bombas y tijeras

este artículo es alucinante, en texto e imágenes.
un triple proceso de recopilar la casas, la vida y las imágenes fragmentadas por el tiempo y el humano.
el bombardeo --> el montage --> un artículo de CTXT
cemento/bombas, papel/tijeras, ojos/pantalla
por nuestro colega Sebastiaan Faber
muy util para lxs que enseñan cultura visual/historia material en español

La extraña vida póstuma de un inmueble madrileño y otras historias de la Guerra Civil 

dibujos infantiles, guerra civil española

http://www.yorokobu.es/dibujos-ninos-de-la-guerra-civil

y preguntas pedagógicas desde la página de la Brigada Abraham Lincoln: http://resources.alba-valb.org/lesson-plan-pictorial-narratives-from-children-in-war/#.VwaAQD_jJW0  

versión cómic de PICNIC - Fernando Arrabal, dibujada por Jaime Asensi

Interpretación visual de la obra de teatro de Arrabal.
Difícil de encontrar.  Se puede bajar AQUÍ en pdf, en color.
(Este cómic podría dialogar bien con la obra de teatro Esquadra hacia la muerte de Alonso Sastre.)
Temas: guerra, violencia, existencialismo, el absurdo, la humanidad, compañerismo, universalismo...

Guernica, Norman Foster, Deleuze, Edward Gorey

the other day i was grading papers and listening to my itunes on shuffle when i was stopped by the last line of the poem (below) by norman rosten, read by joan baez on her album "baptism" (1968). it's representative of baez´s stark tragic ballads and anti-war songs. my purposes for sharing this depressing poem: to remember what our tax dollars are used for, to illuminate and learn from some historical connections between 1943 and 2008, maybe to add that election day is around the corner, and finally (it's kind of far out, but why not while i'm on the soapbox) to promote adoption.

Guernica by Norman Roster, 1943

In Guernica the dead children were laid out in order upon the sidewalk, in their white starched dressed, in their pitiful white dresses.

On their foreheads and breasts are the little holes where death came in as thunder, while they were playing their important summer games.

Do not weep for them, madre. They are gone forever, the little ones, straight to heaven to the saints, and God will fill the bullet holes with candy.




(Side note-- I often thought: What if Roster had included a description of the children before the bombs fell, one that depicted the children bickering about petty things, saying mean things, as children often do, maybe one boy hits another or spits on someone...etc. It would have been interesting to include that. Not so much because it would suggest that the children were being punished for their bickering, literally and excessively with the death penalty. Nor so much as to call our attention to the analogy between war and infantile disagreements, between our human tendency to spit bombs and saliva at those we dislike. But rather to complicate our conventional emotional response, to challenge our immediate cause-effect logic. As Deleuze would say: to scramble up our sensorial "intensities." Colebrook says that for Deleuze's, "It is the task of art to dislodge affects from their recognised and expected origins" (23) He generally attributes this to film, where "the usual sequence of images--our usually ordered world with its expected flow of events--and allow us to perceive affects with out the standard order and meaning" (39). The purpose of all this, I think, is to recognize the world's subjectivity and also to create a new and more open, tolerant, and less reductive way of thinking.

Edward Gorey wrote and illustrated a similar story, called "The Stupid Joke" (in Amphigorey Also), about a boy who stubbornly refuses to get out of bed (I don’t remember the reason) and then one night he's swallowed up by a monster that had been hiding under his bed (or something like that).

unlearning numbers II

"Researchers estimated that as a result of the war, about 655,000 people in a country of about 27 million have died above the number expected to have died without war, Bernham said. that means 2.5 percent of the Iraqi population has died because of the invasion and ensuing strife, he said.

At a White House news conference Bush said, "I don't consider it a credible report. Neither does General (George) Casey (top U.S. commander in Iraq) and neither do Iraqi officials."

Casey, at a separate Pentagon briefing, said he had not seen the study but the 650,000 number "seems way, way beyond any number that I have seen. I've not seen a number higher than 50,000. And so I don't give it that much credibility at all."

Bush said, "I do know that a lot of innocent people have died, and that troubles me. And it grieves me." But he called the study's methodology "pretty well discredited." Last December, Bush estimated 30,000 Iraqis had died in the war.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told Reuters, "The report is unbelievable. These numbers are exaggerated and not precise." Iraqi government officials put the total Iraqi death toll since the war started at 40,000."

--"Study sees 655,000 Iraqi war deaths; Bush disputes" (Reuters, 11 October 2006)

A slow conversation between Ferdinand and Marianne in a car. Ferdinand, with a cigarette hanging from his mouth, is calmly driving. It is night. We know they're in the city because of the colored lights that repetively flash over the windshield. A line from the radio breaks the silence:

Radio: Garrison massacred by the Viet Cong who lost 115 men.

Marianne: Awful, isn't it? So anonymous...

Fernindand: What is?

Marianne: They say "115 guerrillas" and it doesn't mean a thing to us.

[Pause]

Marianne: Yet each one is a man, and we don't even know who he is. We don't know if he loves his wife, if he has kids, if he prefers movies or plays. We don't know anything. All they say is "115 killed." It's like photographs. They've always fascinated me. You see a snapshot of a guy with a caption underneath. He was a coward maybe, or a nice guy. But at the time when it was taken no one can say exactly when he was thinking about. His wife? His mistress? The past? The future? A basketball game? Nobody will ever know.

Ferdinand: That's life for you.

Marianne: Yes...that's what makes me sad: life is so different from books. I wish it were the same: clear logical organized... Only it isn't.

Ferdinand: Yes it is... a lot more than people think.

Marianne: No, it isn't, Pierrot.

[Pause.]

Ferdinand: My name's Ferdinand.

-- Pierrot le fou, 1965, director Jean-Luc Godard.