democratic underground
Activist artist/photographer/filmmaker/animator John Douglas (see article on Da Speech) is at it again! Isolationism, vulnerability, cold steel, human flesh, and latent violence seethe in “Homeland Security” -- no, it isn’t a film or video, it’s the latest provocative series of photographs from the veteran Charlotte multi-media creator. Sporting an M16 and nothing else, Douglas appears in this series of images as a literal “one-man army” -- duplicated photographically and armed to the teeth in a procession of tableaus that confront the power and impotence of firepower. Sans any associative figures but male replicas of himself, supplanting the male organ in almost every pose with M16s (or flags), “Home Security” offers a sardonic dissection of America’s current pre-emptive ‘go it alone’ military foreign policies and a delirious portrait of primal ‘citizen soldiers’ in native habitats (trailors, tracks, flag-draped coffins, and -- most chilling of all -- seated stoically around a TV set in the darkness, lit only by its cyclopean light). It’s brilliant, funny, unnerving, confrontational, disturbing stuff; you haven’t lived ‘til you’ve seen a small platoon of nude, armed, and dangerous Douglas clones poised for action. Seven Days offered a generous spread on “Homeland Security” in its June 30-July issue (pp. 24A-26A)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/