Burn, Baby Burn: Fahrenheit 9/11

June 27, 2004

Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 has descended upon us, a gripping portrait of the Bush Kingdom that smokes with the flames of these apocalyptic times. Moore documents how, since 9/11, even going back to the Florida election scandal, George W. Bush & Co. has scorched our liberties, our laws, our sensibilities, and our freedoms.

Bush is portrayed, without much effort, as a dangerous buffoon who sat reading “My Pet Goat” for 7 minutes to a group of school children in Florida, while hijacked planes were raining from the sky. The Bush Family “oilgarchy” is shown to have deep business ties (collaborative!) with the Saudi Royal Family as well as the Bin Laden Clan, throwing the latter’s post 9/11 getaway into suspect light. And Moore’s account of the Iraq fiasco centers around the ultra-patriotic Lila Lipscomb from Flint, Michigan, who is shown sobbing in front of the White House after the news of her son’s death – raging against the Administration.

Fahrenheit 9/11 will surely come to be known as the Great War Film of the era of the War on Terrorism. The film is one part satire, one part tragedy, and 100% act of artistic mediation that attempts to unseat from power the President and his Republican cronies. However accurate the film may be, its purpose is to peel off the layers of lies and deception handed down by our political leaders to reveal the true nature of their intent. It also attempts to reveal the foolishness, sloppiness, and hypocrisy of politicians on both sides of the isle: an appeal to Congressmen who haven’t read the Patriot Act is countered by reading it to them from behind the wheel of an ice cream truck encircling the US Capitol; Moore personally recruits Congressmen by asking them to sign up their own children to join the Army if they really support the War in Iraq; and a startling scene in the Senate Chamber at the opening of the film reveals that not a single Senator supported a House-led petition to investigate the Florida election scandal.

This is the film we have all been waiting for. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a powerful catharsis that vents the anger spreading across the nation and around the world at an Administration perilously on the brink of self-destruction and global annihilation. Michael Moore is the hero of our times, an artist who has expressed our collective horror. Fahrenheit 9/11 is an artwork that reaches beyond the screen and attempts to bring the possibilities of change into action, action that might translate into votes.

Fahrenheit 9/11 demonstrates the power of art to reveal what is so obvious to some, but remains elusive to most behind the veil of deception and propaganda. Let’s hope the film ignites Joe America and the rest of the red-zone populace, inspiring them to shed the terrible illusion afflicted upon them by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, to exercise their one remaining, untargeted freedom, the right to vote (even that is now suspect). Our 200 + year experiment with democracy hangs by a thread, but with films such as Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, hope remains.

Go see it if you haven’t already.

Randall Packer

Daft Unresolution on Partisan Hero Worship

June 17, 2004

Recalling the reverence for Kings, Popes, Pharoahs and Fuhrers past,

Reaffirming that the collective amnesia of the American people mirrors that of their former president,

Reaffirming the right of the mass media plutocracy to force their version of history down the throats of the public that has suffered by the policies of trickle down economics, enormous defense spending, support for apartheid, and inaction on HIV research,

Welcoming the opportunity to shamelessly rewrite the history of the late twentieth century, emphasizing only the feel-good interpretations favored by the Gipper,

Recognizing the importance of diverting the public’s attention from the miserable failings of the current president, who would like to think he is the heir to Reagan’s aura,

Taking note of the absence of awareness of U.S. sponsored and trained death-squads in Central America in the 1980s,

Forgetting if at all possible the illegal entanglements of the Iran-Contra scandal, and the absurdity of treating Grenada as a hemispheric threat,

Welcoming the respite from awful news from the Persian Gulf, which corporate news organs needed desperately to prop up ratings as the tedium of war drags on,

Stressing the need to pretend that Americans are unified in mourning a man who has always been a symbol of partisanship,

Affirming the importance of the rule of lucre, violence, and respect for greed, including the rights of millionaires, billionaires, militarists, dictators, and dirty rotten scoundrels,

The Media Leadership of the United States of Broadcasting resolve to remain actively seized of the delusions implied herein.

Andy Deck
Undersecretary of Radicalization of Corporately-Controlled Media
US Department of Art & Technology

In Defense of Steve Kurtz and the Role of the Artist

June 08, 2004

A Letter in Defense of Steve Kurtz and the Role of the Artist in Society:

As with many in the arts community, particularly those engaged in acts of artistic mediation, I am shocked and outraged that one of our own has become a recent victim of oppressive policies coming down from the Bush administration. I met Steve Kurtz and Critical Art Ensemble partner Claire Pentecost a few years ago here in Washington, DC, during their residency at the Corcoran College of Art.

Steve’s commitment to social inquiry, particularly in the area of bio-technologies, is internationally renowned. Steve is an artist and scholar of extraordinary depth of knowledge and perspective. Behind the actions and projects of CAE is a profound understanding of 20th century avant-garde practice and its impact on contemporary thought. If in fact it is the role of the artist to shed new light and vision on the issues that confront us today, Steve is the classic model, the real deal.

For Steve Kurtz to now be facing criminal charges, shows the deep chasm that exists in our society between the artist’s role as a social and political critic, and the society at large. Steve has shown how the artist-as-citizen might stand up for justice in the most thoughtful and imaginative way possible.

It is my hope that the case of Steve Kurtz and other CAE collaborators now under investigation can inspire other artists to better articulate their vital role in society. Without artistic freedom, there is no freedom in the world. The artist is constantly examining, redefining and expanding our notions of freedom. How hypocritical for the US Government to claim it is bringing freedom and democracy to oppressive regions of the world, when here at home, it is condemning one of the great artists of our generation who speaks out for truth and justice.

In George Orwell’s 1984, the motto of Big Brother is:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

The words resonate all too well in the current social and political climate. The crisis facing us is much larger than the charges that may face Steve Kurtz and Critical Art Ensemble. The crisis is that this madness may soon be staring us all in the face, particularly those of us fighting for the ideals we thought our nation was all about. Steve is being victimized by the Patriot Act and the extremist ideologies behind it. We must not allow this to occur. We must defend the principles we believe in, and we must defend the role of the artist as a critical voice to help counter the rising tide of injustice that has spread since 9-11.

The defense of Steve Kurtz is vital to the defense of the artist, whose role is to function as a mediator between our strange hostile world and the human spirit.

Randall Packer

Secretary Interview II

June 07, 2004

Ryan Griffis from Furtherfield recently interviewed me for the on-line new media journal.

For the next few entries, I will post excerpts from the interview.

RG: Your art and writing (and from what i gather, your teaching as well) often addresses the ever-expanding ‘totalizing’ effect of what is called ‘multimedia.’ There’s both a utopic and dystopic side present to notions of singularity. What kinds of relationships do you see between Virilio’s Total War and Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk?

RP: The totalizing properties of the Gesamtkunstwerk (Total Artwork) have driven my own research and artistic production over the past 15 years. I was fascinated early on by Wagner’s approach to the theater, he could not fully realize his work until he had completely overhauled the “platform” of the opera house, creating a medium for immersing and directing the full attention of the viewer on the illusionary or ‘virtual’ space of the theatrical stage.

With US DAT, I was thinking about the total collapse of the fourth wall, that imaginary line between audience and the stage (still sacred in Wagner’s theater), in order to extrude the work from the stage into the space of the “real world,” to dissolve the distinction between the two. This is to me is a further implementation of the Gesamtkunstwerk, in which the totalization of the experience of art is one in which the “real world” is transformed using techniques of media and illusion. (Regarding Virilio, you could say that war as theater constitutes the ultimate transformation of the physical space.)

I was invited to speak at the Transmediale Festival in Berlin in 2002 as the Secretary of US DAT for their opening ceremonies, alongside several politicians and diplomats. No one was told I was a fake but there was great confusion in the air. It was arranged that I was to be introduced by an actual government official, the Cultural Attaché of the US Embassy in Berlin. Now if there really were a Secretary of the US Department of Art & Technology, this would be the protocol. And so he played it completely straight. He gave a stirring introduction, indicating that the US Government was now embracing a significant role for the arts. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

My speech, delivered to an audience of over 1,000, was a dadaesque collage of President Harry Truman’s address to the United Nation’s in 1945, mixed with texts appropriated from the Futurists, Berlin Dadaists, and even some of the hyper-utopian descriptions of artist works presented at Transmediale. The conclusion of the speech ended, appropriately with the following line, taken from the famous words of President Kennedy, “In this city of dada, decadence and indulgence, ich bin ein Berliner, Kunstler!). Most everyone recognized by this point it was a performance, except for one rather confused media critic whom I won’t mention by name, but who thought I was an American government official posing as an artist. I found this reversal most delicious.

Randall M. Packer