War and its consequences have been a lot of my mind in the last few weeks, together with a fashion-related problem, density and accumulation of materials.
The latter actually came from a previous post and from memories of a counter covered in random plastic toys I saw at Bahdeebahdu’s Philadelphia-based studio (see background of first image in this post) a while back.
The former came instead from the news reports about the situation in Libya and the clueless reaction of the European Union, but also from memories of a book, If I Die in a Combat Zone by Tim O’Brien.
This personal account of a soldier's tour of duty in Vietnam was first published in 1973.
Chronicling his own experience from training to the front line, O'Brien also exposed the doubts and fears of soldiers fighting in a war nobody believed in.
My favourite extract out of this book is the one in which Private O’Brien remembers his friend Erik reciting a poem by Ezra Pound:
Erik became Ezra Pound. Seriously, slowly, he recited a portion of ‘Hugh Selwyn Mauberly’
These fought in any case,
and some believing,
pro domo, in any case…
Some quick to arm,
some for adventure,
some from fear of weakness,
some from fear of censure,
some for love of slaughter, in imagination.
learning later…
some in fear, learning of slaughter;
Died some, pro patria,
non ‘dulce’ non ‘et decor’...
‘Pound is right,’ Erik said. ‘Look into your own history, Here we are. Mama has been kissed good-bye, we’ve grabbed our rifles, we’re ready for extinction. All this not because of conviction, not for ideology; rather it’s from fear of society’s censure, just as Pound claims. Rather from fear of weakness, afraid that to avoid war is to avoid manhood (…). Here we are, thrust to the opposite and absurd antipode of what we think is good. And tomorrow we’ll be out of bed at three o’clock in the pitch-black morning.'
Thinking about these two inspirations, I fashioned out of a piece of leather and a few toy soldiers the necklace you see in the second image in this post.
There is actually a further inspiration behind it: the colours – khaki and green with a touch of gold – are inspired by Simon Norfolk’s photograph showing a security guard's booth at the Ikhtyaruddin Citadel in Herat.
Norfolk gave up photojournalism in the mid-‘90s in favour of landscape photography, but his images of the war in Afghanistan collected in the volume Afghanistan: chronotopia are a mixture of photojournalism and landscape photography, with emphasis on monuments in ruin among mountainous or arid desert areas and small patches of vegetation.
Since the dusty beige of ruins and the green of vegetation often prevail in his photographs, I opted for these colours for my necklace. You can actually discover further images by Norfolk at the current exhibitions featuring also John Burke’s work at Michael Hoppen Gallery (from 13th May to 18th June) or at the Tate Modern (from 6th May to 10th July 2011).
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