Ps4

Ps4. Mark Cooley. Issue 6: Fetish. Katalog

American Dreams: A Work in Progress

American Dreams: A Work in Progress
2000 – 2011

American Dreams is an interactive installation making use of common retail packaging and display aesthetics where gallery participants may self-reflectively play the role of consumers while uncovering unsettling relationships between free market globalization and military domination. The installation represents an ongoing meditation on the abuse of power and prevailing mythologies and ideologies of US culture.

 

Review – Ryan Griffis, “American Dreams”, review, New Art Examiner, Vol. 29, No. 4, Dec.-Jan. 2000

 

PS4

PS4.  Mark Cooley. Media Fields Journal

May we never forget (who we work for)

May we never forget (who we work for)
2010

Press Release – Hylton Performing Arts Center

LOCKHEED MARTIN PROVIDES $250,000 TOWARD NEW COMMUNITY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER AT GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY’S PRINCE WILLIAM CAMPUS

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

“MANASSAS, VA, March 27, 2007 — Lockheed Martin recently pledged $250,000 toward the future Community Performing Arts Center that will be built on George Mason University’s Prince William County campus in Manassas, VA.

The Center, a partnership between Prince William County, the city of Manassas and George Mason University, will create the region’s first state-of-the-art performing arts center, housing an 1,100-seat four-story rehearsal and performance space, two other smaller performance venues, and facilities to support the arts both at the university and in the surrounding community.   Under the terms of their pledge, Lockheed Martin will provide the university $250,000 in permanent endowment funds to support the Center over five years.  Construction of the Center will begin this summer with an anticipated opening in the fall of 2009.

Denise Saiki, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin’s Manassas-based business recently presented the company’s first pledge payment to Dr. Alan G. Merten, president of George Mason University at the university’s Prince William campus in Manassas, VA.

“We are delighted to make this contribution to the Community Performing Arts Center,” said Saiki. “This will allow us to help local high school performing arts education programs and local performing arts organizations use the center for their community programs for many years to come.” 

“We are thrilled to welcome Lockheed Martin as a founding partner of the Community Performing Arts Center,” said Bill Reeder, Dean, George Mason University College of Visual and Performing Arts. “Lockheed Martin’s leadership gift will make it possible for the Center to design exciting and innovative programs for schools and families to explore the connections between the arts and science.”

The mission of the new Community Performance Arts Center is to provide world class performance facilities for both well-established, high-quality, regional art groups and the many community-based groups that provide opportunities for residents to actively participate in the arts, as well as, arts-related educational opportunities for area schools.  

Headquartered in Bethesda, MD, Lockheed Martin employs about 140,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services.” 

E pluribus unum

 

E pluribus unum
2004 – 2008
online version

“If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.” – Noam Chomsky

“In 1971, Telford Taylor, the chief US prosecutor at the post-World War II Nuremberg Tribunal, cited the ‘Yamashita’ case as grounds for indicting (General) Westmoreland. Following the war, a US Army Commission had sentenced Japanese General Tomayuki Yamashita to be hung for atrocities committed by his troops in the Philippines. The Commission held that as the senior commander, Yamashita was responsible for not stopping the atrocities. The same ruling could of course apply to General Powell and General Schwarzkopf. Yamashita, in his defense, presented considerable evidence that he had lacked the communications to adequately control his troops; yet he was still hung. Taylor pointed out that with helicopters and modern communications, Westmoreland and his commanders didn’t have this problem.” – Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower by William Blum, Common Courage Press, 2000.

The installation consists of reproductions of post-WWII presidential photographic portraits accompanied by faux engraved plaques listing, in abridged form, 60 years of presidential foreign policy accomplishments. Flagrant violations of international laws are par for the course. Efforts to build empire have always been marked by murder celebrated fanatically as “just and righteous,” and yet we have something that we call “International Law,” including the Charter of the United Nations, Nuremberg Principles, Geneva Conventions, Genocide convention, and many others. In the interest of law, accompanied with the facts of 60 years of US foreign policy, and while using the case of General Tomayuki Yamashita as precedence, we can speculate on how our presidents may have faired if accused of war crimes before an impartial jury.

http://www.exitart.org/site/pub/exit_archive/history/2004.html

Independent Media Series @ SMSU

Open site archive

The Independent Media Video Series @ SMSU was initiated at Missouri State University by mark cooley with sponsorship from the SMSU Film Society. The series ran from 2002 to 2004 in the aftermath of 9/11 with the goal of encouraging critical debate on the campus of SMSU (now MSU) and in surrounding communities. The series came at an important time and helped to bring together activists who soon after galvanized to form the Ozark Peace Network. 

Enduring Freedom (the good patriot test)

Enduring Freedom (the good patriot test) | 2002

Dirt – placed on the gallery floor in front of a pedestal holding television 1.

Television 1 – playing a video in which Noam Chomsky analyzes U.S use of terror in the wake of September 11, 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

Door mat – printed with an image of an eagle and text “United We Stand” in red, white and blue. Placed in front of pedestal holding television 2.

Television 2 – displaying a closed circuit video of viewer/participant watching television 1 superimposed with a graphic of a target.Video (surveillance) camera – contains a lens printed with a target and is focused on the viewer/participants watching television 1.

The various power cords needed for the piece are used to tie the components of the installation together. The excess cords are coiled, tied with camouflage printed fabric and connect into a single electrical outlet (printed with an American flag motif).