The Desert in the Garden
1991 - 92
The Desert in the Garden was my exploration of the media's depiction of the Gulf War and the symbolic desert it was fought in. The Desert in the Garden combined 'paraphrased' newsmedia war coverage with original graphics, video and music.
The installation was first presented in Los Angeles at Sue Spaid Fine Art, then at Galleri Enkehuset in Stockholm and finally at the Sculpture Center in New York City.
The following is taken from the show's catalog (Los Angeles, October 7, 1991)
The desert is located outside the sphere of human existence and is susceptible only to things transcendent.
The desert is the domain of the sun, not as the creator of energy upon earth, but as a celestial radiance, blinding and burning in its manifestation.
If water is associated with the ideas of birth and physical fertility, it is opposed to the concept of everlasting spirit.
LIFE, AS WE KNOW IT, IS CORRUPTIBLE
Burning drought is the ideal climate for pure ascetic spirituality: the consuming of the body for the salvation of the soul.
Remember that monotheism was born in the desert.
What is the significance of a human death in the desert if spirituality is not the ambition behind it?
No matter how sanitized and dry death in war appears to be it is wet with blood and essentially the result of suffocating human life.
The Story behind The Desert in the Garden
I was in Spain at Art Futura presenting Interstate
when the ground war began in Iraq, and there were hysterical reports
about the possible use of nuclear arms in the Mediterranean basin. The
good people of Barcelona, who have had more recent experience with wars
fought at home than North Americans, bought up much of the food in the
stores, lowered their heavy blinds and prepared for the inevitable
unknown.
I needed to find out what was going on. For example, I attempted to hear the English underneath the Catalan-dubbed CNN broadcasts, without much success. Fortunately, I discovered one Spanish daily which translated articles from different world newspapers. I was able to read the Moroccan response to the situation, for example. The variety of opinions expressed in the papers and on the streets of Barcelona stimulated me and I was prepared to go home and debate the issues surrounding the Gulf War.
However, when I returned to New York, there was little evidence of public discourse. The views expressed by the American newsmedia were, for the most part, homogenous. To delve deeply into the complexities of the war indicated an apparent lack of patriotism, rather than proof of curiosity. People bought yellow ribbons and fought the evil Hussein from their armchairs as if it were a football game. I couldn't understand the passivity and the lack of empathy for those on any side who were, through some chance of fate, now in mortal peril.
It dawned on me that the images and descriptions of the war referred to
it as something occurring in a "desert", not in a human
community. The Tigris-Euphrates basin is considered to be the cradle of
Western Civilization but no one seemed to mention that during the war.
Iraq and Kuwait were simply vistas of sand, Ashes to Ashes, Dust to
Dust, not cultivated human communities.
The news media's emphasis on the desert led me to consider its American
symbolism. In the United States the desert functions figuratively and
literally as a type of free zone where Americans do things not done on
the farm or in the city (i.e., nuclear testing and gambling). Is the
desert our realm of complacency or does it render us opinionless through
its powerful Judeo-Christian-Islamic-Native American symbolism? The Gulf
War deaths appeared in the media as bloodless and mythologically
appropriate, illustrated events from a Bible parable about death and
salvation.
The newsmedia are our access to a view of the world and its events. As a democratic nation we are dependent upon a plurality of opinions in order to choose our own views and actions. But as Neil Postman said, the supra-ideology of television's discourse is entertainment. Apparently, audiences are lost when the news becomes too complex or depressing. Added to this, in the case of the Gulf War, is the intimate relationship between companies who produce weapons systems and companies who produce the newsmedia. We may have governmental protection of our free speech but no media company will present an ideology in conflict with its interests.
Special thanks go to:
Video Planning Inc. for sponsoring the video editing
Andrew Beeton for his incredible music and assistance
Darnell Williams for help with the computer animation
Juliann Kroboth, Allen Gersten and Richard Stein for help with the U.S.
installations
Jeremy Wolff for the photo montage
and especially to Mats Broden for his encouragement and the amazing job
he did curating the Galleri Enkehuset show
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