Fourth of July

[anything_slides cat=4thofjuly navFormat=”true”]

How is disengagement created? Is it manufactured for us, or is it a choice we make for ourselves? Fourth of July 2006, Grant Park, Chicago explores the disengagement allowed by the careful delineation between comfort zones and conflict zones. The ease of the narrow span of the comfort zone lies in that it enables us to be blame-free—to avoid placing ourselves in a context where our actions may be implicating.

The comfort zone is a place padded with surgically altered images—images free of corporeal traces. Images of war with an absence of the human body serve a dual function—working as propaganda for the unaware, and functioning as a renewable excuse for those not wishing to be implicated. Through the removal of mutilated bodies, these sterilized images of conflict are always understood as pure aftermath. The action has always already been carried out, the viewer’s physical reaction is comfortably deadened. There is no trace of the body in any of it.