Visualizing Aggression: Documenting America at War
Conceived of and developed by Mary Walling Blackburn
Brief Course Description
Notions about victor/victim, enemy and aftermath, pleasurable violence and
necessary tortures are generated, maintained, and disseminated through artistic
practices. We will examine the visual trajectory of US war-making- from the
Revolutionary war to the present; ultimately producing our own visual
documentations of how we experience war, distant or near, with loyal support or
fierce resistance.
Some representative works:, anonymous portraits of African-American revolutionary
war seaman, Pacific Islander WWII ballads, American GI underground radio
broadcasts, covert Taliban studio portraiture, trips to local military reenactments and
war monuments.
Texts will touch upon the acoustics of war, the history of camouflage painting, the
development of aerial photography, the aesthetics of torture and the philosophy of
defeat.
Specific Class Objectives
Our purpose in this is:
1. To deconstruct and evaluate visual texts, actual sites (war monuments and war
museums) and performances (war re-enactors) in order to build a more complex
understanding of how visual representations of war create historic record
2. To understand and develop an aesthetic language (within the context of war), that
enables you to deftly produce your own visual analysis (of war)
3. To probe the psychoanalytic dimensions of aggression.
4. To evaluate the manner in which certain conflicts are depicted, how these
representations shift overtime, and what role imperfect memory plays in the visual
representation of war
5. To determine who chronicles war, their motivations and research methods and what
ethical dilemmas they face and to realize the strategies employed by soldiers that rely
on visual information, the structure of the armed forces, civilian experiences of
conflict versus soldier’s relationship to battle, the purpose of the war, and the
expected and unexpected outcomes.
6. To determine, in these specific circumstances, the efficacy of words and the efficacy
of pictures in relationship to one another.
General Academic Objectives:
To dissect how information is produced and visualized and to determine one’s own
relationship to that process
To develop a solid sense of how perceptions of conflict, aggression and war in America has
been conscientiously shaped by competing interests over time.
Overview of Assignments
WEEKLY
Each week students will provide a short response to the readings and images; they will either
offer a written critique of a specific visual representation of aggression or they will provide
their own set of illustrations for the assigned reading. The images will be produced by the
student or personally commissioned by peer artists.
MIDTERM
The midterm essay will take the form of a zine. For our intents and purposes, a “zine” is a
self-published DIY magazine, humbly written, produced and distributed by the author. You
will select and investigate a ‘Secret War’ conducted by the US government or actualized
within US territory. Your selection must occur within historic record and cannot be a current
secret war. Twelve pages total (5 pages of your text, 5 pages of images, 2 pages of text from
guest contributors/borrowed text). Be sure that your work is in dialogue with the borrowed
texts and images – that it expands upon the notions of another writer by either deepening
the analysis or existing in contradiction. Please curate, write, and distribute for an intentional
and targeted audience outside of SAIC. Share the intellectual wealth, folks. Strategize.
Figure out how to distribute this outside of Chicago as well. Distribute 100.
FINAL PROJECT Select one of these.
A. Drawing from Edward Tufte’s groundbreaking archive of visual representation, students
will create a graphic visualization of “our future war in Iran”. This imaginary war hovers,
weightless but weighty, in our collective psyche. How do we visualize and understand what
seems both impossible and immanent? Data will be collected by the student and must
include research in library and museum collections. The objective? To convert a considerable
quantity of research into a visual form that is comprehendible yet comprehensive,
aesthetically sound and intellectually compelling.
B. Broadsheet: Distributing Disturbance
The broadsheet operated as a circular of sorts; distributed throughout communities (literate
and illiterate) to communicate local events and often contained song lyrics that also narrated
pressing news and/or operated as cautionary invectives. Be sure to closely examine the
graphic quality of these broadsheets (organization of space, use of color, fonts, hierarchy of
information). Design and distribute your own boroadsheet, complete with lyrics. Explore a
specific aspect.
Choose from the following list:
Delineate a local site of aggression: Chicago’s Civil War sites (POW camps, underground
railroad), the location of Chicago’s Civil Rights violations (Anarchist repressions, Civil Rights
Uprisings, Prison complexes, Cold War/ Endless War training facilities).
Grading
Weekly Assignments: 25%
Midterm: 25%
Final: 25%
Class Participation: 25%
Selected Resources
Academic Readings
Abraham, Nicholas and Maria Torok and Nicholas Rand, “A Poetics of Psychoanalysis: The
Lost Object: Me.”
Antoon, Sinan. “Monumental Disrespect”
Beradt, Charlotte. The Third Reich of Dreaming
CIA Archive. The Center for the Study of Intelligence.
Doob, Leonard. “Ezra Pound Speaking”: Radio Speeches of World War II
Gephart. “Hidden Talents: The camouflage paintings of Abbott Handerson Thayer”
Gordon, Avery. Haunting and the Sociological Imagination
Gordon, Terry J. “Fascism and the Female Form: Performance Art in the Third Reich.”
Grancsay, Stephen. “Exhibitions at Army Camps” (1941)
Jayne, Horace H.F.. “The Art Museum in War Time.” (1942)
Keiichi, Ogata.”Hiroshima through Light” From Light to Silence, Silence to Light”
Kwon, Miwon. “One Place After Another:Notes on Site Specificity.”
Marshall, Kimberly Jenkins. “Recent University Marching Band Recordings”
Mobilio. “Looking Down: The God's-eye View of the Aerial Photograph”
Nancy, Jean-Luc. “L’Intrus”
Nelson, Cary. “Martial Lyrics: The Vexed History of the Wartime Poem Card.”
Paperno. “Dreams of Terror: Dreams from Stalinist Russia as a Historical Source”
Puar, Jasbir K. and Amit S. Rai. “Monster, Terrorist, Fag: the War on terrorism and the
Production of docile Patriots.”
Roach, Michael. Cities of the Dead
Sebald. W.G.. On the Natural History of Destruction
Sert, J.L. and F. Leger and S. Giedion. “Nine Points on Monumentality” (1943)
Scnittou, Douglas A. and Michael H. Logan. “Fluidity of Meaning: Flag Imagery in Plains
Indian Art.”
Smith, Harlan. “The Work of Museums in War Time” (1918)
Tufte. Visualizing Information
Vaisman. “The Acoustics of War”
Interviews
Peter Gallison “The Ontology of the Enemy: The battlefield and cybernetic vision”
Wolfgang Schivelbusch “Toward a philosophy of defeat”
Herbert A. Friedman “On the history of airborne propaganda”
Sven Lindqvist “The history of civilian bombardment”
Selected Viewings:
Film/Video
Francus Alys, El Gringo (2004)
Rebeca Baron: Ok Bye-Bye (1998)
Paul Chan RE: The Operation (2002)
Department of Energy Nuclear Weapons Test Films (1945-1958)
Robert Enrico, Incident at Owl Creek Bridge (1961)
Su Friedrich, The Ties That Bind (1984)
Coco Fusco: a/k/a Mrs. George Gilbert (2004)
Harun Farocki: EyeMachine 1 (2001)
Jim Finn: The Juche Idea (2008)
D.W.Grifiths, The Birth of a Nation (1915)
Nguyen Hatsushiba: Vietnam: Towards the Complex—For the Courageous, the Curious, and
the Cowards (2001)
Nazi propaganda, The Führer Gives A City To The Jews (1944)
Leni Riefenstahl, Olympia (1938)
Joseph Strick, Interviews with My Lai Veterans (1971)
US Government, Communist Blueprint for Conquest (1956)
YOUTUBE: US Soldiers dancing in Baghdad. Various clips
Still Images
Anonymous portrait of a black revolutionary seaman (c.1780)
British war cartoons (1770)
Emily Jacir. Where We Come From (2003)
Dorothea Lange. Japanese-American Internment camp photos
An My Le. Small Wars
Elmore Leonard. Black Panther posters. Civil Rights Graphic Artist.
Photographs: Matthew Brady, George N. Barnard and Alexander Gardner (1861-1865)
Propaganda posters and air drop leaflets from WW1 & II, Vietnam War and Iraqi Wars
Paul Revere: Engravings of massacres (1770)
Martha Rosler. Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful (1967-1972)
Alison Smith. The Muster (2002)
Robert Knox Sneden, map-maker (1861-1865)
Frank Viztelly – civil war correspondent and illustrator (1861-1865)
Academic Audio Recordings
Dean, Tim. “On Bareback Subcultures and the Pornography of Risk.” (slought.org)
Paglen, Trevor. “Secret Us Prisons” (fora.tv)
Audio Recordings
Major Jon Pershing: First audio recording from battlefield (WWI)
Civil war recordings. Last confederate veteran, John Salling, sings, “The Yellow Rose of
Texas”
Ezra Pound. Radio Plays
Recordings by soldiers stationed in Vietnam: Nixon and "the Young Americans for
Freedom", Warning from Hanoi. Under Ground radio broadcast in Vietnam.
Literary Readings (shortlist)
Carr, James. Bad: The Autobiography of James Carr
Cooper, Dennis. My Loose Thread [school shootings]
Duras, Marguerite. The War: A Memoir [ WW2]
Herr, Michael. Dispatches [Vietnam War]
Komunyakaa, Yusef. Neon Vernacular
Waldrup, Rosemary. Shorter American Memory
Miscellaneous
Models: Stone house, Gettysburg cyclorama, Wendover Airport H-Bomb model
Video games: Gulf War Operation Desert Hammer (2001)
3-D imaging system: Beyond Manzanar (2004)
Interactive media installation: Go Fish (2001) John Klima
Berlin Holocaust Memorial Quicktime VR
German POW Camp newspaper Die Lagerstimme Camp Ellis, Illinois.
WEEKLY READING AND VIEWING SCHEDULE. Subject to change.
There will be three off-campus field trips and they will be scheduled for Saturdays.
Advance notice will be given.
Week One: Lots of Guns: An Introduction
All Class Performance of Lots of Guns, an Oratorio for Five Voices by Ann Carson
Excerpts from Bad: The Autobiography of James Carr and Dennis Cooper’s My Loose Thread
Viewing: Rebecca Baron OK Bye Bye
Objectives: Course Overview, Testing the potential performative dimensions of military
discourse (Carson). Including non-military case studies (60’s prison activism and 90’s high
school massacres, for example)) within our discourse on the organization of American
violence.
Week Two: The Performative Body, the Exploding Body
Reading: “America in Autumn” Gregory Whitehead
Excerpt from The History of Warfare by John Keegan
Viewing: Home Footage of Exploding Bomb in Iraq,
Objectives: Assess the effectiveness of Baron’s film. Sketch of Keegan’s claims regarding
herding, animal butchery and the development of warfare. Beheading as Choreography.
Terrorist relics: an infinite re-usage of culturally loaded body parts.
Week Three: Invisible Wars:
Reading: “Monster, Terrorist, Fag: The War on Terrorism and the Production of Docile
Patriots” by Jasbir K. Puar and Amit S. Rai
The Penal Colony: “Inscription of the Subject in Literature and Law, and Detainees As Legal
Non-Persons At Camp X-Ray” by Scott McClintock. Source: Comparative Literature
Studies. Vol. 42. No.1 2004
Recommended: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination: Avery Gordon
Viewing/Listening: Trevor Paglen. Harun Farucki. Coco Fusco. Desparacidos
Objectives: Revealing the polemics around undocumented military operations, squelched
internal uprisings and the formation of the enemy. Examining the political artwork that
attempts to make the formless and submerged visible.
Week Four & Five: Nostalgia for Carnage: ‘Authentic’ ‘Historical’ Re-enactment
Readings: Please focus on this article: “We Should Grow Too Fond of It”: Why We Love
the Civil War: Drew Gilpin Faust Source: Civil War History, Volume 1. No.4 2004 by The
Kent state University Press
Skim this article, keeping in mind the dimensions of the suffering represented within this
article and the performances of pain and entrapment at our re-enactment field trip. Escape
from Andersonville: A Study in Isolation and Imprisonment: Robert S. Davis Source: The
Journal of Military History 67 (October 2003)
Viewing: Please go to the library and see: Jeremy Deller’s Battle of Orgreave,
Please view works online by An My Le, Alison Smith, Timothy O’ Sullivan & Matthew
Brady
Field Trip: Historical Re-enactment weekend
Week Six: Reconstituting Apocalyptic Future/ Atomic Past
Reading: Atomic Bomb Cinema: Illness, Suffering, and the Apocalyptic Narrative: Jerome F.
Shapiro A Hundred Million Hydrogen Bombs: Total War in the Fossil Record: Doug Davis
The War Between North and South
Optional Reading: The Language of Explosion: Documenting Nuclear Craters in the
American West: Mary Walling Blackburn Source: Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist
Theory, Issue 27, 2004
Viewing/Listening: Sun Ra and afro-centric re-imaginings of the future, excerpt from Orson
Wells, War of the World. Images: bomb shelters, Wendover Airport H-Bomb model, time
capsules, DOE test sites, urban test evacuations, terrorist re-enactment camps. US
Government, Communist Blueprint for Conquest (1956)
Objectives: Examining the racial dimensions of projected wars. Developing a visual grammar
for total annihilation. Describing the cumulative effect of waiting for a war that never
happens. The usages of Atomic imagery in Peace Activism.
Week Seven: Mix-Tape: A Violent Sing A-Long
Reading: Extraordinary Circumstances, Exceptional: Music in Japanese American
Concentration Camps: Minako Waseda
The Politics of the Voice. Source: from A Voice And Nothing More: Mladen Dolar
The Acoustics of War: Daria Vaisman Source: Cabinet Magazine, Issue 5 winter 2001
Viewing/Listening: Major Jon Pershing: First audio recording from battlefield (WWI)
Recordings by soldiers stationed in Vietnam: Nixon and "the Young Americans for
Freedom", Warning from Hanoi. Under Ground radio broadcast in Vietnam.
Interviews with the Last Confederate Soldier.
Bird Watching in Iraq, New Guinea Creole English WW2 song.
A selection of visual images that communicate the aural aspects of war.
Saddam Housein’s Re-election song. (A cover of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love
You.”
Objectives: Focusing on the mutable and tactical qualities of sound. Sousing out the ethical
and aesthetic limitations of the voice (protest songs, war rallies, crying out in anguish),
Determining the gap between sound and its visual representation. Examining the use of pop
music in the wake of failed diplomacy.
Week Eight: Unorthodox Remains: Tortured, Plundered, Documented
Reading: Knox, Sara L. (Sara Louise) Source: "The Productive Power of Confessions of
Cruelty” Postmodern Culture - Volume 11, Number 3, May 2001
Naomi Klein: 'Never Before!' Our Amnesiac Torture Debate Source: Nation (12-26-05)
“Equipped For Murder”: The Paxton Boys and “The Spirit of Killing All Indians” in
Pennsylvania, (1763-1764): Jeremy Engels Source: Rhetoric and Cultural Affairs. Volume 8
No.3. 2005 pp.355-382
In Class Hand-Outs: Poems by Emily Dickinson, Yusef Komunyaka
Excerpts from Maurice Blanchot’s Writing the Disaster
Viewing: Robert Enrico, Incident at Owl Creek Bridge (1961)
Chris Burden, Kim Jones, Wolf Vostell, Gutai Group, Otto Dix, Gerhardt Richter,
Recommended: The Black Body As Souvenir in American Lynching: Harvey Young Source:
Theatre Journal 57 (2005) 639-657, John Hopkins University Press
Objectives: Beginning to create a visual structure for the unimaginable. Analyzing the
slippage between narratives of cruelty as they morph genres (from serial killing to
community lynchings to military engagements). Introduction to performance art as reactions
to war. Discuss, assess, and rewrite #1 writing assignment.
Week Nine: Into the Ether: Blind Landings, Aerial Bombardments, Soldier’s Dreams
Reading: The Politics of Blind Landing: Eric Conway
“Looking Down: The God's-eye view of the aerial photograph”: Albert Mobilio
“On the history of airborne propaganda”: Herbert A. Friedman
Excerpt from Mechal Sobel’s “Teach Me Dreams: The Search For Self In Revolutionary
America”
Week Ten: Architecture of Aggression
Excerpt from “On The Natural History of Destruction”: W.G. SebaldKeiichi, Ogata.
“”Hiroshima through Light” From Light to Silence, Silence to Light”
Viewing: Nazi Propaganda: The Führer Gives A City To The Jews (1944) WWII Victory
Gardens, Loos’s unrealized design for Josephine Baker’s home, Vietnam War bomb crater
fisheries, WWI trenches and fortifications.
www.clui.org
www.paglen.com