From Picasso's Guernica to the Hollywood hit Braveheart, artistic representations of war provide society with both entertainment and opportunities for dialogue. This year, the Duke Institute of the Arts is sponsoring a series of events reflecting how art has influenced and been influenced by war.
"There is a lot of serious [dialogue needed] about the role that art has played in military conflict and civic unrest throughout the ages," said Kathy Silbiger, program director for the institute. "The arts get marginalized into sort of this entertainment distraction role. We want to counterbalance that."
Silbiger sent an e-mail asking for proposals for potential events to all departments and faculty members in the arts-and some in the social sciences-and said she was pleased by the level of response.
"Each [event] is coming at it from a different angle, and it will attract a different audience," Silbiger said.
Organization for the series is largely decentralized-individuals in charge of a particular presentation have done much of the coordination. The series consists of five scheduled events running the gamut from lectures on country music and war to multimedia presentations.
A dance commemorating the inadvertent U.S. bombing of an Afghan church during a wedding--resulting in 50 deaths and about 100 injured, according to the Afghan government--kicked off the program Nov. 3.
"The dance was a sort of communal remembering of an event that was trying to express a certain empathy of innocent victims of war no matter where they are," Silbiger said.
The dance, which attracted approximately 75 people that included the musicians, drew Duke students of all levels of African dance, modern dance and ballet.
The performance also had participants from the Durham School of the Arts, Carolina Friends School and ballet students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
"We, as Americans, have a tendency to be so comfortable in our own country that we... shut [the tragedy] out. I wanted to make it tangible. Let's not forget that this happened," said head choreographer M'Liss Dorrance, associate professor of the practice and director of undergraduate studies for the dance program.
"People were really moved and really touched."
The program also hosted a lecture Nov. 15 about the role of war in the work of 20th-century artist Joseph Beuys.
The next scheduled event is a photograph exhibition on Afghanistan from 1980 to 2002 that will run Jan. 3-31 in the John Hope Franklin Center gallery.
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