War and Discontent at the Museum of Fine Arts
An addendum on the Phil Collins Video
By: Astrid Hiemer. - May 15, 2007
The exhibition shows fierce and stark and powerful images from Eduard Manet's, 1867, "Execution of the Emperor Maximilian," and Francisco y Lucientes Goya's, (1863 published) "Disasters of War," a series of etchings of torture and murder during war times to more contemporary works, such as "Napalm (II)," Leon Golub, 1969, "Statue of Liberty," Andy Warhol, 1986, and the ah, so beautiful, "Black Gold II, by Yinka Shonibare, 2006, here in a museum debut.
Among the video presentations this writer was drawn into a video booth by observing dancing Boston teenagers, who were moving to pop music. In fact, the artist Phil Collins filmed in 2004 in Ramallah, Palestinian teenagers during a dance marathon for eight hours. One will read that the marathon was interrupted by power cuts, calls to prayer, and curfew. The teenagers on film were performing dance steps that the teenagers in Boston were trying to imitate and having a very good time.
The music in Palestine , in the occupied West Bank in 2004, was the same as American teenagers could listen to. The dress code on film as in Boston was also the same, they all wore jeans and t-shirts. The Ramallah teenagers would dance to exhaustion and beyond, while the Boston teenagers would just go home.
The title of Phil Collins' video is "They Shoot Horses," 2004.
P.S.: Do teenagers in Baghdad dance now?