Here is my recommended song for this post.

So, for the last month and a half of school this year, we have been learning about the Vietnam War and conceptual art. Weird combo right?

When we first began the unit I had very little knowledge about the Vietnam War. It’s been one of the few wars I haven’t really researched or looked at on my own. So I was entering into the unit very differently than I have entered similar units in the past.  We began by looking at conceptual art first though. We looked at what the art actually is and what we have to do to gear our minds towards creating conceptual art. After learning this we knew that we were creating conceptual art as our end product for the unit and we knew it would be presented at the Spring Exhibition.

After doing some preliminary learning about conceptual art we went to go see actual conceptual art at the Vancouver Art Gallery. It was an interesting experience. At first I wasn’t a big fan of it and found it just a collection of random stuff thrown into a room but a few weeks later I realized it was pretty helpful in inspiring what I was creating.

After visiting the Art Gallery, Willemse and Hughes left to take the Grade 10’s on a 10 day trip around BC. So we were left with a ton of work to do. We spent the classes, with them away, learning the ins and outs of the war. We were given a very detailed section in our course that covered everything from the French colonial rule to the Pentagon Papers. That time was really just to absorb as much information as possible so they we would be prepared for our projects and gain the knowledge we are supposed to gain from the unit. I had a lot of fun just learning about Vietnam and building my knowledge base.

When Hughes and Willemse got back we were fully introduced to what the project would entail. We were to each create a piece of conceptual art that addressed ethical judgements about the Vietnam War. We had to make it an interactive piece that showcases what we have learned as well as explore the deeper topics of the war.

The week we were first introduced to the project I spent a lot of time discussing the war with my dad who has been interested in the war in past. From those discussions about the events of the war I started to formulate my ideas for my art installation.

I’ve always been interested in the soldier experience of the war and how that impacted the war. I love watching movies or reading books about the physical fighting of war and the different events in history pertaining to it. So I thought it would be cool to look into Vietnam and the soldier’s experience in the country.

Based on my research into soldier accounts the main thing I gathered about the jungle fighting in Vietnam was that it was claustrophobic. The Viet Cong fought within 5 feet or so of the American forces, the jungle was super dense and the soldiers there were trapped in going on patrols and staying in the jungle for weeks. It was like a vacuum sucking people in.

After finding that as my base idea I started to look at how it transferred elsewhere in the war and realized the whole thing was one giant claustrophobic experience. With the Americans in Vietnam, the Viet Cong had infiltrated everywhere even the ARVN forces. The country was all working to close in on the westerners and push them out. Then with the presidents back in America, they were stuck in the mess of the Vietnam War and couldn’t get out until they left office. The public was so unhappy with the the war they were breathing down the back of each president involved. Many people felt trapped and cramped when it came to the war.

Once I had that full scope of my idea I started to look at how I was going to make that come alive. I came up with the idea of creating a tunnel type thing. I wanted to use this old green canvas tarp I had (turns out I didn’t have it anymore) and set it up to appear normal and then underneath have another tarp that slowly closed in until you became trapped.

After a lot of tweaking I changed it to just being a single tarp that appeared fine on the outside while inside I created this dark vacuum, with sound and sight and touch.

I spent the week before the exhibition putting my plan into action. It was a very busy week so I didn’t actually test it until the night before. Before that though I created the soundscape. I took an audio clip of Walter Cronkite detailing the war after his time in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive. I also found some jungle noises to include as well. The way I decided to set it up was to have speakers playing the jungle noises as you enter into the tunnel and at the very end Walter Cronkite would give his blurb. The purpose behind that was to give that sense of the parallel between the jungle and the US and to create that sense of entrapment through sound.

Now for the actual test of setting the whole thing up. I spent 4 hours trying to set up a free standing tarp that narrowed as well as lining it with black plastic and making it so anyone would be able to physically enter it. A lot of different ideas were thrown about between me, my dad and a family friend who happened to be around at the time. Eventually we created the final thing I set up for the exhibition.

Now the Exhibition was a whole other story. As soon as the 3:00 bell rung it was go, go, go until everything was set up. I spent the first hour and a half clearing the room so I could build my installation. Then I ran into a couple problems actually setting it up. First I wasn’t fully prepared for the different floor so I had to spend some time positioning tent poles so they were set up the right way. Then it was super saggy and was on the verge of collapsing so, from the help of my dad fresh out of the office, my friend Pascal from Germany and Kate. We finally got it figured out. The 2.5 hours before the exhibition were probably some of the most stressful in the last month or so.

The whole exhibition was a big success and a lot of people understood my art and were able to take away the feelings I intended to get across. Overall I was really proud of my project. I had a lot of fun doing the actual unit, building the installation and just exploring different ideas with it. I also really enjoy having those rushes of stress, I don’t know why, but the exhibition was a challenge and I had a lot of fun working at it. I think my biggest take away from this unit was the idea of going deeper with ideas and knowledge. Not to just brush at the surface like a Wikipedia page but to explore the different ideas and opinions across the board. This project forced me to do that and I found it to be helpful for me to learn something a different, unique way. I plan on taking that skill and applying it further to my next projects in Grade 12.