// events //FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC Date: September 2 – 25, 2005 Poetry Reading: // ABOUT // Artist and Organizer: Jane Irish An extensive multimedia art exhibition scheduled for September 2 - 25, 2005 at the Ice Box Project Space at Crane Arts (American Street just above Girard Avenue, Philadelphia). The first 2 weeks will also be part of the Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe. This is a themed show, but it differs from a regular curated show in that I have asked artists to create a new work specifically for the show. The heart and soul of this artistic effort will be a commemoration and homage to the 35th anniversary of something called “Operation Rapid American Withdrawal”. It was a wonderful example of true guerilla theatre / performance art that was a reenactment of a search a destroy mission performed by antiwar Vietnam veterans of the time. Operation RAW happened here in the Philadelphia/NJ area and nowhere else in the USA. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War demonstrated in order to bring their buddies home, it was a creative act, and visual artists as their heirs of contemporary art will re-call attention to this kind of heroic dissent with the same committed fervor and the same lovingly created tools. 75 artists have been invited to create work because newspaper articles and oral histories say this is the number of veterans which began the 4 day march in Morristown, New Jersey on September 4, 1970. By the end, over 200 Vietnam veterans reenacted a final sweep mission at Valley Forge Military Park culminating in a peace rally where they “broke arms” with 2000 supporters looking on. Speeches were offered by soldiers, sympathizers, politicians, and celebrities - including John Kerry, Jane Fonda, and Donald Sutherland. |