OPERATION R.A.W.
Icebox Project Space - Phildadelphia, USA 2005
RAW - if people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars
Operation Rapid American Withdrawal or RAW 1970 – 2005 was an extensive multimedia art event that was exhibited in the Ice Box Project Space at Crane Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA from September 2nd – September 25th, 2005
This was a thematic exhibition that focused on the commemoration and homage to the 35th anniversary of something called “Operation Rapid American Withdrawal”.
This was also a wonderful example of true guerilla theatre/performance art that was a reenactment of a search and destroy mission performed by anti-war Vietnam veterans of the time. Operation RAW happened in Philadelphia/New Jersey area and nowhere else in the USA.
The form and vision of the show was actually intended to resemble a demonstration and to contribute a piece for the exhibit was similar to showing up to march.
In researching this particular historical era and combining the extensive documentation provided by the Curator, I came across, Abbie Hoffman, an anti-war protest leader from the Sixties who promoted countercultural values and was against the Vietnam War. I then proceeded to create an artwork that took on an activist tone in support of the proposed exhibition thematic using the juxtaposition of word and image
The indictment of the text reminds us that language and its use within culture is constructed in order to provoke questions about power and its effect on the human condition: to investigate the way power is constructed, used and abused. The work I produced, proposed that power is interrogated and interpreted through social, economic and political systems influenced by mass media and my intention was to present and reflect an emotional response that comes from the private space of family and community. We motor life’s impulses and this form of art making reminds us of this place in our oral history and the political consciousness of our time.
(Abbie Hoffman was a social and political activist in the United States , co-founder of the Youth International Party, "Yippies" and, later, a fugitive from the law. He came to prominence in the 1960s and has remained a symbol of the youth rebellion of that decade).
RAW - if people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars
Operation Rapid American Withdrawal or RAW 1970 – 2005 was an extensive multimedia art event that was exhibited in the Ice Box Project Space at Crane Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA from September 2nd – September 25th, 2005
This was a thematic exhibition that focused on the commemoration and homage to the 35th anniversary of something called “Operation Rapid American Withdrawal”.
This was also a wonderful example of true guerilla theatre/performance art that was a reenactment of a search and destroy mission performed by anti-war Vietnam veterans of the time. Operation RAW happened in Philadelphia/New Jersey area and nowhere else in the USA.
The form and vision of the show was actually intended to resemble a demonstration and to contribute a piece for the exhibit was similar to showing up to march.
In researching this particular historical era and combining the extensive documentation provided by the Curator, I came across, Abbie Hoffman, an anti-war protest leader from the Sixties who promoted countercultural values and was against the Vietnam War. I then proceeded to create an artwork that took on an activist tone in support of the proposed exhibition thematic using the juxtaposition of word and image
The indictment of the text reminds us that language and its use within culture is constructed in order to provoke questions about power and its effect on the human condition: to investigate the way power is constructed, used and abused. The work I produced, proposed that power is interrogated and interpreted through social, economic and political systems influenced by mass media and my intention was to present and reflect an emotional response that comes from the private space of family and community. We motor life’s impulses and this form of art making reminds us of this place in our oral history and the political consciousness of our time.
(Abbie Hoffman was a social and political activist in the United States , co-founder of the Youth International Party, "Yippies" and, later, a fugitive from the law. He came to prominence in the 1960s and has remained a symbol of the youth rebellion of that decade).
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