An hour does not seem to be long enough

I'm thinking that an hour is not long enough for me to feel what I wanted to feel when I decided to do this project. An hour just goes by too fast. I want my hand to hurt. I want my body to feel the pain. So, I'm thinking maybe I should find a day when I'm less busy and just write the cards for as long as I can stand it. It will have to be sometime next year then.

Meaning of the Unknown -- Day 12

As I was writing the unknows last night, my thought of human existence finally came to me. We all will die in one way or the other. People die on this planet every second; there is nothing special about it. But with these people, we're responsible for their deaths. That's way this project is still important, maybe. Will follow up on this thought.

Too soon to quit? -- Day 11

So, as I was writing them, I was thinking that it's time for me to quit as I really don't know why I'm doing what I'm doing now. Or maybe I should talk a break? But, is it too soon to quit?

Okay, I want to hang on to this thought. I'm hoping that we I'll get more out of this project when I get less busy later. Or perhaps I need to do it in the morning instead of doing it at night when I'm exhausted.

Countless of Unknowns

They really don't make any sense. I'm saying it with shame, guilt and sadness. So far on Day 8, I have writing around more than 1,700 of unknowns. They are the people who died but yet identified. So, the media did not know thier names, according to Iraq Body Count.

Maybe that's why Tony kept quoting Stalin's quote "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic".

I am reading Michael Otterman's "Erasing Iraq" now. In the forward section, I found the following words by Harold Pinter really powerful when he commented on the War in his 2005 Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

"They are blank. They are not even being recorded as dead."

What Pinter said is haunting. But what even more haunting is that what he said is true.

Writing at home

Giving up 1 hour of sleep/work/play time to write the cards every day is really not easy. It takes planning to make sure that I do it before midnight. I have been doing it at around 10:30 pm to 11pm. Sometimes, I am actually a bit sleepy while doing the writing. They are not as meditative as I thought. Often, instead of thinking about these civilians and their lives, I would think about something. So, as I said in my previous post, I am still searching the meaning or the unmeaning of this project.

I am also thinking that perhaps 1 hour a day is not enough for me to feel the magnitude of the destruction. So, should I write for longer hours, say 8 hours or more a day? Or at least until my hand and my back hurt?

Day 1 - Performing at Grace Exhibition Space

So, this was it. I actually didn't know how long I was writing the cards for. Little less than 2 hours, maybe? I think I wrote around 70 cards. Anyway, it was a lot more intense than I expected. The crowd, the kind of lighting, the noise and the air at the space all put my body and mind in a state of unease. They were a bit disturbing, especially the smokey cigarettes floating in the enclosed space filled with people.

Couple minutes after the performance started, people gathered around my table and looked at what I was doing. But it was not until at least 15 minutes after that someone asked me if he could pick up the books and read them. I then said yes. Itt was the only time I was interacting with people. One man, behind my back, said to me that he thought what I was doing was really great. I ignored him. There was also someone picking up an already written card and looked at it. Overall, I was happy with the reception.

But what do that 70 something cards or names, or innocent victims mean to me? I really don't know. Writting down their names and where they died etc. has forced me to read the data carefully. For instance, I read that a family died near a US Amry check point. But then what? I am actually afraid to admit that I am as detached as I was before. I am anixous to find out what I have to say about what I feel in say a month or 3 months.

Tomorrow

In less than 24 hours, this project is going to kick off at the show at Grace Exhibition Space. I practiced wrting the cards this afternoon and wrote for 1 hour. An hour is actually not as long as I thought.

Today, a colleague of mine said how come I pick such a time-consuming project to work on. Yes, the scale of this project is scary, not to mention the subject matter which I do not konw much about. Does it mean that I should not do it? I don't know, I really don't know. All I know is that I finally realize and admit that I am doing this Iraq War project for myself and I finally have the courage to allow myself to do so. This project has almost become not about the innocent people who died but about me who is trying to find out my relationship to my work as an artist. Does it make sense?