An integrative initiative in creative work & learning.

Arts & War

March 20-21, 2007

The war in Iraq is the number-one concern of the American people. Increasing numbers of Americans are horrified by the human costs of this war, for the Iraqi people and for American soldiers and their families.

And yet our Iraq war is only one of a dozen or more conflicts -- most of them dimly or not at all known to us -- currently underway on the Earth.

War is a constant of human life. Its ubiquity can numb us to its horror. Its horror can stun us into willful blindness. Our rage and grief can immobilize and overwhelm us.

Art can transform our experience of war. Human beings never wage war without making art about it: art designed to mobilize a populace for conflict, to protest the mobilization, to testify to the horrors of war, to help us comprehend and come, somehow -- or refuse to come -- to terms with our grief.

Now, when we are so troubled by yet another war, Arts on Earth has gathered artists and scholoars from the University of Michigan and beyond to present and explore art created in response to war.

We hope these events illuminate the power of the arts to inform and move us in ways that nothing else can.

The Poster (PDF)

March 20
Arts & War: Mobilization and Protest
When: 5:10–6:40 p.m.
Where: Lydia Mendelssohn Theater, 911 North University
Cost: Free
What:

The experience begins in the lobby, which becomes an exhibit venue for arts about war.

Michael Rodemer’s kinetic sculpture, "Verdun, and the like," addresses the Battle of Verdun, one of the bloodiest and most futile of the First World War. In 11 months, the German and French armies inflicted almost one million casualties on one another; half of these were fatalities. Rodemer’s sculpture vivifies the staggering size and senselessness of that war’s toll.
Carol Jacobsen’s video project, “Military Cemetery: Homage to Greenham,” approaches the magnitude of military deaths in wartime through the medium of film, building quiet power through a series of pans of some 50 military cemeteries throughout the U.S. and Europe.
Student artists of renowned faculty members Thylias Moss and Heidi Kumao present work in film, text, and performance throughout the lobby, using the unexpected to simulate in participants the uncertain state of life in wartime.

Host: Linda Gregerson

One of the most admired American poets of her generation, Linda Gregerson also is a distinguished scholar of Renaissance literature. Professor Gregerson has been invited to read her poetry in dozens of venues throughout the United States and in Europe, both because of the richness of her poetry and her reading talent, polished in professional theater and through stage and radio performances. With her energy, wit, and warmth, Professor Gregerson will be a supportive guide through this experience.

Internationally acclaimed U-M faculty Joan Morris, mezzo-soprano, and William Bolcom on piano perform contrasting songs:

“Over There,” the 1917 George M. Cohan song rallying U.S. national pride in the fighting prowess of the “Yanks” as they entered WWI, determined to turn the tide, and
“I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier,” the 1915 song by Alfred Bryan and Al Piantadosi, fiercely resisting the military drumbeat demanding even more cannon fodder.

Time for Three—Zachary De Pue, Nicolas Kendall, and Ranaan Meyer. With a parent’s fear for her son’s life ringing in our ears, Joan Morris teams with the sizzling young string ensemble, Time for Three (www.timeforthree.com), to sing the great American classic of mourning and longed-for redemption, “Amazing Grace.”

Mark Clague, U-M faculty in Musicology, American Culture, and Afro-American and African studies, propels the audience into the Vietnam era with Jimi Hendrix’s famous Woodstock rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. Clague, an expert on the uses of national anthems both to support and to protest wars, illuminates both the resistance and the patriotism in Hendrix’s work.

Madhavi Mai, a Bharatanatyam dancer and teacher based in Ann Arbor, choreographed the piece she’ll perform tonight, South Asian Womenspeak, as a response to the war in Iraq. Based on three poems by South Asian women – one written in the first century, one in the eighth, and one in the last decade, the dance reflects an impassioned resistance to war that is recognizable across cultures and centuries.

It may both surprise and chill to learn that soldiers ready themselves for combat with music. Jonathan Pieslak, Assistant Professor of Music at the City College of New York, presents “Sound Targets: Music and the Iraq War,” a collection of interviews with American soldiers serving in Iraq and clips of the music they use to prepare themselves for battle.

Heidi Kumao, Assistant Professor in the School of Art & Design reminds us of the cost to the soldiers themselves with the video work “Roll Call,” a brief, silent meditation on the American casualties in Iraq.

If there is hope that the conflict between Israel and Palestine will ever be resolved, it is to be found in the voices of principled, passionate artists like Mahmoud Darwish and Tirtza Even.

This set of two pieces begins with a reading of the poem “… As He Draws Away,” by Mahmoud Darwish, who has been acclaimed as “the premier poetic voice of the Palestinian people.” Khaled Mattawa, Libyan-born poet and head of U-M’s MFA program in poetry, selected this poem because it “recognizes the reality of occupation but also 'the enemy's' humanity, and the possibility of connection.” “…As He Draws Away” is read by Karem Sakallah, U-M Professor of Engineering and Computer Science.
Tirtza Even’s video work-in-progress, Once a Wall, or Ripple Remains documents a series of encounters between Israeli and Palestinian individuals which took place in the Summer and Fall of 1998 in the Occupied Territory of Palestine. Like the Palestinian Darwish, the Israeli Even rejects the polarization of the peoples of the Middle East, and finds the capacity for human connection intact. Musical improvisation in the interstices of Even’s work is provided by jazz artists Ed Sarath and Kate Olson.

Bolcom and Morris return, performing “Remember My Forgotten Man,” a 1933 song by Al Dubin and Harry Warren.

Time for Three closes with “Of Time And Three Rivers," performed by cellist Ranaan Meyer, and "Hymn," performed by the full ensemble.

Conversation with the artists follows, hosted by Linda Gregerson.

March 21
Arts & War: Testimony
When: 5:00 – 6:30 p.m.
Where: Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, 911 North University
Cost: Free
What:On Wednesday, March 21, for “Arts & War: Testimony,” participants move through the lobby exhibits into the theater to experience works of art created as testimony to effects of war that, without art, can barely be grasped.

As on the first night, performances this evening are by artists of remarkable stature and accomplishment.

The program, “Testimony,” is built around three movements of Paul Schoenfield’s riveting 1995 work for violin, clarinet, cello, piano, and narrator, “Sparks of Glory.”

“Sparks of Glory” is based on the accounts by Polish-Israeli journalist Moshe Prager of life in the Nazi-created Warsaw Ghetto in WWII. Prager wrote in the introduction to his collection that the stories are all true and accurately recorded: “And if they appear to border on the miraculous, it is because they mirror an age of miracles. And if they make the soul tremble, it is because they are echoes of a terrible and lofty time.”

Sparks of Glory, Movement 1: B’demayich Chai
Written by Paul Schoenfield, performed by Yehonatan Berick, violin; Deborah Chodacki, clarinet; Anthony Elliott, cello; Paul Schoenfield, piano; Gavriel Savit, narrator.

“Exploding Angels”
When MacArthur-award-winning poet, musician, and video artist Thylias Moss and her son, Ansted, were watching the news in 2003, Ansted was stricken by the sight of an Iraqi boy his own age (12, then) whose arms had been blown off by an American bomb as he sat in his own home. Ansted's response was to write a song, which he entitled "Exploding Angels." The song was a winning entry in the MIchigan Young Composer's Competition in 2003. In this video piece created by his mother to bring the song to life in another medium, Thylias Moss sings the song created to mourn the losses suffered by the Iraqi boy, Ali Abbas.

“My Parents Bedroom”
Uwem Akpan is a Nigerian-born Jesuit priest who traveled to the University of Michigan in 2005 to complete the MFA Program in Creative Writing. “My Parents Bedroom,” published in The New Yorker in June 2006, is narrated by a nine-year-old child whose parents are killed before her eyes in the conflict between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda. Akpan has returned to Africa; an excerpt of “My Parents’ Bedroom” is read tonight by OyamO, an actor, the author of some 30 plays, and faculty in U-M’s Department of Theatre.

Sparks of Glory, Movement 2: My Name is Chaim, written by Paul Schoenfield. Performed by Yehonatan Berick, violin; Deborah Chodacki, clarinet; Anthony Elliott, cello; Paul Schoenfield, piano; and Gavriel Savit, narrator.

Rahim AlHaj is a virtuoso oud musician and composer who was born in Baghdad, Iraq. Due to his activism against the Saddam Hussein regime, AlHaj was forced to leave Iraq after the first Gulf War. AlHaj says, “My music is not to entertain, but to communicate compassion, love, and peace.” The original work he plays tonight, “Dance of the Palms,” commemorates the beautiful palm trees, sacred in Iraq, that were destroyed in the Iran-Iraq war.

For The Healing Of The Nations, by Geri Allen
Like many other artists, jazz pianist and composer Geri Allen responded to 9/11 first with stunned silence, with doubt that she could create art that adequately captured the horror of that day, and then with creative energy. Allen wrote her jazz composition, "For the Healing of the Nations" as a tribute to the victims and survivors of 9/11, and their families. It is performed here in part, by jazz greats Geri Allen, piano; Ed Sarath, trumpet; Donald Walden, tenor sax; Dennis Wilson, trombone; Jessica Sacks and Robert Hurst, bass; Danny Fisher, alto sax; Quentin Joseph, drums; and vocalists Minnita Daniel-Cox, Carolyn Tribune, Charis Vaughn, Kira Lesser, and Derik Nelson.

Not Mistaken, choreographed, written, and performed by Amy Chavasse
The American invasion of Iraq as a response to 9/11 has been roundly criticized from many quarters. In this excerpt from her longer solo work, choreographer and dancer Amy Chavasse adds her voice to the critique, focusing on the convoluted attempts by several public officials, especially Donald Rumsfeld, to evade responsibility for their catastrophe in Iraq. Music Is by David Byrne, Arthur H, Amy Denio, and Petty Booka.

Sparks of Glory, Movement 4: Lomir Zich Iberbeiten
Written by Paul Schoenfield, performed by Yehonatan Berick, violin; Deborah Chodacki, clarinet; Anthony Elliott, cello; Ra-Jung Yang, piano; and Gavriel Savit, narrator.

This evening’s performances will be followed by a conversation with the artists, hosted by Glenda Dickerson. Professor Dickerson is a director, writer, folklorist, educator, and actor in many venues, including the Biltmore Theatre (Broadway), Circle in the Square (New York City), Lorraine Hansberry Theatre (San Francisco), and Ford's Theatre and the Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.) She currently serves as Director of Academic Programs for the Center for World Performance Studies at U-M and head of the Black Theatre Minor. Dickerson’s incomparable scholarship, artistry, and passionate engagement with issues of war and peace prepare her well to guide this evening’s dialogue.