cover image Hiroshima After Iraq: Three Studies in Art and War

Hiroshima After Iraq: Three Studies in Art and War

Rosalyn Deutsche, Columbia Univ., $22.50 (112p) ISBN 9780231152785

Deutsche, a professor of art history at Barnard College, interprets three works of video art and the comment they make on art and the use of atomic weapons on the citizens of Hiroshima. Silvia Kolbowski's After Hiroshima mon amour grapples with the notion that the bomb was dropped without concern for race, gender, or age. Kolbowski establishes links to the Resnais film from which she took her title, and to the occupation of Iraq. Her video addresses the process of perpetuating a "nuclear-mentality culture," or "a way of life that, precipitated by Hiroshima, is based on fears of annihilation and increasingly psychotic modes of defense." Leslie Thornton's Let Me Count the Ways combines text with original and archival imagery, including interviews conducted by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey shortly after the bombs were dropped, and draws a parallel between Hiroshima and 9/11. Krzysztof Wodiczko's Hiroshima Projections comes in part from two nights of projecting images onto buildings in Hiroshima in 1999, near the anniversary of the bombing. Through her highly academic interpretation (the text was taken from lectures), Deutsche shows that the art of war protest didn't perish with the ‘60s. Photos (Aug.)