Peter Whitehead and Terrorism

Abstract

Avant- Garde April 2007, Peter Whitehead was invited to London's Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) to talk about some of pop promo films he had made in sixties. His frenetically edited clips of Eric Burdon and World War II dive- bombers played on a kaleidoscopic program of similarly themed and video work by likes of Gerard Malanga and Nam June Paik. Interviewed onstage after screening, Whitehead patiently fielded usual questions about his work with Stones and Hendrix in a further display of seemingly endless public appetite for nostalgic sixties anecdotes. Toward end of session however, he was asked about his thoughts on contemporary film: as a director primarily associated with sixties- perhaps pivotal de cade of twentieth century- who, in his opinion, did he feel was making interesting work in twenty- first? Whitehead paused momentarily before announcing that greatest of twenty- first century had, in fact, already been made. It had been made in New York on September 11, 2001, and it had been made by Osama bin Laden. Heads shook and there were no more questions. Here, Whitehead was recapitulating comments he had made a year earlier in In Beginning was Image; before Beginning was Avant- Garde. This was an essay on current status of avant- art written as preface for La Cinema Critique (2010), a book on experimental published by Sorbonne. it, he argued that in current cultural context, terrorist has rendered artist redundant having learned tricks and gambits of art's artifice. Working from basis that the true purpose of avant- garde is to nurture (if not enact) acts of war ... a calculated violation of frigid sterile form, Whitehead presents Bin Laden's cleverly contrived of Several Missile Planes as a supreme example. The events of 9/11 and widely disseminated matrix of footage are seen to be monumentally effective in creating a work that is directly and belligerently dangerous. Whitehead goes on to suggest that Bin Laden's legacy- his film should be called Terrorism Considered as One of Fine Arts, a phrase that would have significant resonance for his own subsequent work.1 He took it as title for his 2007 novel, which he then adapted into a full- length that recently premiered at Viennale. Terrorism as art. What to make of this? The icy response of ICA audience indicates that connection obviously doesn't work as a joke. Is this uncomfortable juxtaposition intended as provocation or an expression of misanthropic delight? Whitehead is certainly no stranger to former. As a filmmaker, he is best known for a series of documentaries, most incendiary of which are Benefit of Doubt (1967), an account of Royal Shakespeare Company performing play US, and The Fall (1969), an examination of decline of American protest movement. Benefit contains a sequence in which Glenda Jackson delivers a monologue begging for horrors of Vietnam War to be brought into polite En glish gardens. Similarly, The Fall presents viewer with riots, police beatings, and equally brutal per for mance art to suggest that violence is inevitable outcome of initially peaceful protest. Much of critique in these films was directed toward paralysis Whitehead saw as characterizing mainstream responses to Vietnam; public inability or unwillingness to adequately make sense of a seemingly distant conflict. His comments on terrorism could be taken in same spirit- a cultural wake- up call designed to trouble Western complacency. The problem with this comparison is that 9/11 essentially fulfills mid- sixties wish of Peter Brook and Royal Shakespeare Company; one of entanglements of American foreign policy is devastatingly realized in domestic sphere. As such, a crucial difference emerges. …