What Did We Bargain For?

I hear that many Americans are buying fake Canadian passport covers these days to hide their identity while traveling abroad. Since 2001, I think we are all experiencing a profound identity crisis: discovering how despised we are abroad and realizing how powerless we are to change it. As America's standing in the world has so rapidly declined, we've become embarrassed and fearful to proclaim our nationality. We've all been made targets, even if we don't believe in our government's policies. Yet, most of us are too busy or too stressed out to do something about it.

We're having trouble finding our voice and image, as Americans and as America, and we have to bring these two identities back together to create a new kind of impact.

I created this piece to provide a moment for audiences to pause and reflect on our situation. Our government no longer represents the majority's will. Beyond the obvious victims (war victims now number over 3 million, our deficit now in the trillions), the military aggression is causing a profound tear in the fabric of our country that will last for generations. I have come to believe that our time will be marked not only our by the many tragedies that unfold daily and their countless victims, but also by a cultural wound, a brutal destruction of our sense of self.

My new performance-installation is a portrait of us, right now. It is about our citizens' lost participation in American democracy. It is meant to activate our lost majority. The commercial-slogan-title shows us the pervasive American bargain-attitude, where today you don't have to put in as much as you expect to get out of the world. American democracy has been confused with capitalism, and consumer culture has enveloped us with its very dangerous bargains.

My performance-installation Come & Have a Chicky Meal, Cuz You're Gonna Love This Deal grew from a series of questions I asked myself: What is the "deal" that American democracy offers the world today? Is our consumer culture larger than our sense of civic responsibility? Have we lost our revolutionary zeal? Or, has something been taken away? What does it mean to be an American today?

The installation contrasts the tragedy of a bombed Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise in Pakistan with the irony of the cheerful advertising slogan found in the rubble. All of the performers, Americans, hold fast to the structure, acting as resistors, yet also seek it's failing protection. On their dresses, I've embroidered anti-American protest chants in their original languages, revealing our collective burden. Translated, they say "Down with America." "Down with American Imperialism."

The performance is installed and shown at the Art Director's Club, a perfect venue in terms of physical space and given it's relation to content of the piece itself - a gallery recognizing leadership in design and communications, and the recent host of Advertising Week's activities where companies competed in a hypothetical pitch to remedy the brand "America".

The image of women smearing charcoal on the walls suggests not only the charred destruction of an American icon, but the idea of "getting your hands dirty," which has two meanings: one is "get to work," but the other conveys "getting involved in something that's not honest."

In order to clean up our future, I think that we as Americans have to do both. The more we reach beyond the mainstream press that has controlled and filtered our information, the more we learn about America's actions abroad and at home. If our government ignores honesty and truth, and our media manipulates it, it can be an artist's mission in today's world to encourage and motivate Americans to take responsibility for the actions done in our name. We have not been adequately trained for our civic role, which is demanded now more than ever. We need to start feeling uncomfortable. We need to stop and think about our role in the world.

Americans, however, are very adept at washing our hands clean. I believe if more of us would get dirty and stay dirty, and allow our conscience to absorb the truth, it would become so unbearable that we would act more aggressively to change the situation. The greater the American public's outrage becomes, the more people will become civically engaged, which is the enthralling real "deal" and the truly great offer of a democracy.

If we continue to lose our voice and identity, we can predict more tragic stories -- already we can see an invasion of Iran on the horizon -- and some tragedies will be so large that we cannot even fathom their horribleness. But what is harder to predict is how much longer we will remain complicit by holding onto this fragile, crumbling structure, without making a stand.

Julia Mandle, October 2007
www.jmandleperformance.org

Chicken image- Performer Sarah Louise Lilley, Photographer Jochem Sanders (2007)
Bombed KFC Image- Aamir Qureshi/AFP Getty Image (2005)
Performer on Wall/Installation - Performer Uttara Asha Coorlawala, Photographer Ron Cowie (2007)

This piece is dedicated to Marcia Tucker, a powerful force inspiring change.

Comments

[hopeless277]

I am so damned tired of being blamed for not 'participating' in our democracy. I vote. I write letters. I make calls. It does no good. Bush has seized control of this country with the willing help of the Democratic party. He is a DICTATOR. There is no other word. Our representatives represent the corporations that buy them. They do not represent us. These corporations make money from war so we make war on helpless countries that pose no threat to us. How are we going to stop it? Bottom line: we can't. RIP America. It was grand while it lasted.

[Ben Dixon]

You're right, American's are despised around the world. We were despised before 2003. We were despised before 2001. And yet everytime we do try to change our image in the world we are meet with complaints of imperialism.
So now the real question is what do we do? How do we change things?

[dryfactoidobotanoid]

the twentieth century madness of nationalism has been replaced with the twenty-first century madness of fake counter-terrorism.

"What does it mean to be an American today?"

the answer is, it doesn't matter. America simply represents the state power of the United States, period. corporatism is globalized, culture is globalized, and America is no longer made of "Americans" any more than Americans have a voice in the dominant mass media culture of short-circuited thinking and the mass facade of corporate public relations.

the ruling class long anticipated the death of nationalism through noise and apathy. that is why they have replaced the fake communal identity of nationality with the collective fear of fake terrorism (see Webster Tarpley).

the ruling class killed nationalism, deliberately. from now on, there is no more America -- there is only money and power, and there is no more refuge from greed and fear except in our own realized serenity.