant? I am tempted to agree that they should. Knowledge, awareness, experience, and their long-term reward, wisdom cannot harm art. They inspire it with content and long-lasting relevance. Is art limited to ethical and philosophical content? Of course not; entertainment, pleasure, shock, propaganda, advertising, and society in general, use art for what Guy Debord called the "spectacle," and the aestheticization of everyday life. Sports have become rituals, as they once were in ancient Greece, and war is presented by the television networks in the same manner as sports coverage. In that respect, the preparation for the invasion of Iraq is a case study. Baudrillard's temptation to turn the world of signs into one of never-ending simulacra becomes a tempting one. Should we leave the world to merchants, psychopaths, and cynics in order to retreat into our art like hermit crabs into empty shells? Should artists only be the passing birds that the poet and composer, Georges Brassens, describes in his song, Les Oiseaux de Passage? Their goal is to fly to the highest altitudes that the sky and the human spirit can offer. Following their paths, off the beaten track, many of them will break their wings and fall. Isn't it the role of the artist to bridge the distance between azure and ground, between a world of intense sensations, intellect, and a more mitigated reality? The artist as voyant, seer, medium, yes, but without an audience, to what avail?

Shouldn't art engage the world? Shouldn't the artist be engaged with the world? Because of the contemplative dimension of most art forms, or because of they result from contemplative activities, they should be considered as a necessary counterpoint to what most of our modern, or postmodern societies offer: immediacy, constant motion, facts and easy gain. Artists do not have to deal with the immediacy, of response with which journalists, documentarians, or politicians have to keep up. They do not have to produce daily, they do not need to be reelected. They should not have to flatter. They should be our conscience as well as the keepers of our memory, a memory that does not pretend to be "objective." In the wake of recent events, history does not seem to teach much. Facts by themselves do not say much; one never gets the full picture, the total context, and meaning of a fact. An example could be taken from the Second World War and its impact on civilian populations too often reduced to the holocaust perpetrated by the Nazi regime against the Jewish populations of Western Europe. Partial and oversimplified facts tend to leave us helpless, misinformed, and "disinformed." For instance, we should not forget the genocide perpetrated against the gypsies, the systematic elimination of homosexuals, political opponents, the horrors of the real war against civilian populations all over Europe: how many instances of Coventry, Dresden, Stalingrad, Oradour, ... and later, around the world, Algeria, Vietnam, Biafra, Chile, Rwanda?

The question is not how can we keep on making art, but how can we keep on making the same art? How can we proceed with plans made before the war when it is raging? How can we let our common funds, the product of our labor, the taxes that we all pay, be invested in weapons of mass-destruction and mass-control, in international state-terrorism and horror while our educational system, our health coverage, our children, and parents, and grand-parents desperately need them?

Art is not war. Art must be ethical or cannot be. This is where the line lies between art and entertainment, between concerned work and wallpaper, between art and the "spectacle." Whoever speaks of "Vision" speaks of awareness, intuitiveness, wisdom and passion. The artists features in this issue of Afterimage, all share this approach to the work they produce, the collections they define, the exhibitions they curate--which does not mean that they, we, should stop questioning the ethical ground of our work and its relevance. We, at Afterimage, count on you, our readers, writers and collaborators, to help and strengthen our role. Your feedback is crucial.

Regarding feedback, I announced a survey of Afterimage readership in the previous issue. I have, since, done some research and realized that, in fact, there had been such surveys at the end of every decade of the history of this magazine, in 1982, and in 1992. 2003 will see the third one. As I am trying to define an editorial line in the tradition of the work of my predecessors, as well as in the context of the current state of the world, and of my own background, my plan is now to publish this survey in the September/October 2003 issue of Afterimage; giving you, our readers, the opportunity not only to express your opinion on the past state of your magazine, but on its current situation. Until then, please keep on reading us, and telling your audience, your friends, students, and relatives about us.

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