Ground Zero Syria

Collateral Murder in Iraq by Wikileaks

‘On July 6, 2010, Private Bradley Manning, a 22 year old intelligence analyst with the United States Army in Baghdad, was charged with disclosing this video (after allegedly speaking to an unfaithful journalist). The whistleblower behind the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg, has called Mr. Manning a 'hero'. He is currently imprisoned in Kuwait. The Apache crew and those behind the cover up depicted in the video have yet to be charged. 

5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.

Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-sight, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.

The military did not reveal how the Reuters staff were killed, and stated that they did not know how the children were injured.’ < ARE YOU SERIOUS?!

Who Killed Blair Peach?

Kennard

Looking for artists that fit my preferences was hard as I wanted to find artists that had hidden messages to their work. I looked up war and conflict on www.tate.org.uk and stumbled across this interesting artist called Peter Kennard- 'London born and based photo montage artist' born on February 17th 1949.

'Apartheid South Africa' is one of the photo montages Kennard has made that stood out to me. As of all the pieces I know of, this one is also symbolic and powerful. There is a man that looks of the black ethnic background, laying on the floor helplessly whilst being 'fed to the dogs'... literally. This is representing how black people were left to their own demises. As his flesh is being shredded, there is a white woman seated alone on a bench that has a stamp saying 'EUROPEAN ONLY', looking away without a care of the man laying on the floor. This is showing the lack of consideration to what the people of black backgrounds were going through because of racism.

Gathering of Images

After a conversation with myself, I decided to stick with the 'conflict' topic for my art project. I surfed the internet and picked out a few images that left an impression on me. Most of these are linked onto war.

Barefoot Gen

When thinking of a topic to stick to throughout the year, it's hard. You have to find something that you are passionate about and won't ever get tired of working on. You want to keep finding out more about that topic and be able to get loads of inspiration from it to then be able to create amazing pieces from myself later. I've been thinking about 'conflict'. The first words that came to my mind are 'disagreement', 'anger' and 'war'. I was scared to pull myself in that direction at first so i drew away from it... I thought about materials and mediums that conflict each other (for example water and oil) and had thoughts of dedicating my project to that. I talked to my sister about it and she told me I could do better than that and tried to explain that I'd get bored with such a meaningless topic. To persuade me even more, she introduced me to a YouTube clip...

To be honest, I didn't think an anime could make me cry. I couldn't even believe the footage was age restricted. I began watching this thinking it was going to be pointless, but as the clip progressed, I was speechless. Without sounding corny, tears just began rolling down my face. Before watching this clip, I was uneducated on the nuclear bomb that was dropped by the American military onto Hiroshima. This clip was so powerful; I didn't even need to see real footage to understand the effects a nuclear bomb can do- wiping out nearly a whole city.

This was the trigger that began my exploration of other matters facing war...