Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 21. juni 2007 / Time Line June 21, 2007
Version 3.5
06/21/2007
Blairaq: in discussion with Peter Kennard and Cat Picton-Phillips
The iconic images of the last hundred years certainly aren’t
the representations of faith so abundant in art’s past.
Neither are they a reflection of popular contemporary culture;
history won’t repeat the generosity to Warhol’s
celebrity portraits that our Sunday supplements so readily extend.
It’s ideology that defines a 20th century visual, whether the
substance stems from the Surrealists’ exhortations to seek
out the abnormal, Goya’s depictions of man’s inhumanity
to man – or most potently of all the hammer and sickle, and
the swastika.
For the ‘millennial generation’ (it’s marketing
speak for those born after 1970) who missed Surrealism, pacifism,
Nazism and fascism, perhaps the first truly arresting images they
were ever exposed to were those of the dissident movement. The
placards wielded on TV news by striking miners, Socialist Workers,
the Animal Liberation Front and pro-disarmament protestors were
utterly alien to our cosy world where confrontation meant British
Bulldog and subversion trespassing on the cricket square.
The most potent and memorable of all these were the anti-nuclear
images made by Peter Kennard, now 58. Perhaps this is why Banksy,
the millennial generation’s artist in residence, regularly
cites Kennard as his greatest influence. Banksy has gone as far as
to ape Kennard directly. His series of customised oil paintings
(see: Crimewatch UK has Ruined the Countryside for All of Us) were
inspired by Kennard’s own version of Constable’s most
famous work, doctored to include surface-to-surface tactical
nuclear weapons riding on the back of its haywain. But
Kennard’s art is pleasingly purist compared to that of the
modern-day artists he’s influenced. Monochrome, stridently
motivated, and untainted by nudity or brand logos they do seem, and
this is admittedly shallow under the circumstances, terribly
refreshing.
“Well, at the time the peace movement didn’t use hard
imagery,” explains Kennard. “They thought we should be
using flowers and rainbows. But young people don’t want that.
Not only is Utopia impossible to picture, a rainbow doesn’t
relate to their life.” It’s testament to
Kennard’s influence - his style defined the visual identity
for underground media like International Times and Class War
– that the generation who followed him felt the need to ramp
up his imitators’ efforts, using primary colours and base
imagery for their own pieces. But the new generation of
‘cult’ artists rarely miss an opportunity to laud
Kennard.
His recent work alongside collaborator Cat Picton-Phillips, Photo
Op, showing Tony Blair snapping a burning oilfield on his mobile
phone, was the centrepiece of last Christmas’ Santa’s
Ghetto, the cult artists’ seasonal showcase. It was also
chosen as one of 2006’s defining images by advertising bible
Campaign. (Unsurprisingly, other work by the duo also rests in the
Tate, the V&A, plus the Imperial War and Science museums).
“It may be difficult in 2007 to outrage, but it’s
simple to be subversive,” says Picton-Phillips, who worked
with Kennard on Blairaq. The pair were thwarted by the agents of
mediocrity in 2004 when a commission they’d prepared for Bob
Geldof’s Light Up London project was axed. “It was
supposed to be projected on the outside of the National
Gallery,” explains Picton-Phillips.
“We made a Virgin Mary; Mary’s head was the Earth with
the CND symbol for a halo. It was disturbing – it worked,
basically. The sponsors, Orange, wouldn’t let it happen
– they said it’d be offensive to children and
grandmothers. Some holly went up instead.” “Or maybe it
was Nigella Lawson’s mince pies,” adds Kennard. There
is indeed something brutally uncompromising about Kennard and
Picton-Phillips’ protest art – it jars like it’s
supposed to. ‘Civilian #10’ picturing the corpse of an
Iraqi woman in a gunner’s cross-hairs, is an alarming image
even to those very modern types who consider themselves
unshockable. “We can get hold of photographs intended for
newspapers before they go to press,” explains
Picton-Phillips. “Some are even marked ‘for editorial
consultation’, ie prospective censorship.” The work for
Blairaq sits within the duo’s chosen medium of photomontage -
“Montages are incredibly easy or people to relate to”
says Picton-Phillips. So much that nowadays photoshop pieces are so
widespread that the idea behind such a process is seeming more and
more important.
Kennard and Picton-Phillips already have the ideas, and
they’ve refined their methods. “We’re working
with the paper, using relevant newssheets like the Houston
Chronicle and Rupert Murdoch-owned organs,” says
Picton-Phillips. “It’s then layered so another image is
behind the outer one, with torn strips exposing it like a tattered
flyposter,” adds Kennard. “Also the large pieces
can’t be viewed as a single image, more complex and that
complexity allows people to engage with the subject – the
fucked up attack on Iraq.” But even though twenty years on
Thatcher and Reagan have become Blair and Bush, the duo’s
other objects of ire haven’t changed. “We don’t
have new missiles and planes to work with,” says
Picton-Phillips. “The ‘new’ Trident ICBM system
is the same thing, it’s just new software the government are
buying.” “They’ve even still got B-52
bombers,” adds Kennard. Further proof if it were needed that
the duo’s relevance goes well beyond influencing a new
generation of artists. Kennard has been described as ‘the
king of lost causes’. In his 2003 toilet-reading smash
Nuclear Paranoia, Chas Newkey-Burden wrote ‘Ronald Reagan
didn’t start World War Three. Threads [a terrifying seventies
BBC drama simulating a nuclear attack on Sheffield] was a work of
fiction, it didn’t happen… Mine is not the last voice
you will ever hear.’ But if Newkey-Burden’s point was
as resounding as it is well-put, Kennard and Picton-Phillips
anti-war work would just be sitting in the Victoria and Albert
Museum. Not showing in an East End gallery like 93 Leonard Street.
james@tlsg.co.uk
06/21/2007
National Security Archive Update, June 21, 2007
THE CIA's FAMILY JEWELS
Agency Violated Charter for 25 Years, Wiretapped Journalists and
Dissidents
CIA Announces Declassification of 1970s "Skeletons" File, Archive
Posts Justice Department Summary from 1975, With White House
Memcons on Damage Control
Washington DC, June 21, 2007 - The Central Intelligence Agency
violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegal
wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human
experimentation led to official investigations and reforms in the
1970s, according to declassified documents posted today on the Web
by the National Security Archive at George Washington
University.
CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden announced today that the Agency is
declassifying the full 693-page file amassed on CIA's illegal
activities by order of then-CIA director James Schlesinger in
1973--the so-called "family jewels." Only a few dozen
heavily-censored pages of this file have previously been
declassified, although multiple Freedom of Information Act requests
have been filed over the years for the documents. Gen. Hayden
called today's release "a glimpse of a very different time and a
very different Agency."
Hayden also announced the declassification of some 11,000 pages of
the so-called CAESAR, POLO and ESAU papers--hard-target analyses of
Soviet and Chinese leadership internal politics and Sino-Soviet
relations from 1953-1973, a collection of intelligence on Warsaw
Pact military programs, and hundreds of pages on the A-12 spy
plane.
"This is the first voluntary CIA declassification of controversial
material since George Tenet in 1998 reneged on the 1990s promises
of greater openness at the Agency," commented Thomas Blanton, the
Archive's director.
06/21/2007
Treaty Between The Government of The United States of America and The Government of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Concerning Defense Trade Cooperation
June 21, 2007
http://www.state.gov/t/pm/rls/othr/misc/92770.htm
The Government of the United States of America (hereinafter "the United States Government") and the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (hereinafter "Her Majesty's Government") (hereinafter "the Parties"):
Desiring to strengthen and deepen the relationship between the United States of America (hereinafter "the United States") and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (hereinafter "the United Kingdom") to achieve fully interoperable forces;...
 |
 |