To hell with the New. We already have more music, writing, art, and experience piled up than we can possibly deal with, and so much of the fresh news we receive is at best a distraction. Every week, the next movies arrive, the next celebrity temper tantrum, the next batch of lies from the podium, and meanwhile Jack Abramoff’s gaming of the political system already seems like ancient history. It’s getting clearer all the time that most of what passes for the New is just a way of forgetting what really matters.

In this issue, Plazm takes on the subject of Collective Memory. What’s worth remembering in an information society? We have a few ideas. In the following pages we delve into the archive of Tom Robinson, photographic negative preservationist and all-around genius. We ponder the legacy of geographic partition plans among retreating empires. We pool our memories of a music scene with many protagonists. And we make room for artists such as Storm Tharp, Jessica Hutchins, and Casey Watkins, who have taken the time to understand their roots and humbly work within traditions older than themselves.

We also focus our thoughts on the one big innovation we really care about: the end of war. Artists such as Sue Coe, Yoko Ono, and Art Chantry, among others, contribute ideas about a future without organized murder, and what it might look like.

The New is so Twentieth Century. We want wisdom, not information. We want to explore old music, old books, and old photographs, figure out what we care about, and preserve it for those who come later. We want to walk backward into the future.

—Jon, Josh, & Tiffany

Bill Walton, May 14, 1977 Photograph by David Falconer Courtesy of Historic Photo Archive

PLAZM ISSUE No. 29

Editors: Jon Raymond, Tiffany Lee BrownArt Director: Joshua Berger

Editorial Coordinator: Sarah GottesdienerCopy Editor: Allison Dubinsky

Contributors are listed in the table of contents (pages 7-8) with biographical statements included on pages 158-159.

Plazm Magazine is published annually by Plazm Media, Inc., Portland, Oregon, USA. Subscriptions are not

available. Back issues and single issue sales may be purchased through our website: www.plazm.com.

ISSN 1085 4525

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Business address: Plazm

PO Box 2863, Portland, OR 97208-2863503-528-8000

info@plazm.comwww.plazm.com

To be notified of new Plazm books, magazines and other projects, sign up for our newsletter at www.plazm.com.

EXTRA SPECIAL THANK YOU TO: Thomas Robinson, whose tireless efforts in preserving images

and stories of Oregon history—from Edward Curtis negatives to early Portland punk rock and everything in between—are an invaluable resource and true treasure in our community.

Thank you, Tom, for your help in making this issue happen. www.historicimagearchive.com

No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written consent of the artist and/or Plazm Media, Inc.

Copyrights remain with the artists and writers.

Plazm Media, Inc. pledges to exercise all possible care in the handling of submissions: film, prints, artworks, digital

media, and other materials. However, submitting any print, slide, negative, or digital media to this company for consider-ation for publication constitutes an agreement by YOU not to hold Plazm Media, Inc., legally responsible in any manner for

any damage or loss by our company, subsidiary, or agents.

©copyright 2007 Plazm Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

Image above: Ishan Khosla

At 74, Yoko Ono is more active and engaged than many artists five decades younger—opening exhibitions, producing documentaries, performing live music, and continuing her tireless campaign for peace. In February 2007, Ono released Yes, I’m a Witch, a compilation of songs remixed by a variety of artists including Cat Power, the Flaming Lips, and Peaches. Open Your Box, a collection of remixed dance tracks, followed in April.

Plazm publisher Joshua Berger recently spoke with Ono about unfinished music, witches and wizards, and why the flag-waving activism of the ’60s is over.

Joshua Berger: Can you talk about your concept of unfinished music?

Yoko Ono: “Unfinished Music” was first made when John [Lennon] and I did “Two Virgins.” A couple of years earlier at Indica Gallery I did a show of my artwork and I called it “Unfinished Paintings and Objects.” I was trying to have some participation from people in the art world so they could feel that they were part of the creativity. When John and I did “Two Virgins” we decided there should be unfinished music too. I did explain that to the critics at the time but nobody really did anything about it. Except for probably keeping the cover. For what? To frame it?

There’s a huge range of musical styles on the Yes, I’m a Witch album. Were you surprised that your work could be translated successfully into so many different languages? Was there a certain amount of letting go that’s required?

No, no. I loved the idea of it. These are all very artistic people to begin with—stars of the indie music world. So they knew what they were doing. It just came out very well. I really like the idea of encouraging, inspiring people to be creative. Because we all have this creativity inside, but we’re not always opening it up. It’s an incredible pleasure to be able interact with other artists.

What does it mean to you to have so many people from a younger generation remixing and reinterpreting your music?

Well, I don’t know… I just did a show in the Pitchfork Music Festival and I really enjoyed it. Sometimes people will say to me, “Your audience is all young.” And I am thinking, Yes, because I feel I connect with them more than my generation.

I saw some of the Pitchfork set on YouTube—you with Thurston Moore—which was great.

I think Thurston is fantastic. He is a very heavy musician. I have played with so many heavy musicians, I am very lucky that way, and I think that he can be counted as one of them.

You wrote Yes, I’m a Witch in the early ’70s but it hadn’t been released until recently. I’m curious if you’d talk more about the definition of a witch.

I am a witch. I think that all women are witches and all men are wizards. Together, we are a very powerful, interesting race of people, and we can do a lot for this world if we want to, instead of destroying it. When people say you’re a wizard, that’s a compliment, right? But when somebody says you’re a witch, that’s like…

Derogatory.

It’s so derogatory. And I question that. Why would a witch be derogatory? They burned the witches. Wizards, they give medals to. I just think it’s very important to bring that out.

What do you see as the role of the woman artist in today’s culture?

It is not just “the woman artist,” but women in general. We are all very sensitive, powerful, creative, and intelligent people. I think that the world is actually doing disfavor to itself by not recognizing this power because if we used this power well we could probably survive.

I don’t like the idea of saying women artists are better than men artists. It’s not like that at all. It’s just that women artists are not getting the same kind of acceptance as men. But

that’s changing, and I think it’s going to be fine. Still, there’s a stigma about being a woman. The society itself is still a male society and men fear the power of women. That should not be.

So how do we change?

By recognizing that it’s a power that you can use on a societal level. We should be practical about it, instead of being scared or prejudiced. It’s very important to learn to always use good power.

How can artists use media to change the world?

As artists, that’s what we’re all doing. I think that the power of art, music, and films—anything to do with artistic, creative events—can help to change this world. We’re trying to do it, and I think we will.

What advice would you give to young artists today, facing these enormously daunting issues: overpopulation, global warming, seemingly endless war…

We don’t have to feel like we are the only people who want to do something. Once you start thinking like that, you might as well jump off the roof. Just do as much as you can. If each of us does what we can, in a very small way… If the whole world did that, it would just be going the right way. People see all of the violence and terrible things happening, but there are so many good things happening, too. We have discovered all sorts of things that will make our lives totally different—stem cells, DNA—all sorts of things that could make our lives easier.

Focus on the positive?

Focus on the positive and help those things to grow. Stay well and healthy, and let’s see what happens.

So you’re optimistic?

I’m realistic, let’s put it that way.

Does that mean you’re not optimistic?

Your conclusion is that I’m optimistic. What I’m saying is, ‘I’m realistic.’ Do you see the difference?

I understand that you are saying, “Every person, do what you can, and focus on the positive.” That seems either very optimistic or just blind faith.

If all of us, everybody in the world, at once, would say, we want world peace or something positive together, the whole world would change so much. Instantly. Don’t you think? Just saying one or two things sometimes is very important.

How do you feel about what’s going on now in terms of activism versus what was happening in the ’60s? Do you think that there’s an evolution of understanding? Does our culture really remember what happened then? Did we learn from it?

They don’t have to because the ’60s were a different time, and now we have to cope with something bigger. Don’t think about the ’60s. Those were flag-waving days. We can’t just be waving flags. It’s a different time.

So it’s unimportant that young people now may not know what happened then?

The young people now, you can’t take them lightly. I think that they’re very intelligent and they know where they stand. They are doing it in their own way. Very quietly, not standing on the corner of the street shouting. So you may not notice it, but there’s an incredible awareness now, that we all share, and it’s going to be fine.

Do you still believe in pacifist resistance?

No, I believe in pacifistic visualization, dreaming, wishing, and being united.

Prior page: photograph by Tom Haller; lettering by Aaron Heil

jennyelizabeth

daniel peterson

Images courtesy of Elizabeth Leach Gallery

Somewhere, someone is always doing

it. In the ’70s, it was Larry Clark,

turning the camera on his beautiful,

wayward friends. In the ’80s, it was

Nan Goldin, documenting her clique in

the East Village. Most recently, it’s

been Ryan McGinley, immortalizing his

circle of vandals and young artists.

The magic of bohemian youth is

fleeting but intense. Daniel Peterson,

a photographer in Portland, has lately

been catching his own friends and

times in full flower. — Jon Raymond

phot

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by

blue mountains, umatilla indian reservation

jenny

untitled

hit it snow babes

paired dul

luntitled 6 - 8 - 06

madras, oregon

Drawing lines on a map is easy. Living with partition is not.

b y R O B E R T M A C K E Y

Like all Gaul, all Delaware is divided in three parts – with the counties of New Castle, Kent and Sussex splitting the state neatly into one northern, one central and one southern province. The fact that there is a notable absence of sectarian warfare between the nontribal peoples that inhabit these three parts of his home state may explain why Delaware’s senator, Joe Biden, looking out at the world from his office in Wilmington, has devised a plan to end the civil war in Iraq by simply splitting the country into three separate, self-governing states – one in the north, for the Kurds; a second in the center, for the Sunnis; and a third in the south, for the Shia.

Then again, to give the senator and the coauthor of his plan, Leslie Gelb, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, slightly more credit, they may really have been inspired by the historical example they cite – the “soft” partition of Bosnia, at the end of the war there in 1995, into three regions: one run by Serbs, another by Croats and a third by Muslims. Whatever their inspiration, though, Biden and Gelb are essentially buying the argument for dividing Iraq that’s been going around Washington think tanks since history books were cracked open in the Green Zone, just after the war’s cakewalk stage came to an end – namely, that the country was an artificial construct in the first place, created by the British less than a century ago to ensure that the region’s two biggest oil fields, near Mosul in the north and Basra in the south, would be under one easily controlled puppet government. They yoked together three provinces seized from the Turkish empire at the end of World War I, put a friend of Lawrence of Arabia’s in charge, designed him a flag with three stripes and three stars on it, and, in a transparent marketing ploy, instructed him to call this new creation of theirs Iraq, which is Arabic for “a well-rooted country.” So, the thinking goes, a partition of Iraq now would return these three diverse provinces to their historically separate conditions as neighbors, and end the ninety-year-long experiment of forcing them together into one multiethnic, multiconfessional country.

The problem with this plan, though, is that it ignores other, more pertinent, failed experiments in nation-building conducted by British colonial officers in the 20th century. Between about 1920 and 1950, as the British gradually and then suddenly decided that ruling vast chunks of the planet wasn’t really worth the effort, they withdrew from one territory after another, often in a great hurry, simply drawing lines on the world map to divide such places as Ireland, Palestine and India into separate states in which ethno-religious groups would no longer have to cooperate or

swirls of colors splattered across most of the territory and almost no part of it being purely Serb, Croat or Muslim. The country’s cities in particular were so mixed that there was no way that any one of them could have been assigned to one group or the other before the fighting began. And this is the important point: the fighting itself was almost entirely dedicated to tearing apart those mixed communities, to make it possible to draw lines between them, and to fence off one community from the other.

At first this project was carried out only by ethnic nationalist warlords obsessed with refighting battles that were conducted centuries ago and presenting international mediators with maps from the Middle Ages to bolster the legitimacy of their claims. But a turning point was reached when those international mediators, acting on behalf of the United Nations and the European Union – two organizations you would think might be more on the side of union than division – accepted the logic of the extremists and started talking about a solution in which the territory would be divided along ethnic or religious lines, even issuing prospective maps for who might control what parts of the country claiming, seriously, that this would simply make Bosnia more like Switzerland. The effect of this was immediate and jarring – it worsened the violence, as each side tried to grab, and “cleanse,” as much of the territory as possible, to make the redrawing of the demographic maps easier by forcibly undoing the mixing between the communities that had been in progress for centuries.

What followed the issuing of partition maps in Bosnia was exactly what followed the issuing of those maps in Ireland, Palestine and India (where one British colonial official opposed to partition called the policy “divide and quit”)—and is exactly what will happen if a partition of Iraq, soft or otherwise, is adopted. First, the idea of partition as a way to stop or prevent civil war was endorsed by outsiders. Then, once the maps were redrawn, hundreds of thousands, or millions, of people discovered that they had been living, often for centuries, on land that would soon be part of a new country in which they would be unwelcome. Finally they were ‘transferred,’ often by force, to the ‘correct’ side of the new line dividing their country into two countries.

Time and again the plot has unfolded the same way. Here, for instance, is the encouraging view of the future for the Middle East that was offered to readers of the Guardian in July 1937:

Sunni Kurd

Sunni Kurd / Sunni Arab

Sunni Arab

Sunni Arab / Shia Arab

Shia Arab

I R A QE t h n o - r e l i g i o u s C o m p o s i t i o n , 2 0 0 7

share power but could instead continue to hate each other and live side by side in armed camps for generations. In each case, partition, which looked good on paper and was accepted enthusiastically by extreme nationalist/segregationist leaders in each place, had the same result in practice: a spasm of violent sectarian cleansing and the destruction of the multiethnic societies that had existed in those territories for centuries.

One might think that the idea of partitioning a country along ethnic, or “ethno-religious,” lines is a surprising concept for an Irish-American, like Joe Biden, to hit upon, given the decades of havoc caused by the line that has split Ireland in two since it was drawn on the world map by the British government in 1920. Then again, Joe Biden’s mother’s family, the Blewitts, left Ireland a long time ago, in the 19th century, when it was still in one piece, so perhaps the consequences of that partition are less obvious to him than to those of us born into families that left Ireland more recently. Since my mother was born in Northern Ireland – on the high street of the town of Omagh, which was later torn apart by a bomb planted by fanatical Catholic nationalists that killed and maimed civilians from both communities – I spent a lot of time as a child in the 1970s crossing back and forth across that line sketched out on a piece of paper by some forgotten British bureaucrat, stopping at heavily fortified British Army checkpoints, visiting an uncle and an aunt who lived just a few miles apart, but found themselves one day suddenly living in different countries.

As Christopher Hitchens has rightly pointed out in a series of articles over the last two decades railing against the idea that partition is ever a decent, or effective, solution to sectarian conflict, the main flaw of all partition plans is that those who draw them up implicitly accept the arguments of local segregationists, who claim that it is simply impossible for their people to live in peace with other ethnic or religious groups unless they have their own, separate states – while ignoring the fact that people in these parts of the world had previously been living in relative peace for centuries in multiethnic, often very close-knit communities. When partition is enacted, interwoven ethno-religious groups no longer have to find ways to share power and live together, but are instead invited to drive their neighbors from their homes with threats and violence.

Before the war began in 1992, very few people in Bosnia still defined themselves according to the religion of their forefathers – who were Muslim, Catholic (Croat), or Orthodox (Serb). After decades of communism, religious observance was casual at best and, for most people, what the three groups had in common, all being ethnic Slavs, was much more important than what distinguished them or their ancestors in the past. The population was so thoroughly mixed that on the eve of war, one-third of Bosnians had parents who were from two, rather than one, of the three groups and demographic maps showing which group was the largest in any one part of the country looked much more like Pollacks than Mondrians, with

“Partition of Palestine between Arabs and Jews and the termination of the mandate are recommended by the Royal Commission, whose unanimous report is published to-day. The British Government, in a statement of policy, also issued to-day, accepts the proposal. Partition on the general lines recommended ‘represents,’ it believes, ‘the best and most hopeful solution of the deadlock.’” Seventy years later, we’re still receiving regular updates on the progress toward this “two-state solution,” in a territory now divided into three parts, with the two main ethno-religious groups literally fenced off from one another and the main sticking point in the negotiations still being the right of Arabs to return to the homes they fled or were driven from in the part of the territory assigned to the Jews by that Royal Commission, and then by the U.N., acting on its recommendation.

Ten years later, in May of 1947, the International Herald Tribune reported that “The British Cabinet approved the plan of Viscount Mountbatten of Burma, Viceroy of India, to partition India into Hindu and Moslem areas as a means of organizing the country for its independence by June, 1948.” So the original idea was to spend 13 months figuring out how to divide a territory that had been one country for centuries. Then Louis Mountbatten got impatient and instructed Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a lawyer sent out from Britain to oversee the mapmaking that would split India into India and Pakistan, one state for Hindus and another for Muslims, to get a move on. Radcliffe was given just 36 days to come up with a map. Fortunately, since he was chosen precisely because he knew nothing at all about India – as W.H. Auden wrote in his poem “Partition,” “Unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission,/ Having never set eyes on the land he was called to partition/ Between two peoples fanatically at odds,/ With their different diets and incompatible gods” – Radcliffe wasn’t bogged down by too much information about the towns and villages he separated, and he produced his new map in just 34 days, leaving for home two days early.

A recent BBC report on the anniversary of the partition of India explained what happened next, after the map was announced and Lord Mountbatten, the last British viceroy, left for home: “Astrologers could not decide on an auspicious day for the independence of India so it fell at midnight between 14 and 15 August 1947. The British colony was divided along religious lines and two nations were born - the secular but Hindu-dominated India and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan… As soon as the new borders were known some 10 million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs fled from their homes on one side of the newly demarcated borders to the other side. About one million people were killed during the exodus, and to this day many families are separated by the border.” For an update on

how close these two states are to annihilating one another in a nuclear war now, sixty years later, consult today’s paper.

On the eve of the Iraq invasion, as Paul Wolfowitz responded to charges that the planned occupation force was much too small, he told Congress that Iraq was different from Bosnia because there was no tradition there of ethnic or sectarian warfare. And in a sense he was right. In Iraq, as in Bosnia, for hundreds of years communities of many ethnic groups and many religious sects had lived together in relative peace as citizens of the Ottoman Empire, in which Islam was the established religion, other religions were permitted and ethnic origin was considered unimportant. Which is perhaps one of the reasons that the population of Baghdad before this war was nearly as mixed, in ethnic and religious terms, as the population of Sarajevo in 1992. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, an Iraqi journalist who reports for the Guardian, pointed out in a recent discussion of the idea of partitioning Iraq that, just a few years ago, marriages between Sunni and Shia were much more common in Baghdad than anywhere else in the Muslim world.

In the end the rule for dividing countries is simple: the more mixed the population, the more bloody the process of tearing it apart. So, for the most part, the very north, the very south and the far west of Iraq could be sliced off from each other about as easily as the Czechs and the Slovaks split apart Czechoslovakia by mutual assent in the 1990s. But the center of Iraq, in particular the regions around Baghdad and close to the oil fields in the north, are as diverse as the center of Bosnia before four years of brutal ethnic cleansing made the redrawing of the demographic maps possible. If the U.S. eventually adopts the “divide and quit” solution to get out of Iraq, ignoring what happened before the ‘soft’ partition of Bosnia and after the much harder partitions of Ireland, Palestine and India, one thing is certain: the violence necessary to pull Iraq completely apart at the seams will eventually make the first four years of this war look like one big cakewalk.

unembedded independent photojournalists in Iraq

SADR CITY, BAGHDAD, AUGUST 7, 2004A young boy watches his relatives repair a rocket-propelled grenade launcher in the home of a Mahdi Army fighter.Photo by Thorne Anderson

RASHAD PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL, BAGHDAD, APRIL 15, 2004Patients had few activities to occupy them. One was watch-ing television, which included the Coalition Provisional Authority’s daily live broadcasts and updates to the press. On this day, General Richard Myers, the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, was fielding questions on how he proposed to address the rising insurgency, especially Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. Myers underplayed the threat of the insurgents. A few months later the hospital grounds would shake from nearby bombs, and mortars would land in its courtyard as coalition forces fought the Mahdi Army right outside the hospital gates.Photo by Rita Leistner

< Prior page: NAJAF, AUGUST 27, 2004Picking through the wreckage of battle in Najaf. Photo by Thorne Anderson

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BAGHDAD, SEPTEMBER 12, 2004A young Iraqi civilian lies dead in Haifa Street as a U.S. armored personnel carrier burns in the background. Twenty-two Iraqi civilians were killed and forty-eight injured when U.S. helicopters opened fire on crowds celebrating around the burning vehicle, which was disabled by an insurgent attack. No American soldiers were killed in the fighting.Photo by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

SADR CITY, BAGHDAD, JULY 15, 2004Women squeeze into a car on their way to a henna party, the Iraqi equivalent of a bridal shower, after they have had makeup applied in a salon. They ride behind tinted windows to protect their modesty.Photo by Kael Alford

NAJAF, AUGUST 21, 2004A father shows his hand to snipers as he carries his terrified child across the front line between U.S. forces and the Mahdi Army at the wrecked outskirts of the old city.Photo by Kael Alford

RASHAD PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL, BAGHDAD, APRIL 17, 2004A young patient, newly arrived from the southern Shiite town of Karbala, pleads to go home: “I don’t belong here. Please don’t make me spend the rest of my life here.”Photo by Rita Leistner

> Following page: NAJAF, AUGUST 27, 2004A lone man walks through a devastated business and residential street west of the Imam Ali shrine. The street was a frontline fighting position for the American Army and Mahdi Army fighters during a nearly three-week battle that left much of the old city and surrounding neighborhoods in ruins. A peace deal, brokered by Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani with the militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, allowed residents to emerge from refuge outside the city or hiding within it to survey their homes and businesses in the battleground.Photo by Thorne Anderson