Meridel Rubenstein
From Provisions
Questions for the Artist
Provisions Library: What early memories or experiences motivated your engagement with social change?
Meridel Rubenstein: I grew up in a socially concerned family in Detroit, Michigan, during a time of great change for the black community. This was before the 1967 riots. My high school went from 20% to 80% black while I was there and was at the center of the emergence of young Motown musicians. The racism in my middle class Jewish community during this time made a troubled and deep impression. As a teenager, I was steeped in the literature of the Holocaust (Ann Frank, Meyer Levin, Leon Uris et al). I couldn’t understand how these Jews could forget what had happened to them so quickly and still can’t.
In comparison, I spent summers from age 5 on our farm in Vermont where we were the first Jewish family in the area and where the only thing my farmer neighbors knew about Jews was that they had killed Christ. Not only could I experience difference and rejection from both sides – though for me so much, much more benign – but also nature and culture which are both so important in my work. My parents invited folk singers over when they came to town. The Weavers’ songs especially and so many other songs of struggle were part of my upbringing. My siblings and I played these folk songs on the guitar; we took part in the early civil rights marches. In 8th grade my father gave me a book about Sacco and Vanzetti so I could see other examples of discrimination and difference. I did my first series of linoleum cuts about them.
PL: Who are key influences in your life and why? What books, artworks, films, music, etc. have been essential to you?
MR: My key influences have changed over time but as a young artist starting out in the early 70’s I was painfully aware of the lack of women artists. So meeting the woman writer I was named after, Meridel LeSueur, was a great thing. She became a strong mentor and example. Wendy MacNeil shepherded my first years in photography. I was so influenced by her style that it took some time to break away. By the time I got to graduate school I began to search for less personal models. I wrote my thesis on the mutual influence of O’Keeffe and Stieglitz. Getting to know O’Keeffe and studying her imagery and process gave me a model. Since then certain peers have been my guides. Foremost, artists Ellen Zweig and Steina and Woody Vasulka have had the greatest influence on my work conceptually. Presently my greatest sources of inspiration are coming from outside the visual arts, from writers and activists who are earth angels. The writings of Rebecca Solnit, Terry Tempest Williams, David Abram, Gretel Ehrlich and Elaine Scarry are creating a new form of politically, environmentally, spiritually engaged poetics.
The actions and writings in present time of Buddhist teachers Thich Nhat Hanh, Joan Halifax, and Pema Chodron have inspired me as have many of the great ancient Buddhist texts. 14th c Tibetan Buddhist Philosopher, Je Tsongkapas text: “The 27 Verses for Mind Training” in particular is the most buoyant plea for purifiying the mind to avoid negativity in order to truly be (“intention is the sole creative force of existence”).
The art works of Marina Abramovic, Bill Viola, Anselm Keifer and Christian Boltanski are perhaps the purest visual examples for me of the melding of the personal, political and spiritual that I’m seeking in my own work. Especially in their transmutation of materials which is so important to me.
PL: What are you working on now?
MR: Two years ago my book Belonging: Los Alamos to Vietnam came out which pulled together over 20 years of work. Since then I’ve been gathering new material in Africa and Ireland and now Asia to make a new work very tentatively called Corpus Callousum.
PL: How has the art world reacted to the content of your work? Do you feel that your work has been depoliticized/overpoliticized/exoticized/misinterpreted?
MR: I assume every artist feels all of the above to some degree, but once you have content/issues that you try to express in an art setting the work tends to get neutralized by the context it’s presented in. That’s why installation is so important, to recharge the setting and allow the work its fullest expression.
PL: Terms like "artist" and "activist" are subjective terms. Where do you see the overlap, if any? Do you draw strict separations between the two, or do you see them as inseparable?
MR: They are inseparable for me. Sometimes I do feel very powerless due to the depoliticizing/overpoliticizing/exoticizing/misinterpreting of my work. Then I think it would be better just to volunteer for a while. (I did that a year ago as a photographer for the Green Belt Movement in Kenya). In the end, for my ideas to have any agency, I need to find a way to make the work in the hopes it will be of some use and in spite of what may happen to it.
About the Artist
"I see the doctrine of similarities at play in Meridel's images, where one form creates the semblance of another. In one photograph there is a curled autumn leaf, a baby's untied shoe, and a tortoise skull. below this triptych of objects is a fetal monitor on graph paper that mirrors the landscape of Monument Valley.
Upon first glance, you could imagine this to be a still life. But if you sit with this picture and dream on it, imagine with it, the photograph begins to throb, vibrate, and register the pulse of a life in association. Suddenly, the galloping heartbeat racing to this world through the belly of the Mother is registering its own particular landscape on the page. The dried leaf cradles the past. The tortoise skull portends the future. We stand in the center of our lives, each of our hearts rhythmically beating in tandem as we create the great drumming of existence.
'Another world is happening before us,' says Meridel. 'But people are choosing to read the surface of things.'"
--Terry Tempest Williams. From Rubenstein's book Belonging: Los Alamos to Vietnam, St. Ann's Press
More on the the Impact of War on Civilian Populations
United States Dept of Veterans Affairs - Agent Orange Overview
Approximately 20 million gallons of herbicides were used in Vietnam between 1962 and 1971 to remove unwanted plant life and leaves which otherwise provided cover for enemy forces during the Vietnam Conflict. Shortly following their military service in Vietnam, some veterans reported a variety of health problems and concerns which some of them attributed to exposure to Agent Orange or other herbicides. The Department of Veterans Affairs has developed a comprehensive program to respond to these medical problems and concerns. The principal elements of this program include quality healthcare services, disability compensation for veterans with service-connected illnesses, scientific research and outreach and education.
Potential Humanitarian Impact of War with Iraq - By Richard Garfield
Potential humanitarian consequences of war with Iraq have been widely discussed. Reports from UN agencies and research organizations claim that thousands or millions of people will starve, be killed, become victims of weapons of mass destruction, or become refugees. Most of these reports are highly speculative and based on little substantive information. Here, instead, information from Iraq’s experience in the Gulf war is combined with more recent observations on living conditions and current vulnerabilities. Data are tempered by personal observations during visits to Iraq and as consultant to international organizations there, most recently in January 2003. Reasoned analysis of such information is key if unnecessary suffering is to be avoided.
Human Rights Watch - Off Target: The Conduct of the War and Civilian Casualties in Iraq
Human Rights Watch has conducted several battle damage assessment (BDA) missions in the past to investigate the conduct of war and civilian casualties, including in Yugoslavia in 1999 and Afghanistan in 2002. While the military conducts such assessments to determine the military success of an operation, Human Rights Watch reviews the same incidents from an IHL perspective. For this mission to Iraq, Human Rights Watch conducted its research in three phases: pre-mission, on mission, and post-mission.
