Pricing Note:
I am offering "Drone Strike In North Waziristan" for sale at a price of One Million Three Thousand One Dollars And Zero Cents (US$ 1,003,001.00). According to published data, this is $1 more than the United States pays for each Predator drone aircraft.
The painting is worth $1 more because it is guaranteed to never murder any innocent bystanders.
The painting is worth $1 more because it is guaranteed to never murder any innocent bystanders.
Title Note:
North Waziristan is a province of Pakistan where we are killing hundreds of innocent bystanders because a few people there are at war with us. We are using remote controlled
robot
bomber
planes
called Predator drones to do this. These aircraft glide
silently invisibly
around the sky of North Waziristan with their robot sensors scanning everything down on the ground, their pilots far away in some safe place, leaning back relaxed in comfy chairs, until the robot vision screens they watch reveal some hint of possibly warlike movement far below and far away in North Waziristan. So then they lean forward thru the glass, focus their hybrid human robot sensors toward the movement, carefully examine, and carefully judge if human death will now ensue. If so, our pilot takes control of one of the aircraft's rocket bombs, aims it precisely carefully, and lets it fly. The results in North Waziristan, of course, are rage and utmost constant terror.
silently invisibly
around the sky of North Waziristan with their robot sensors scanning everything down on the ground, their pilots far away in some safe place, leaning back relaxed in comfy chairs, until the robot vision screens they watch reveal some hint of possibly warlike movement far below and far away in North Waziristan. So then they lean forward thru the glass, focus their hybrid human robot sensors toward the movement, carefully examine, and carefully judge if human death will now ensue. If so, our pilot takes control of one of the aircraft's rocket bombs, aims it precisely carefully, and lets it fly. The results in North Waziristan, of course, are rage and utmost constant terror.
Thematic Suitability Note:
This painting does not seem to fit the show for which it was made. For this show artists were asked to react, in some meaningful way, to a set of 20th century African art and craft objects.
Well, you might easily see forms from those objects in this picture – there are masks in both places, coiling shapes, etc. – but that seems tenuous at best.
Somewhat better: you might feel some sense of ritual in this picture's rhythmic structure and you might have felt your sense of ritual enlivened by the African pieces too, by their foreigness if nothing else, or by the fact some seem to be costumery for ritualized performance. But this is also pretty vague.
Of course, if you are aware of the politics of 20th century Africa – imperialism in its ever- evolving shapes and the struggle against it – then you might guess the close connection with North Waziristan in the artist's thinking. You might guess I see the Drone War today as simply one more phase of the worldwide struggle for democracy, and your guess would be correct.
But that political connection in the artist's mind would not be visible. It would not satisfy your wish to see a good painting, nor to see what mite of wisdom Surreal Cubism might yield on this worldwide struggle, or on the whole conversation of human politics.
(Continued on next page. …)
This painting does not seem to fit the show for which it was made. For this show artists were asked to react, in some meaningful way, to a set of 20th century African art and craft objects.
Well, you might easily see forms from those objects in this picture – there are masks in both places, coiling shapes, etc. – but that seems tenuous at best.
Somewhat better: you might feel some sense of ritual in this picture's rhythmic structure and you might have felt your sense of ritual enlivened by the African pieces too, by their foreigness if nothing else, or by the fact some seem to be costumery for ritualized performance. But this is also pretty vague.
Of course, if you are aware of the politics of 20th century Africa – imperialism in its ever- evolving shapes and the struggle against it – then you might guess the close connection with North Waziristan in the artist's thinking. You might guess I see the Drone War today as simply one more phase of the worldwide struggle for democracy, and your guess would be correct.
But that political connection in the artist's mind would not be visible. It would not satisfy your wish to see a good painting, nor to see what mite of wisdom Surreal Cubism might yield on this worldwide struggle, or on the whole conversation of human politics.
(Continued on next page. …)
Personal Note:
My son and his wife just had a baby, a beautiful new astonishing human child. Last month two women went out to a water well at night and were rendered into bloody pieces. I cannot pretend that these two things are different sorts of things, pretend that they are not the same type and quality of fact, for they are human facts. I cannot say, Oh one is mine and one not mine, for my one human heart strains to encompass both and strains to examine them with the fear and hope and joy and shame and trembling pity that are all alike the province of one heart.
My son and his wife just had a baby, a beautiful new astonishing human child. Last month two women went out to a water well at night and were rendered into bloody pieces. I cannot pretend that these two things are different sorts of things, pretend that they are not the same type and quality of fact, for they are human facts. I cannot say, Oh one is mine and one not mine, for my one human heart strains to encompass both and strains to examine them with the fear and hope and joy and shame and trembling pity that are all alike the province of one heart.
