Summer Reading Book Reviews

Summer Reading by David Barrett Book Summary

Toppled by Florian Gottke (Post Editions 9789460830167) might make you pause for thought as you're photographed holding up the tower of Pisa while sightseeing this summer. Although it is a tourist cliche, Gottke reveals that the collectible snapshot--driven by the 'I was there' impulse--has an equally strong hold on US servicemen. The artist has been gathering images of the destruction of Saddam Hussein statues in Iraq, many of which come from military personnel posing alongside the mangled remnants. The book examines the changing iconography of Saddam in the media, focusing on the high-profile toppling of the monument in Firdous Square, organised by the US military for the international press corps that had set up base in the square's hotel. Infamously, US army engineers briefly hooded the statue with the stars and stripes. Gottke uses this moment as an example of how treacherous a war of symbols can be in an age of rolling news. Beyond analysing the country-wide iconoclasm, the artist also offers a number of intriguing side stories: a personal account from a soldier whose squad cut the hand off the Firdous Square statue and tried to get it back to the US; an example of the 'War Trophy Registration/Authorization' form that US military personnel fill out to document their war booty; and a lesson in how symbolic warfare can go wrong from the United American Committee, a right-wing US activist group which released a video game called Quest for Saddam that al-Qaeda coders simply reworked and released as Quest for Bush. (Apparently the UAC then considered suing al-Qaeda for infringement of intellectual property rights, a ploy similar to arresting mafia bosses for tax evasion but overlooking the fact that you have to find your enemy before you can serve them a writ.) Not all sculptures hang around until they are blown up, however. One Day Sculpture edited by David Cross and Claire Doherty (Kerber Verlag 9783866783331) documents a 20-artwork project first proposed by Doherty while on a fellowship in New Zealand and which was taken up by the Litmus Research Initiative. As outlined in Doherty's recent book Situation (Reviews AM337), the artworks produced were less site-specific and more situation-specific. The temporal nature of the project allowed for more radical proposals than if the works had been longer lived; for example, Heather & Ivan Morison blockaded a street in downtown Wellington and in Today We Don't Use the Word Dollars, 2009, Superflex signed a contract with the ANZ bank which partially gagged bank employees for the day. While each work in the book is accompanied by an introduction and an essay, this is far more than a simple catalogue; there are essays by the likes of Amelia Jones, Melanie Gilligan and Terry Smith on the issues raised and a roundtable discussion between the curators.

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