Many years ago I drove on a Friday night from Chicago through Indiana to Defiance, Ohio to meet someone there. It was an incredible experience of deep, rural, rough America. They all had cowboy's hats and boots, they were all rock and folk, and they didn't like strangers. This time my trip to Ohio was easy and flat, apart from a very interesting business meeting (nice to know that someone promote high-quality modern design over there) and the Art Center designed by Zaha Hadid who is a fantastic architect:
It was an open night with DJ's and free access and drinks for the visitors (nice to know that someone works to make modern art accessible there). I was impressed by the work of two artists: Radcliffe Bailey:
and An-My Le. She is a Vietnamese photographer whose main subject is war - but from a different angle. One collection of pictures - called Small Wars - is dedicated to people who dress up like soldiers and re-create scenes of the Nam war on Sunday mornings, the other one - called 29 Palms, from the name of a Marine Training Facility in California where they prepare soldiers to the Iraq war and is not too far away from Hollywood - makes you think about war as a show that we enjoy from the screen of our televisions. By depicting the war as a game or as a show she underlines the hidden side of it, the terrible, illogical, barbarian side, the dark side of humanity.
It was raining in Cincinnati - it was raining all over America this time. And this is me reflected for a moment on the wet street, a street somewhere down in Ohio that maybe, like so many other streets, like the streets in Defiance or who knows where, I will never cross again.
No comments:
Post a Comment