Posted on 01/13/2005 1:10:02 PM PST by presidio9
What does it mean to oppose the war in Iraq while your son is fighting there? Kari Gunther-Seymour has lived that question daily since her son was sent to Iraq in August. She has turned one mother’s anguish and a citizen’s questions into the stirring and interactive installation WAR GAMES: a mother’s perspective at Minneapolis’ Susan Hensel Design through February.
“When the soldiers come home, they need to understand that people really did differentiate between ‘the war’ and ‘the soldiers,’” Gunther-Seymour said quietly. “What the soldiers are doing, they are commanded to do. The war is separate and different people command and control that. The soldiers are pawns on a chess board.”
It’s that recognition that began Gunther-Seymour’s artistic response to her son’s deployment: a chess game played on a board super-imposed over a map of Iraq. The “kings” have the faces of George Bush and Osama bin Laden and their respective Cabinet-members are the other powerful pieces. Plastic toy soldiers are the “pawns” on both sides.
A series of games, insisting on the viewer’s participation, followed. “Iraqi Scrabble” centers on “Halliburton” and “oil” as the root for players to make words of conflict and war. A variation on Etch-a-Sketch invites messages to the troops.
Gunther-Seymour works as a graphic artist in Ohio’s Appalachian region. The connective link throughout the show is her favorite medium: collage. Months of covers of Time, Newsweek and newspaper clippings are compressed into an undeniable indictment.
“People may have seen many of these magazine covers, but once they’re all together, it’s astounding,” she said. “It’s hard to believe that we behaved like this. It becomes apparent we’ve made mistakes and then repeated them, putting our soldiers at terrible risk once again. Similar to Vietnam.”
As a high school student, Gunther-Seymour opposed the war in Vietnam, but clarifies that she sees herself “as an activist not a pacifist. We still need a military because we obviously haven’t evolved very far from our barbaric roots.”
She confronts terrorism head on with the game of “Domino Conspiracy,” looking at America’s real exposure to attacks directed at chemical plants, communications and utilities systems. It’s a chilling look at practical omissions by Homeland Security. An “Osama Dart Game” has been produced in multiples, available for sale.
However, ultimately, WAR GAMES transcends political debate going to the heart of the matter: (mostly) young men with their lives on the line and families enduring overwhelming anxiety or unbearable grief.
“The installation brings you into the experience that military families have,” the gallery’s curator Susan Hensel says, describing her discovery of WAR GAMES in December. “That’s the season of Advent, which is the period of ‘watchful waiting’ for the Christ child to be born. For military families, it’s always a time of watchful waiting. This show really brings you into that.”
One is never far from feeling the presence of the soldiers. Photographs, military objects and quotes make their presence visceral. A “care package” with “wish lists” and contacts, encourages sending goodies. (AnySoldier.us) “There’s No Place Like Home” re-creates the conditions Gunther-Seymour said her son has described, of sleeping in a hole dug in the sand in desert nights where temperatures plummet to zero degrees. The vulnerability of soldiers without armor is made painfully real.
“Since my son was sent from duty in Korea, he has lots of training in urban guerilla warfare and his Second Infantry Division is fully armored, unlike all the Reserve and National Guard soldiers,” she said. “I’m so proud of the soldier who spoke up to Rumsfeld.”
Guther-Seymour relates harrowing stories of bullets lodged in the Kevlar vests protecting her son and his comrades. “My son’s sergeant said, ‘Hey! Seymour! You’ve got a bullet in your back.’ He was running on adrenalin and didn’t feel it.”
“Band of Brothers” is a black and white, wall-size enlargement of four fresh-faced soldiers, including Guther-Seymour’s son. Red Xs mark the image of a soldier who was later killed and another who’s since lost a leg. One can write a message on yellow-ribbon stickers, addling them to the piece.
With stunning simplicity Gunther-Seymour expresses her daily struggle with fear and worry for her son in “Soldier Mom’s Medicine Chest.” I won’t ruin the impact she’s created with ordinary objects by revealing more. “I needed to be very honest with that piece,” she states, alluding to its contradicted self-portrait and concerns for her son, even if he survives. “We all know Vietnam veterans that are still struggling greatly with that war. One of my greatest fears is that he’ll feel like a murderer. So far, he has not.”
But, war scars every soldier and Gunther-Seymour’s WAR GAMES culminates in a universal one: loss of a friend. Part rubble, part shrine, the final piece is a memorial to her son’s best friend, Sean, killed in Iraq in March. Unlike most war memorials, raw grief replaces official heroism and even the devastated country of Iraq itself is evoked.
Most peace activists tentatively balance anti-war sentiment with “supporting the troops,” but WAR GAMES seamlessly merges them. “Art as dissent” attains a rare immediacy. Kari Gunther-Seymour synthesizes the daily news and geo-political analysis we’re all bombarded with, then anchors it in the human costs the war-planners never pay. Confronted by this mother’s vision, those saying we must “stay the course” in Iraq might waver. The rest of us will be further emboldened.
The Lewis Grizzard rule is applicable 99 out of 100 times...
NEVER trust a woman with a hyphenated last name.
If I had a mother like that, I'd surely sign up for a second tour. "Unexploded ordinance? I'll take care of it sarge!"
Owl_Eagle”Guns Before Butter.”
Geez....and to think I was embarrassed when my mom called my 1SG because she hadn't heard from me for a while....
That is supposed to be "art?" My four year-old niece could create more sophisticated "art."
" have the faces of George Bush and Osama bin Laden and their respective Cabinet-members are the other powerful pieces. Plastic toy soldiers are the on both sides."
Politics aside, this is just amateurish cr*p
My GOD mother, have I not told you over and over again not to drink, how many times do I have to tell you, are you listening to me?????? lmao!
Hey Kari Gunther-Seymour or whatever the hell your name is...one more time....Your son volunteered!!!!...which means they are trained to kill, blow things up and destroy the enemy.......I hope you son doesn't share your views and is embarrassed..I would be!
Just tell that to any Vietnam Vet lady.
Dear Mom,
STFU!
Love,
Sonny
That's it. She's changed my mind. I just hope she shows her "art" to the terrorists too.
Pathetic
She sounds like one of those disturbed people that needs to look back into the toilet after a proper pinch to satisfy some psycho-sexual need.....
Does she realise that all pieces, not only pawns, are moved about by the players. Does she think that the Queen moves of her own volition? The King?? what a patzer!
My dog's made better art than this (and he leaves his outside.)
Wow. That must have taken her minutes think up and to create.
I guess that might make her look like a freaking kook or something. I found this Nostradamus quatrain that seems appropriate:
"In the dawn of the new century
A dingbat hails from the state of Uhio
Bringing forth goofy art and platitudes
Signifying little but her own mental problems."
I think he wrote that.
I hear two banjos in the background...
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