photomontage workshop at Streetlevel in Glasgow

The series of prints in ‘Award’ arose out of our need to find a way to express our disgust with the war against Iraq and attempt to revoke our impotence in the face of the raging terrorism committed in the name of democracy. We wanted to use digital technology to make visceral images that used everyday stuff as directly as we could in order to respond to the war’s full horror with thousands of Iraqis being killed.

We had been on the anti-war demos . Now the flat bed scanner became our stage on which we could let rip with our feelings of outrage. We placed medals and bandages, threw dust and blood on to the scanner. We were told the war was over, as the Occupation continued with more and more killing and torture we covered the scanner with the grit and grime of the street outside our studio, asking how to represent this filthy war from a street in East London .

As the Occupation became filthier our prints became denser and denser . The scanner became like an etching plate and through using the newest technology our practice became strangely more and more connected to printmakers of the past . We looked at Rembrandt and Goya etchings, at how the etching , aquatint and drypoint layers on their metal plates became our dust and fabric , set layer upon layer on the computer. We looked at how their etchings developed from state to state becoming darker, denser and more concentrated. Some of our prints went through twenty states becoming more and more imbued with physical matter. We gritted the scanner ; bled on it ; threw torn up rags , flags and ribbons on it ;poured oil, then stamped on the stuff, burnt it and spat on the lot. On some of the images we used photographs taken with great bravery by documentary photographers in Iraq. Their commitment to keeping us informed often showed us the extreme degradation that this war has brought upon the Iraqi people.

It is a continuing process as we search for images that can represent our fury and the fury of the millions who oppose this action . Also we are attempting to make images that can represent the people of Iraq , who have fast become discardable pawns of Western leaders playing a deadly game called profit.

Award#4

Award series of 15 pigment prints on 308gms cottonrag paper

oak framed 100cm x 72cm

Streetlevel Gallery, Glasgow 2004

view images from the gallery and more here

to view all prints from series Award in greater detail go to the print section

Welcome to the Occupation text by John Slyce

On March 12, 2003, George W Bush signed an executive order establishing the Global War on Terrorism Medals – one expeditionary, and one for combat service. In less than a week, Iraq would be

invaded. Section 2 of the order reads as follows: ‘There is hereby established the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal with suitable appurtenances. Except as limited in section 3 of this order, and under uniform regulations to be prescribed by the Secretaries of the military departments and approved by the Secretary of Defense, or under regulations to be prescribed by the Secretary of Homeland Security with respect to the Coast Guard when it is not operating as a service in the Navy, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal shall be awarded to members of the Armed Forces of the United States who serve or have served in military operations to combat terrorism, as defined by such regulations, on or after September 11, 2001, and before a terminal date to be prescribed by the Secretary of Defense.’

Late in February of 2004, the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall established the Iraq Medal. Early estimates were that some 48,000 would be issued, with at least 150 offered to qualifying members of the embedded media. As if to lend flesh to a line from Benjamin’s fragmentary notes for an unwritten book on Baudelaire – ‘Allegorical emblems return as commodities’ – you now can buy a genuine facsimile of an Iraq Medal on eBay for a little less than a fiver. The Iraq Medal has been struck for those who have served in what the MoD named ‘Operation Telic’. The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary suggests someone in Whitehall might have been taking the piss: Telic a. M19. [Gk telikos final, f. telos end: see –ic] 1 Gram. Of a conjunction or clause: expressing purpose. M19. 2 Directed or tending to a definite end; purposive. L19. Telic finds its antonym in the word ecbatic which denotes a mere result or consequence. These paired terms are eerily shadowed by the values enumerated in those of instrumental and autonomous as applied to art.

Both members of kennardphillipps are committed artists and activists. The work before you in Award began on the streets in protest against an impending war long before any blood hit the scanner. kennardphillipps’ art has for long operated in fusing together seemingly disparate elements. The allegorical tension which binds kennardphillipps’ images together is located in the tangible recognition we feel when we realise that very little actually separates the combined fragments of, in the case of these works, death and glory. The military commemoration is perhaps the ultimate allegorical emblem. The Purple Heart, the United States’ oldest service medal decreed by Washington himself, represents an undisclosed personal sacrifice but has come to signify the loss of blood and limb. These images explode the architecture of a symbol. As the fragments of dust and oil, spit, blood, and bile settle, a clear and present picture of what actually stands behind this allegorical emblem forms. It is the suitable appurtenances of war lodged in hate, torture, exploitation, and death. The terminal date of these terms and categories will not be prescribed by any Secretary of Defense but by each of us – both individually and collectively.

The war on terror is of necessity a war without end. Do not be deceived. The only enemy worth having these days is one that is everywhere and yet nowhere. Rather than making anyone safe, the war on terror finds its ‘definite end’ in the reproduction of fear. Fear extends the politics of distraction beyond the limits of a sound bite to create unlimited space in which to pursue narrow interests and person profit. Do not be afraid. A line from an earlier war inaugurated by terror might be a guide: ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’

John Slyce

A film showing kennardphillipps installing the exhibition DEMO at City Hall, London in 2004 – also featuring the making of DECORATION and AWARD

Film by Kristian Buus

The Mall

Award series of pigment prints on 308gms cottonrag paper

oak framed 100cm x 72cm

Henry Peacock Gallery, London 2004

Harold Pinter read from his poems ‘War’ outside Henry Peacock at the opening Saturday afternoon.

Harold Pinter reading 'War' at opening of Award, outside Henry Peacock Gallery, London

photo by Jenny Matthews

sorry for delay in uploading film of Harold reading his poems from ‘War’ – coming soon

pamphlet handout made for the exhibition Award

A version of The Mall wallpapered in the window of Henry Peacock

the folio of prints included an essay by John Berger and a facsimile of the fax to us from Thom Yorke both written in response to the work

faxed response from Thom Yorke

to see all prints in the series Award in greater detail see the print section

Essay by John Berger

“If we don’t succeed, we run the risk of failure.”
George W. Bush

There are certain moments of looking at a familiar mountain which
are unrepeatable.  A question of a particular light, an exact

temperature, the wind, the season.  You could live seven lives and never
see the mountain quite like that again;  it’s face is as specific as a
momentary glance across a table at breakfast.  A mountain stays in the
same place, and can almost be considered immortal, but to those who are
familiar with the mountain, it never repeats itself.  It has another
time scale.
*

Each day and night of the ongoing situation in Iraq is different
with different griefs, different acts of defiance, different
stupidities.  It remains, however, the same war, the war which almost
everyone in the world perceived, before it began,  as an aggression of
unprecedented cynicism (the ravine between declared principles and real
aims), undertaken to seize control of one of the world’s richest oil
reserves, to test out new weapons, like the microwave bomb, weapons of
pitiless destruction, many of which were offered free to the Pentagon
by
the manufacturers in the hope of winning substantial contracts for wars
to come, but principally and above all undertaken to demonstrate to the
present fragmented, globalised world what Shock and Awe is!

The primary aim of the war, launched in defiance of the UN, was to
demonstrate what is likely to happen to any leader, nation, community,
or people, who persist in refusing to comply with U.S. interests.  Many
propositions and memos about the vital need for such a demonstration
were being discussed in corporate and operational planning circles
before Bush’s fraudulent election.

The term U.S. interests can lead to confusion.  It does not refer
to the direct interest of U.S. citizens, whether poor or well-off, but
to the interests of  extensive multinational corporations, often
dominated by U.S. capital, and now, when necessary, defended by U.S.
armed forces.

What Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz, Perle and Co. have
succeeded in doing since September 11th is to close any debate about
the
legitimacy or ultimate efficacy of such a threatening deployment of
power.  They have used the fear, set off by the Twin Towers attack, to
try to enlist the media and public opinion in support of unilaterally
decided pre-emptive strikes against any target they name terrorist.  As
a result, the world market with its spin is being woven into the Stars
and Stripes, and the making of profit (for the few who can) is becoming
the only inalienable right.

“Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the
rich,” Peter Ustinov the playwright recently observed with succinct
clarity.

*
Although the assertion that Iraq had weapons of massive destruction
was the so-called justification for the country’s invasion, there has
perhaps never been a war in which the inequality of firepower between
the combatants has been so great.  On one hand satellite surveillance
night and day, B52s, Tomahawk missiles, cluster bombs, shells with
depleted uranium and computerised weapons which are so sophisticated
that they give rise to the theory (and virtual dream) of a no-contact
war;  on the other hand, sandbags, elderly men brandishing the pistols
of their youth and handfuls of fedayeen, wearing torn shirts and
sneakers, armed with a few Kalashnikovs.   The comparative casualty
rates between the Iraqi people on the one hand and the forces of the
Coalition on the other will probably turn out to be, as in the
operation, whose logo was Desert Storm, something approaching 1000 : 1.

*

Let us return to the mountain, which proposes another time-scale.
From there the victors, with their historically unprecedented
superiority of weapons, the victors who were bound to be victors,
appear
frightened.  The leaders of the New World Order are married to Fear and
their subordinate Commanders and Sergeants are indoctrinated from above
with the same fear.

The practices of their marriage?  Day and night the partners of
Fear are obsessively preoccupied with telling themselves and their
subordinates, the right half-truths, half-truths which hope to change
the world from what it is into something which it is not!  It takes
about three half-truths to make a lie.  As a result, they become
unfamiliar with reality.  Above all they cannot come to terms with, or
find a place for, death.  Fear keeps death out.  And so the Dead desert
them.  They are alone on this planet – as the rest of the people in the
world are not.  This is why, considering all the power they wield,
military and otherwise, the victors are dangerous.  Terrifyingly
dangerous.  It is also why they cannot survive.  The Dead have
abandoned
them.

The Guardian Wednesday October 13 2004

The Times 21 July 2004