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HAPPENINGS

By S.G
Fri, 04, 17

Guernica, a mural-sized painting by Pablo Picasso, was such a powerful anti-war painting that Colin Powell, the US national security advisor in 2003, had to hide it in the UN when he was there to present his case for the war.

Art and modern solutions

Guernica, a mural-sized painting by Pablo Picasso, was such a powerful anti-war painting that Colin Powell, the US national security advisor in 2003, had to hide it in the UN when he was there to present his case for the war. The mural is painted in grey, black and white and showed pictures of people suffering violence, dead bodies of horses and flame. Though it was painted in 1935 in response to the bombing of Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, it stills resonates with the people. When the painting was hung in an exhibition, a staff officer pointed at the painting Guernica and asked Picasso, “Did you do this?”

Picasso said bitterly, “No, you did it!”

An artist is after all known for his/her sensitivity; Picasso’s Guernica became a symbol of protest against war and the tragedy it brings.

HAPPENINGS

Before getting into advertising, Ali Rez, a creative director and one of the top 10 creatives in the world according to the Big Won report, also wanted to make something like Guernica. But then, he realized that advertisement is actually a modern form of art that could greatly influence people. Everything we use from toothpaste in the morning to the moisturizer we apply before going to bed is the result of advertisements we watch.

Ali Rez at Pakistan @70 LSE summit organized by Aman Foundation and South Asian Centre, LSE at the Institute of Business Administration, Karachi talked about how some of his art projects staged protest, moved authorities and helped change mindsets.

#BeatMe

Ali and his team talked to women about domestic violence and they were shocked by the responses they collected. A huge percentage of women think they should be beaten! Ali thought why not deal with this problem in a different way.

Whatever protest has been done in this regard have proved to be ineffective because it showed women as weak and vulnerable begging for sympathy and protection. So, in the project #BeatMe by UN women, Ali showcased powerful women inviting men to beat them - but at things they were good at. With the intention of changing the mindset of people, this campaign was a unique protest against domestic violence.

Team went to parks where they asked men to beat Naseem Hameed by running 100 meters in less than 11.81 seconds. Not a single man could beat her! They couldn’t believe a woman could be that fast. The realization that they could be beaten too helped change their mindset.

Exchange for change

This project was done for Citizens Archive of Pakistan to bring together Indian and Pakistani students to promote peace between Pakistan and India. The plan was to have a cricket match at Wagah border. At first, the guards were reluctant, but then they thought what harm it could bring if children from the two countries play cricket here. The next day, this project made headlines in the newspapers in Pakistan and India.

#NotaBugSplat

Drone strikes are a modern problem; as a modern form of warfare, it only requires the drone operator to hold the trigger thousand miles away. The operator is completely oblivious to the screams and of course the faces of the people they are bombing. In military slang, these operators call their targets “bug splat”.

#NotABugSplat, an art project, was a protest against the controversial US drone program in Pakistan’s tribal region that was killing innocent citizens. A giant poster with the girl’s face, whose family had been killed by a strike, was unfurled in a heavily bombed region of Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa; Ali says, “When viewed by a drone camera, an operator sees the girl’s face instead of an anonymous dot on the landscape.”Her message was “I am a human being, not a bug splat!”

All this happened under the simple hashtag “NotABugSplat” and the campaign went viral overnight. It was discussed in the National Assembly; every news channel and website covered it; and most importantly, the drone operators also noticed this and realized what they were doing is inhuman.