The
Chapman brothers investigate society’s taboos with humour
and provocation, appropriating imagery from diverse sources including
historic art and consumer culture. Their work,"Hell,"
depicts scenes of disaster and chaos, was made from 5,000 figures
portraying skeletons, Nazis, soldiers and deformed humans that had
been cast and hand-painted by the artists.
This
immense sculpture "Hell"-- made in 1999,
refers to a single mass execution of Russian soldiers by the German
army during World War II. The brothers have attempted to capture
this event in over 10,000 hand-modelled and hand-painted figurines
about six centimeters tall, assembled into a gruesome inferno of
war and death on an inverted swastika.
The
Chapman brothers' works present images of death, humiliation, mutilation
and mutant sexuality.... venturing into the Chapmans exhibition
is liable to be a disturbing experience.
Quotes... "The
job of a work of art is to raise questions about its terms and conditions,
That’s what we do. We present the viewer with a puzzle. We put an
injunction on speedy consumption, by refusing to offer a straightforward
aesthetic experience. And to defend the integrity of the work, we produce
a bit of turbulence that makes it more than a simple sip – of art."
--Jake Chapman in an interview with Time Out London.
Is
it our nature to torture?
By Philip G. Zimbardo - Science & Technology
What makes
men into monsters capable of such acts of inhumanity?
Were these
violence workers a breed apart from the rest of humanity, bad seeds that
then produced bad flowers? Or was it conceivable that they could be programmed
to carry out their deeds by means of some identifiable and replicable
programs of induction into the corps of state-sanctioned violence workers?
The descent
into hell is swift...
Once torture
is permitted to function in civil or military policing operations, extreme
forms of abuse predictably follow and gain public censure only when they
become notorious. ...Blame for these deeds must go from the top down and
must not be directed solely on those corrupted by the evil of a prison
run amok suspended within a war based on lies and deceptions.
We must always
be on guard against taking the first step on torture’s slippery
slope because even the best of us can be seduced into becoming perpetrators
of evil under the wrong circumstances, and the descent into hell is swift.
There
is an element of the surreal and a large dollop of hypocrisy in the expressions
of shock and dismay over human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib prison...
Given the
Bush administration's scrupulous inattention to the morality of its Iraq
policy, it's ironic that a handful of sadists from Appalachia have succeeded
in making the Geneva Conventions mandatory reading in the halls of power
again.
Abu
Ghraib pornography presents warning about power
So, we should
not be surprised that the porn we have seen from Abu Ghraib prison in
Baghdad reflects the genre. Naked prisoners stacked in a pyramid. A naked
Iraqi, grimacing in fear, taunted by dogs. Another, also naked and on
a leash, mocked by a young female soldier. Vile and degrading, the images
sear themselves into our minds' eyes, shoving aside the beautiful and
noble images we cherish when we think of our nation.
Those pictures
remind us of what novelist Joseph Conrad called the "heart of darkness."
It is a void and desolate place. A place where even "good" people
can descend. Ironically, they are most vulnerable when they feel most
invincible.
On a personal
level, those images from Baghdad should present each of us with a cautionary
picture of the seductive power of evil. Few among us would imagine any
of those U.S. soldiers would behave so badly under normal circumstances.
But given power and opportunity in a climate of extreme anger, they debased
themselves.
.. .Each
of us must acknowledge that tendency toward depravity. We must guard against
abusing any power we possess. We must pray we never see or treat others
as objects, as anything less than creatures made in God's image.
Is
it our nature to torture? 
Abu
Ghraib pornography presents warning about power