- What did you find most compelling — or most “successful” as an activist intervention — and why?
I found both the art piece with the stuffed uniforms on the ground and the posters for the Vietnam war quite effective. The stuffed uniforms were effective because they created the reality of what the weight of those who were killed looked like- it was a visual representation of so many lost in such gruesome ways, many to be never found again. And also having prior knowledge of how a lot of the bodies that were lost during the Vietnam war was because they would sink into the mud gave the fact that the piece was upon the ground a whole other level of meaning.
The posters were successful, in my opinion, because they created a sense of humor out of the situation, and what better way to point out that people are being horrendous than making fun of them?
- How does the art/design approach contribute to the conversation about the subject matter?
It’s a lot harder to look at design in a way to spread messages than it is to do so through art because there is such a thin line for design to be crossing over into art. Once a designed object looses it’s functionality, is it still design?
- How do the material / design choices influence the success of the work?
Again with the uniforms, to have them stuffed and just uniforms gives such a sense of how dehumanized soldiers are in our society, especially at that time and especially when there is a horrific amount of carnage and fatalities. It reminds us of how young men were being shipped off in huge amounts just to become heavy sacks on the ground, no longer a human and thus no longer with a face.
