SUMA: Resistance, Memory, and Play: The Work of Joseph DeLappe by Southern Utah University

LEARNING GUIDE Southern Utah Museum of Art 2022 1

About the Learning Guide This learning guide is designed to provide art historical context and interpretive analysis for Resistance, Memory, and Play: The Work of Joseph DeLappe. This guide can be utilized in conjunction with the exhibition at SUMA or for further exploration on these topics at school or at home.

About the Exhibit Resistance, Memory, and Play highlights the work of Joseph DeLappe, who has been working with electronic and new media since 1983. He has exhibited his artwork, which includes online gaming performances and sculpture, in Australia, the United Kingdom, China, Germany, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Mexico, Italy, Peru, Sweden, and Canada. A recipient of the 2017 Guggenheim Fellowship, DeLappe’s work examines relationships between art, technology, and social issues. Through multimedia, including video games, paintings, and sculpture, he confronts audiences with his perspective on relevant current issues, such as gun violence, drone warfare, and the complicated relationship between humans and technology. This exhibition asks tough questions about the complicated roles that electronics, computers, the internet, video games, and other technologies play in our societies. DeLappe makes new media art that investigates how technology mediates our shared experiences. People make tools of all kinds to do many different things in the world, and DeLappe’s art gives us occasion to press pause and consider what those tools really are, how they really work, and what they really do to our relationships with one another. The same technologies that connect us can divide us. The same media that entertain us can kill us. In a world totally transformed by new media, how do we remind ourselves to stay human, stay curious, stay creative, and, above all, treat each other well as ever-intrusive technology collapses distances between us and meddles in our lives?

Memorials War memorials are monuments that aim to keep alive the memories of those who actively participated in war—specifically those who were part of a governmentsponsored military—and especially those who lost their lives during armed conflicts. In his work Joseph DeLappe uses this same principle to commemorate military veterans as well as civilian bystanders who have died as the result of war and gun violence. DeLappe’s artworks prompt the viewer to consider the complicated and tragic nature of war, and to question who is remembered and mourned, and who is not. Specifically, DeLappe wants to “call attention to the moral implications of the use of these remote killing machines [drones] and the devastating effects their use has had on civilian populations.”

Untitled. Photograph by Jin S. Lee. Courtesy of 9/11 Memorial and Museum.

1,000 Drones - A Participatory Memorial This is probably the artwork most easily recognizable as a memorial, due to its title and apperance. On each drone, contributing participants wrote the names of civilian drone casualties in Pakistan and Yemen. “Unknown” is written to memorialize civilian drone casualties from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for which names were not recorded. Names are the centerpoint of many memorials. Most notable for many Americans are the more than 58,000 names inscribed on the polished black granite walls of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial designed by Maya Lin; or the 2,938 names inscribed on the bronze edging that surrounds the memorial pools at the 9/11 Memorial designed by Michael Arab and Peter Walker. 1,000 Drones - A Participatory Memorial 2017, at the Fred Jones, Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, June 2022. Photograph by Rebecca Bloom.

A section of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Washington, D.C.), designed by Maya Lin, dedicated 1982. Courtesy of Britannica.com.

Joseph DeLappe making the Atone Project

The Atone Project at the Fred Jones, Jr. Museum of Art, University of

rubbings at the 9/11 Memorial in New York,

Oklahoma, June 2022. Photograph by Rebecca Bloom.

September 19, 2021. Photograph by Sarah DeLappe.

Rubbings People often come to memorials as a site for reflection and recollection; they leave flowers and other items, and make rubbings of the names of those they knew. DeLappe adopted this practice of making rubbing for The Atone Project. As the United States exited Afghanistan, a drone strike in Kabul accidentally killed ten civilians all from the same Ahmadi family, seven of whom were children. This tragedy was still on DeLappe’s mind when he coincidently found himself in New York on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. At the 9/11 Memorial, DeLappe used the letters of names inscribed on the bronze edging to create the first names of ten Ahmadi family members. This work creates a link between the civilians killed during the 9/11 attacks and the estimated 71,000 civilians killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the subsequent War on Terror that began in 2001.

Dead-in-Iraq Memorials are often thought of as physical places marked by makeshift or architectural monuments; but DeLappe has found ways to create memorials within virtual spaces as well. Logging into America’s Army, a government-funded firstperson shooter video game, DeLappe made his avatar stand still as he typed into the chat the names of American military casualties in Iraq. dead-in-iraq takes the form of both a protest against the war and a memorial to the lives lost fighting it. Unlike the previously mentioned memorials, dead-in-iraq has no fixed location nor is it “publically accessible.” But as our communication and interaction with others increasingly happens online, virtual spaces can become a kind of “public square.” And DeLappe uses this new type of shared space to stage this and other performances and memorializations.

“just kick this guy already :)” dead-in-iraq screenshot, 2006-2011. Courtesy of Joseph DeLappe (delappe.net).

The Three Servicemen, by Frederick Hart (1984), at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Courtesy of Britannica.com.

America’s Army Action Figure, 2009. Courtesy of Joseph DeLappe.

America’s Army Action Figure Another intervention of America’s Army is America’s Army Action Figure. This miniature figure was released by the Defense Department in promotion of the video game. DeLappe took two of the figures apart and reassembled them to accurately represent his fallen avatar [dead-in-iraq]. This miniature statue can be seen as a commentary on the commodification of war as toys and games, but it can also be about memorials themselves. When building war memorials, it is traditional to valorize the military through representational depictions, with the unspoken rule that soldiers should also look brave, strong, and unharmed. This expectation is so strong that when Maya Lin’s design was chosen for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial there were protests over this lack of representationalism. A compromise was therefore struck to include a statue nearby of three servicemen standing, guns in hand, looking solemnly towards the wall of names. America’s Army Action Figure breaks these established norms and depicts a fallen soldier. It does not seek to celebrate war or portray triumph, but rather to present an approximation of war’s tragic reality.

Thoughts and Prayers Similar to war memorials artists and are being commissioned to design memorials for victims of gun violence across the United States. Hank Willis Thomas helped design The Gun Violence Memorial Project which consists of four houses built out of 700 glass bricks. Each brick represents the average number of American lives lost to gun violence in a given week. Site specific memorials to victims of mass shootings have been erected in Las Vegas, San Bernardino, and Sandy Hook; with many more in the design and construction process. DeLappe joins this commentary with his piece Thoughts and Prayers. This 20-foot cardboard replica of an AR-15 assault rifle is a physical representation of the millions of these weapons in the hands of private citizens and symbolic memorial to those killed in acts of violence with them. The title of this piece challenges the common sentiment after mass shootings as audience members write the names of victims on the surface of the sculpture. DeLappe’s Thoughts and Prayers takes on the impromptu and participatory nature of “homegrown memorials.” In Texas, Brandon and Heather O’Neil set up 19 maroon backpacks and two larger pink backpacks to represent the students and teachers killed at Robb Elementary. In Paris and Canada children’s shoes have been used to memorialize the Indigenous children whose bodies have been uncovered at residential schools. Like DeLappe’s work, the permanent and “pop up” memorials aim to make physical representations of the lives lost through scale and number.

Thoughts and Prayers, “Into Action” pop-up exhibition, Los Angeles, CA, 2018. Courtesy of Joseph DeLappe (delapp.net).

Games Much of DeLappe’s work has a connection to game play. Intervening in online video games and collaborating to develop a downloadable game, he guides the user to question the normalization of the gamification of violence and war. DeLappe’s video game pieces echo how games have been used as tools and build on the study of games as cultural artifacts. Games can and have been used to impact social behavior and as such, can be used to think about societal behavior and social norms. Two of the most well known games that exemplify this are Monopoly and The Game of Life.

The Landlord’s Game, United States Patent and Trademark Office Drawing, 1904. Courtesy of Landlordsgame.info.

The Landlord’s Game, 1904. Courtesy of Nytimes.com.

Monopoly Monopoly, originally titled The Landlord’s Game, was invented by Lizzie Magie in the early 1900s to help people better understand Henry George’s economic philosophies and the single-tax theory. In short, this theory aimed to tax only land and landowners; this idea grew during and after the Gilded Age, when land ownership became more difficult as a handful of wealthy individuals continued to control the industrial markets. This led to a massive wealth gap. The original game was very similar to the Monopoly we know today. The goal was to gain wealth by purchasing property that other players had to pay rent to if they landed on it. However, Magie’s original game had an important second set of rules that split the wealth evenly. With this double set of rules, the original Monopoly game became a tool to teach about how monopolies can crush individuals and to advocate for the single-tax theory in which land ownership is taxed but the wealth was shared. While this version of the game did not endure over time, it was a critical teaching tool.

The Game of Life The Game of Life, originally titled The Checkered Game of Life, was launched in 1860 and has adapted with time. From its origins to the present, the game emphasizes very specific cultural ideas. The original game features good and bad squares. The good squares, such as school, bravery, honesty, and perseverance, moved a player ahead, while the bad squares, such as gambing, intemperance, idleness, and politics, sent a player backwards. In the 1960s the game changed the end goal from making it to old age to making the most money. The good and bad squares also changed from moral ideals to consumerist concerns such as job promotions, paying bills, stock market swings, and insurance. This game upholds the societal ideal that the goal of life is making money and the center of life is the nuclear family.

The Checkered Game of Life, Milton Bradley’s first game, 1860. Courtesy of Thebiggamehunter.com.

Killbox It can be argued that the games we play as children prepare us for our future. Therefore, by intervening in online war games, DeLappe questions how these games serve to prepare civilians, often children, for violence and war. DeLappe’s dead-in-iraq works to circumvent this normalization by interrupting play with a dose of reality: reminding players of the true toll of war by listing the names of those soldiers killed in combat. His work Killbox, on the other hand, highlights and problematizes this normalization of violence through game play itself, allowing players to experience the troubling technology of remote drone warfare first-hand. Killbox is a two-player computer game that critically engages the history of drone warfare in Pakistan. The players are on separate screens; one wandering an abstract and colorful space, the other watching and analyzing aerial footage of a drone’s camera feed. Though connected, the players have two drastically different experiences: “For the pilot, the continuous and distorted voices make the player feel unable to claim their own personal space—the pilot is a voyeur visually, but in the sound domain it feels like they are being monitored themselves. The villager on the other hand is surrounded by natural and unthreatening sounds, and friendly noises are created by the player themselves as they interact with other characters.” Like the board games of previous generations, this interactive art piece uses play to simulate reallife experiences in order to teach an important lesson and perhaps instill certain values. Killbox demonstrates how complex and complicated drone warfare actually is, often leading to deadly consequences. And like Monopoly and The Game of Life, there is a political message and social criticism behind the fun that its creator seeks both to express and educate his players about.

Two kids play Killbox at the Memory and Resistance exhibition, Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, 2017. Courtesy of Joseph DeLappe (delappe.net).

Technology and Human Interaction Through a combination of unconventional materials and unexpected subject matter, Joseph DeLappe’s work invites the viewer to consider their relationship to technology.

Artist’s Mouse in action. Courtesy of Joseph DeLappe.

The Artist’s Mouse Playing Unreal was DeLappe’s first experiment with using computer games in his artistic practice. For this series and his Work/Play Studies he used his selfmade Artist’s Mouse to track his movements. Playing Unreal tracked the mouse movements while he was playing a popular first-person shooter game and Work/ Play Studies tracked DeLappe’s mouse movements for approximately one month of use on his home computer. This physical mapping makes physical and visible the fleeting, yet constant labor of computer use–something we all take for granted as part of our daily lives.

Playing Unreal, 1998. Courtesy of Joseph DeLappe (delappe.net).

Joystick Ball Joystick Ball continues the theme of human interaction with technology through assemblage. Using this gaming tool, DeLappe creates a sphere-like structure with a trail of chords. Much like readymade artworks created by Dada artists in the 20th century, such as Marcel DuChamp. The joysticks make the art. Chosen because of its relevance to both game play and drone warfare this piece becomes a bridge connecting much of DeLappe’s work. Though many video games today use a hand-held controller with a combination of buttons, bumpers, and sticks, early video games predominantly used a single joystick with a trigger button at the top. This same mechanism is used to navigate unmanned drones carrying bombs thousands of miles away.

Bicycle Wheel, Marcel Duchamp, New York, 1951 (third version, after lost original of 1913), Museum of Modern Art (595.1967.ab). © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / Estate of Marcel Duchamp.

Joystick Ball, joysticks and hardware, 2002. Courtesy of Joseph DeLappe.

Elegy: GTA USA Gun Homicides screenshot, 2018-19. Courtesy of Joseph DeLappe (delappe.net).

Elegy Like his mappings of mouse movements mentioned above, much of DeLappe’s work aims to transform abstract numbers and mundane activities into tangible, physical manifestations that make them more real and more meaningful. Elegy: GTA USA Gun Homicides makes visible the approximate 14,730 gun homicides in the United States from July 4, 2018 to July 4, 2019. Similar to his artwork on drone warfare, DeLappe wants the viewer to have an emotional or even physical reaction as the statistics often heard on news reports become visually represented by a massive digital body count. In this work, he is also utilizing the digital space of video-gaming as a medium for performance art, once again employing an unconventional medium for artistic expression and activism.

Glossary Assemblage: an art medium that uses gathered objects, often everyday objects or scanvanged scraps, to create sculptural forms Commodification: turning items or even ideas into objects that can be bought and sold Dada: an art movement of the early 20th century built in reaction against war and the upper class that was often satirical, fantastical or nonsensical Gamification: applying elements of game play to other items, ideas or techniques Readymade: art composed of found objects which are often prefabricated or mass produced Representational: the creation of forms or artwork that represent something existing in the world

Additional Resources Joseph DeLappe’s website: www.delappe.net Bierstadt Drones GIFs: https://bierstadtdrones.tumblr.com/ The Atone Project: http://atoneproject.tumblr.com 18