M*A*S*H

Watching this old wartime sitcom, during what remains, or will become of “Enduring Freedom”, makes one realize how unbelievably contrite our current US Foreign Policy is, how empty and vapid our armchair politicizing has become, and the frightening proportions of our National media reportage.

Here was this Prime Time TV show that aired from ’72 to ’83, but was based around a Medical Unit serving during the Korean War. It was completely new in its ability to laugh, proselytize, comment, and even judge the National arguments, policies, morals, and fever/temperament.

I never much watched M*A*S*H when it was a current TV series. I didn’t really like the subject matter, or rather what I thought was the subject matter (War), and found that I couldn’t really find a sympathetic female character (let’s face it, Hot Lips, especially later Hot Lips, is irksome by any standards). But I always liked the theme song, and always made it through the opening credits, so that I could hear the sad sonorous soliloquy, before flipping the channel. The tune is titled, Suicide is Painless. I was unclear with what “Suicide was”, as far as the verse was concerned, but for a television show, the melody was not necessarily so catchy, but something more: maybe because the song was imported from M*A*S*H the movie. I don’t know, but those bars of music are really all I recall from the series.

And it’s funny, despite all the TV I watch, I tried to resist the digitally re-mastered and re-released M*A*S*H currently playing on, of all channels, the Hallmark Channel, notorious, or rather distinguished for its Family Programming. And yet, Suicide drew me in, again. And now, I watch four times a day. I get the comedy, the inevitable clown, the ability to face the farce in the space of dire sadness.

I was speaking to someone whose son would be soon leaving to Iraq:—for a tour of duty, which would last a year. As we spoke, certain things, very unpleasant were revealed. Since “Mission Accomplished”, soldiers who have been injured in Iraq now receive half the “disability” compensation per month, as those injured during “Shock and Awe”. So for example, for a mere $1600.00 per month, these injured troops will now receive $800.00. Not only that, but all troops’ wages have been cut (this friend’s particular son’s decrease amounted to a pay cut of 20%, since the “Accomplished” status). Considering that more troops have been injured since “Flight Suit Day” (close to 3400 in total as of printing), and casualties since then are outnumbering those fallen during “Wartime”, the troops who are sacrificing most for supposed freedom, are being the least compensated. Quite unlike the large conglomerates-such as Halliburton and VP Cheney’s energy consortiums, much less the Texas chums of “W”-all of whom are gaining the fruits, and they truly are “Fruits of War”.

Speak to these discrepancies, these tragedies, Democrats.

For all of it is really hardly a comedy. And yet, we know from our “Day to Day Shakespeare Calendar”, we as an audience have honed in on the concept that everything is either “tragedy or comedy.”

Tomorrow, Dad, I will have black rings painted round my eyes, and the chalk white cheeks of a corpse. I will try to be all those whose laughter ended in the beech forest, in the birch copses far away, just before dawn-those whom you tried to bring back to life. And I shall try to be you, too, you who never forgot.

As best I can. I’ll play the clown the best I can. And maybe, in the name of you all, I’ll manage to play the man too.
—Michel Quint, In Our Strange Gardens

Perhaps “Suicide is Painless.” And the face of death, not just of individuals, but ideals, governments, people, is the visage of the clown, because that of man is too painful to bear.

The game of life is hard to play
Gonna lose it anyway
The losing card I’ll someday lay
So this is all I have to say
(Repeat Chorus)
—Suicide is Painless, M*A*S*H theme song

Devon Dikeou
editor/publisher

Oneil Edwards (Jamaican) George Philip (Indian): We are both currently working on passing the Bar and finishing Med School. We support ourselves by selling fake DMX CDs, Pink Tims and Coogi sweaters in front of Jimmy Jaz in the South Boogie down on 3rd Ave. In our spare time we play beer pong and discuss Deconstructivism vs Radical Feminist perspectives at Max Fish.

Max Ruback: I live in West Palm Beach, Florida. I am in the finishing stages of a collection of short fiction, titled, Us Escaping Something, which “Monsters” is included in. I have had fiction and nonfiction published in several journals, OysterBoy Review, Main Street Rag, Crab Creek Review, and Thought, most recently.

Siri Kuptamethee: The idea for this special project started with a desire to transform images from the Indigo People Fall 2003 look book—après-ski and outdoorsy, with a touch of Southwestern-wear, and a lot of urban flair-into something more surreal but classic. I was inspired by The Blood of A Poet a film by Jean Cocteau, and decided to do a fashion-photo story based on the film. The result is, to me, a mysterious love story.

Christian Schumann has forsaken listening to actual records in preference to the experience that only non-existent vinyl LPs can give.

Giasco Bertoli: An image from childhood: you’re on a tennis court, you’re raising a racket, Fleetwod Mac’s Rumors plays on an eight-track somewhere and it’s the beginning of summer and your mother is still alive but you know there are darker times ahead.

Lawrence Seward: These drawings were plucked out of a couple of sketch books in an attempt to get a job doing a wall mural. Some of them are drawings for sculptures and others are simply illustrations of ideas. The selection process resembled roulette with the result looking like a BINGO card partially filled. Still, I hope these drawings elicit a pleasurable uncomplex response much like eating a good doughnut or swatting a pesky fly with a rolled up news paper.

Wim Delvoye (1965) lives and works in Belgium. In his work opposites attract: divine merges with secular, past meets present, ornament overcomes functionality. “Gothic” is a catalyst, juxtaposing industrial design and medieval iconography. “Gothic” is a mind-teaser and an eye-pleaser.

Jay Stuckey: I began making mummy and airplane drawings in August of 2000. The characters and events portrayed in the work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people living or dead is wholly coincidental and unintended.

Rainer Ganahl is an artist living in NYC. He has shown internationally, including “Kwangju Biennial” 1997, “Venice Biennial” 1999 and at “Tirana Biennial” 2003. www.ganahl.info

Harrison Haynes: I’m writing to you from Woodinville, Washington where my band is recording some music. The studio is a renovated horse-barn and it’s reminding me of where I grew up: the rural outskirts of the North Carolina Piedmont, somewhere between the suburbs and the country. My parents’ friends, and my friends as well since my folks took me everywhere with them, were DIY redneck-hippies: welders and carpenters that listened to ZZ Top and burned big vanilla scented candles in their outhouses. They hosted demolition derbies, volleyball parties, big oyster roasts every fall, and homemade fireworks on the fourth of July. (The fireworks were made by a lunatic blacksmith, so the finale was the detonation of a homemade bomb underneath an anvil, and the resulting spectacle of a 300 pound block of steel soaring upwards into the night sky.)

Karin Davie born in Toronto, Canada. Lives and works in NYC. Represented by Mary Boone Gallery New York. All paintings are from the series Pushed, Pulled, Depleted & Duplicated

Andrew Kuo: My interest in Yankee Stadium lies in fields of color. I see the specific color combination of the blue of the sky and the green of the grass as a ‘trigger’. This ‘trigger’ is relaxing to the eye, as if the stadium were an escape in its surroundings next to the subways, streets, buildings, etc. Yankee stadium becomes it’s own microcosmic landscape within the Bronx, with narratives that begin and end within the playing field. Also, the primary things that attach time to the stadium are the billboard ads, which change from week to week, year to year.

James Fuentes is an internationally recognized curator having overseen exhibitions in the US, Switzerland, Norway, Japan & most recently Paris. Upcoming projects include “Open Space II” an exhibition with rapidly rotating solo shows, and a role in a forthcoming feature length film by Tony Stone opposite Marika Dominczyk. He is a proud member of NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance) and wishes to thank the AFA gang for all their cooperation.

Marisa Aragona, 27, has wildly curly hair and always eats cherries on her birthday. Originally hailing from the Washington DC area she recently relocated to San Francisco after a seven year stint in NYC where she received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts. She is now studying at the San Francisco Art Institute for her MFA and “getting back to nature” in beautiful California. Marisa’s favorite photographic subjects include birthday cakes and girls in their panties. Look for Marisa’s work in this Fall’s current Photo Review. Look for Marisa with her camera and/or sipping a Shirley Temple. Recent exhibition include NYC’s PS122, The Independent Artists Organization and Seattle’s Photographic Center Northwest. You can reach Marisa at marisaaragona@hotmail.com

Gerardo Mosquera (Havana, 1945) is a Freelance Curator and art critic based in Havana, Adjunct Curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, advisor at the Rijksakademie van Beeldenden Kunsten, Amsterdam, and member of the advisory board of several art journals. He was a founder of the “Havana Biennials”, and has curated many exhibitions, including “It’s Not What You See. Perverting Minimalism” (Madrid, 2000), “Cildo Meireles” (New York, 1999), “Important & Exportant” (2nd. Johannesburg Biennale, 1997), and “Ante America” (Bogota, Caracas, New York, San Francisco, San Diego . . . , 1992-1994). Author of numerous texts on Contemporary Art and Art Theory, Mosquera recently edited Over Here. International Perspectives on Art and Culture (coming out in New York in 2004) and Beyond the Fantastic: Contemporary Art Criticism from Latin America (London, 1995).

Adrienne Samos is an art critic and Curator who lives and works in Panama City, and is the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Talingo Cultural Magazine, which won the Prince Claus Award in 2000. She also directs Arpa, a non-profit organization created to investigate and promote artistic and cultural manifestations in and out of Panama, and has organized several solo and group exhibitions of Contemporary Art.

Kenny Schachter has four kids, three galleries and what some might consider a fledgling art career.

Marc-Olivier Wahler: Going through nearly 2000 drawings in Olav Westphalen‘s Brooklyn studio, Marc-Olivier Wahler picked out about 100. The selection represents the finest, smartest, and most elegant of his work. You can imagine the rest! Olav Westphalen who will be inlcuded in this year’s Whitney Biennial is famous for his comedy routine performance entitled Bruhaha, and works with the gallery Maccarone Inc, New York. Marc-Olivier Wahler was former director of the CAN Centre d’art Neuchâtel and TRANSFERT Biel (Switzerland). He has been Artistic Director of the Swiss Institute-Contemporary Art in New York since 2001. For more than 15 years he has been trying to escape the art world, but obviously he has failed badly.