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WEEK SEVEN: DREAD SCOTT*
Curated by Jonathan Gilmore, Ph.D. Costen Fellow, Princeton University

(VIDEOBOX) Andrew Demirijian + Airan Kang Selected by Raul Zamudio
AUGUST 17th -AUGUST 21st
Opening Reception: Wednesday, August 18th 6-8 pm

***Targets, an installation by Joyce Kozloff will be installed in White Box Curated by Joyce Pomeroy Schwartz, Works of Art for Public Spaces

Dread Scott
October Revolution, 2004

The phrase, "while they're here, make nice," the centerpiece of the advertising campaign of New York City Host Committee for the Republican National Convention put in the mouth of former Mayor Ed Koch, suggests a gentle admonition, a playful acknowledgment that politically minded New Yorkers, not possessed of sweetness and light in the best of times, might feel disposed to welcome visiting delegates and politicians with closed fists not open arms. But, of course, the phrase trivializes political difference, reducing the coming referendum over political justice and equality and the U.S.'s moral standing in the world, to a simple us-versus-them scenario, as if it were a matter of whose baseball team in the Subway Series wins. In the face of the reactionary ideals that serve as the platform of the Convention, it is not politeness, but critique and commitment, the hallmarks of Dread ScottÕs art, that are required. His recent work includes Lockdown, a project that addresses the institutional racism defining the mass and disproportionate incarceration of minorities, and documents, through often moving recorded interviews, the reflections of those behind bars on the society that has imprisoned them. But he came to national prominence in 1988 with his seminal installation of What is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag? This mixed-media work, wherein viewers appeared to be invited to step on the flag as they approached a ledger in which they could register their responses to the question, was deceptively simple--laconic almost--but incendiary for the controversy over the flag (in protests, censorship, and attempted legislation) it helped generate. The senior George Bush (whose specious patriotism has become once again familiar, if more insidious and compulsory, in the attack on civil liberties by his sonÕs administration in its prosecution of the U.S. Patriot Act) made great show of visiting a flag factory during the 1988 election and, as President, condemned Dread Scott's work as "disgraceful." If such lack of grace means being polemical, even strident, subversive, disrespectful of conventional pieties, that is, if it means engaging in political resistance, then that's a description of Scott's work his admirers ought to welcome.

- Jonathan Gilmore

Joyce Kozloff
Targets, 2000

I was concerned that yet another war is happening ostensibly in the name of peace and democracy. Learning that White Box was planning a summer exhibition program before and during the Republican convention to address these issues, I asked the artist Joyce Kozloff, an ever alert activist for personal and civil liberties, to show her extraordinary, monumental work, Targets at White Box. A nine foot globe constructed in 24 sections, each of which is painted with an aerial map of a place that has been bombed by the U.S.A. between 1945 and 2000, this work and other smaller globes were conceived and completed during Kozloff's fellowship at the American Academy in Rome during 1999-2000 and first shown at DC Moore Gallery, New York in January 2001.

Kozloff explains the idea behind Targets, "For some years, I had been concerned about the barbarity of aerial war on civilian populations, and particularly its media coverage. We are constantly told that our air force has incurred no casualties while dropping bombs on the enemy, but we hear very little about the victims. As the idea evolved, I realized that it was not about a particular war, but U.S. aerial bombardment in general."

In the catalog of the Targets exhibition, Eleanor Heartney writes, "The series are informed by Kozloff's awareness of the arrogance of power. For all their beauty, the maps on which these works are based ultimately serve as instruments of control and domination. Mixing visual seduction with uncomfortable realities, Kozloff's globes quietly argue for more humane uses of our expanding knowledge and technology."

- Joyce Pomeroy Schwartz

23 Side Effects (2004) by Andrew Dermijian
The Change of Ideology (2003) by Airan Kang

The two works chosen for White Box's 2004 Six Feet Under Series consist of 23 Side Effects (2004) by Andrew Dermijian and The Change of Ideology (2003) by Airan Kang. 23 Side Effects is a visual meditation on the physical and mental toll of Edward Koch's plea to New Yorkers to "make nice" during the Republican National Convention. The piece shows dozens of New Yorkers in direct address with the viewer, while their list of "symptoms and side effects" from "making nice" appears across their image. The piece culminates with the suggestion of a larger collective symptom Š a loss of memory regarding figures in human rights movements who didn't "make nice." The other contribution is The Change of Ideology (2003), and this work culls found footage from what can be called South and North Korean indoctrination camps for youth. One segment documents a South Korean child dressed in the equivalency of a Boy Scout uniform defending patriarchy and ranting about the evils of communism; other images show little North Korean girls who have barely learned to talk touchingly stating that "This is our country, Americans should leave immediately!," "Lets fight Americans!," "Lets wipe Americans out of our country!" Both video pieces foreground the frenzy and fanatacsim that an event like the Republican National Convention tries to capitalize on: demagoguery, fear and blind allegiance.

- Raul Zamudio