PART 1:

Alfredo Jaar

There was a 3 piece series of instances where there was a play on light. This one stood out to me but no less than the other two. The hallway where these were displayed was dark and enclosed on 3 sides. The focus here was the LED backlit white letters that told the stories. After I finished reading the 3 stories I walked around a dark corner and there was another hallway with reflected light at the end. A glimmer of hope perhaps? I expected to see something magnificent coming from the light. With excitement I slowly walked towards the end of the tunnel and the room unveiled itself to me.  I was speechless.  There was nothing.  A wall that was emitting the brightest light almost blinding. It made perfect sense. I immediately thought about Nelson Mandela and how he must have felt. I was truly immersed in the moment of what was happening. There was void, a silence, the kind that makes your ears ring.  Then it all simmered and faded and I was back in reality.

PART 2:

Nelson Mandela– Light. It’s used to tell the story. Light was also used against Nelson Mandela and other black prisoners  on Robben Island.  Breaking rock is labor, but breaking white limestone in the sun with no sunglasses is in itself human torture.  Nelson said the island was, “intended to cripple us so that we should never again have the strength and courage to pursue our ideals.”

Bill Gates- Hoarder of information.  I remember somewhat hearing about this in my past but never thought about the kind of power that holds.  He is the sole owner of 17 million archived images including another 48 million images he owns the digital reproduction rights to works of world museums.  The factor of light in this story is kind of the opposite. I imagine a blackout of information.  I wonder how many “truths” he holds in that vault.

Kabul- The collection of topical and geographic images prior to the strategic carpet bombing of locations in Afghanistan.  To me this is another example of blackout information.  In this story, they call it a “white out” of information which makes sense.  So for the purpose of this piece by Alfredo Jaar, the white light is a perfect depiction of wiping out information.  The purpose of this collection of every single image was so that media could not make any comparison to before and after, essentially leaving it impossible to accuse the military of making mistakes.

PART 3:

“November”

The story to me was about revolution.  It didn’t dawn on me until later in the film that I always assume that the revolutionaries always seem to be depicted as the protagonists.  Then it made me think of the Marxist group that tried (still trying) to implement a Marxist regime in Columbia.  It wasn’t clear to me what ideals specifically that Andrea and this movement were trying to pursue, but the film gave me a feeling that as a viewer I should be taking her side.  I felt like I should feel empathy towards her.  So what I think overall is that this film is about how and idea can become immortalized through storytelling and symbolism. In this case, her story was told and an image of Andrea with a red star in the center and  a green wreath that encircled the center image. In my opinion that was a very strong image depicting revolution of the good kind.

Shifts:

• She was executed in Kurdistan
• Actress depicting a rebel shifted into a real life revolutionary
• Immortalized by a poster. Kind of a shift after death.

Martial Arts:

It was considered to be better than using weapons. According to the film, any group that used weapons was the enemy. Andrea used martial arts as a way of strengthening her image, the groups image, and taught martial arts to other women.  It was a way to fight against oppression.

Additional shifts: The shift from fiction to truth to story.

 

I was attracted to this piece additionally because of the wonderful hanging display with arrows. It was the center piece of the room.  I didn’t understand it’s meaning until I read the story. The general definitely deployed a cunning tactic to replenish his cache of weapons. I marveled at how clever that was.