The Art of Resistance
Join us in the Parish Hall on Saturday, July 12 at 3:00 p.m. for a presentation on The Art of Resistance, a series of short films created by John Reily, a member of our art team. John will also have protest posters on display.
The films in this compilation endeavor to highlight the ill effects of mechanization and the impact of technology. As it subsumes every aspect of our lives, we lose our mooring and are cast adrift amid a tsunami of disinformation. The films mark the points of disorientation. Some of them document a direct resistance to past wars such as the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Artists of every era have criticized the destruction brought on by war, but none more pointedly than Goya in his Disasters of War series. Goya does not hold back from criticizing Napoleon’s attempts to wage war against Spain. Surrealism found its impetus as the artists faced the horrific atrocities brought on by World War I. Mechanization made war much more disorienting, impersonal, and deadly. Later, the surrealists warned of the brutal fascist takeover of Nazi Germany as Hitler rose to power. The weapons of mass destruction of the day killed the soldiers indiscriminately with machine guns, tanks, bombs, and poison gas. In recent years war has brought on further implements of remote strikes on the enemy. We have seen this with the use of localized drone strikes.
The films take on the surrealist tradition by criticizing the ill effects of modern warfare and the military industrial complex. War is deeply intertwined with the postindustrial economy, yielding to a bleak albeit metaphorical nuclear economic winter. The films focus on the desperate societal loss brought on by this economy.
