The Vietnam War and Conceptual Art

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Throughout this past term we grained a deeper understanding regarding the events of the Vietnam War and the meaning of Conceptual Art.

Vietnam War

After focusing on these subjects, we then took what we learned and created a piece of conceptual art telling a story about some aspect of the Vietnam war. For my piece of conceptual art I decided to create a immersive projection experience representing the media’s influence on the American’s perspective during the war. Here is a short video of the projections that were shown:

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Now let’s take a look at the research and steps I took to get to this final conceptual art piece. During the research process about the Vietnam War we focused on 7 main themes of the Vietnam War including:

The forces that fuelled the Vietnam War

Popular beliefs and Misconceptions

Leadership and Decision Making

Who Fought in the Vietnam War 

How the War Was Fought 

Propaganda, Truth, and the Media

The War at Home

I really find learning about 20th century history interesting so I really enjoyed this entire year as we learned about the 1950s, 60s, and part way through the 70s. When learning about the Vietnam war it was a little confusing to me at times as the ethics of the war is highly debated. When I was doing research and trying to find different sources it was interesting to see the differing of opinions during the war from different perspectives. These differing opinions were one of the parts that fuelled my conceptual art.

On top of learning about the Vietnam War we also depended our learning about the true meaning behind conceptual art. This type of art is very different from the traditional definition of what we think of when we look at art. At first when we started learning about it I was kind of confused myself about this type of art, asking questions and making statements like “Is that really art? I could make that and how on earth does that thing really have a deeper meaning?” However the more we learning about the art the more I started to understand that conceptual art isn’t about the art itself but the story behind it that is being portrayed. Conceptual art is make to create a conception between the art and the audience and provoke some sort of emotion. 

Here is an example of conceptual art:

Soul City (Pyramid of Oranges)
Roelof Louw
1967

To really bring this understanding to life we visited a conceptual art exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery to take a look at some famous pieces of conceptual art and look at the story the t was being presented by the artists. I wasn’t really knowing what to expect as well conceptual art can really be anything. Here are a couple photos of some of the pieces that were displayed at the art gallery:

Once we established a deeper understanding about the Vietnam War and conceptual art, it was time to start thinking of ideas to combined the two. To cap off the year we finished with a conceptual art piece showing our learning and understanding of a specific aspect of the Vietnam War. I decided to focus on the war back home specifically the media’s influence on the American’s perfective during this time. This is the part I wanted to focus on because it seemed like the most interesting to me. Drawing upon various different perspectives during this time including the American citizens perspective of being able to see the war from their very own living room. 

The more I began to research into this part of the war, the more I started to incorporate various elements we learned about into the point I wanted to get across. After reading various primary sources including journals, website articles and other trusted sources I created my thesis for my art. I also wrote up paragraphs on the historical evidence I included, the emotion I wanted to provoke and how I wanted to feel. Here is my conceptual art deep think, art proposal, historical statement and artist statement:

The wall of projections is a piece that focuses in on the horror and devastation of the My Lai Massacre. Emphasizing how the media had a massive influence on the American perspective. The projected photos are those form journalist on the scene showing the terror that arose in the village of My Lai. The words displayed on the screen are headlines of newspapers and quotes for the American army and Vietnamese survivors, showing the perspective from the people at the massacre that was heard from, the general public. The constant change in directions of the images and texts show the differing perspectives of the people influence by various sources. At the time the government was saying a completely different story than the media who where showing the true horror of what was happening in Vietnam. As the war was known as the war on television my piece is solely projections showing the true effect the media had on the American’s perspective.
During the 1960s and 1970s media had a huge influence on the Americans perspective during the Vietnam war. With more than 90% of U.S. households having a television by 1965 and as much as 60% of people getting their news from what they saw on tv, the media played a key role of informing people towards the true horror of the war. Throughout this time technologies also began to become more portable and light weight making it easy for journalists to capture the reality of the fighting occurring in Vietnam. One of the event s that had a massive effect on the American people through the use of the media coverage was the My Lai Massacre, one of the most “horrific incidents of violence” (history.com) during the Vietnam war. American soldiers killed an estimated 500 civilians in the village of My Lai including children, women and elders. The army tried to cover the story up however the media and press eventually revealed the incident in November 1969 fuelling the anti war movement and protests. The publicity of the My Lai Massacre was released at a time when the government was trying to seek support of the war during nationwide Veterans Day. The number of veteran day supports didn’t come close to matching the number of anti war protestors. The horrific truths shown by the media made it so Americans saw every side of the war, even when the government was trying to cover it up. People were shocked and angry by what was happening right in front of their eyes. This directly lead to the massive movement where tens fo thousands of people protested various times to put an end to the war. One of the most famous protests was at Kent State University where college students whom were at the age mainly effected by the draft protested to stop the war. During the protest national guards were called to stop the protest leading to the shooting of 4 students. This shocked the US as it went against the country’s democracy which states that everyone has the right to protest bringing up big issues within the United States in a way bringing up a question fo why would America be fighting in this war if there are issues within the United States. The massive movements and questioning against the United States’ involvement in Vietnam was all caused by the fact that the Vietnam War was showed for all of America to see the brutality and horror of War through television and journalism.

Before creating my art piece I had various ideas as to what type of art I wanted to display. However to create this visual presentation I had to come up with the story first, aka finding the idea behind the art. Once I had my story regarding the media’s influence, I started brainstorming ideas. While letting my creative juices flow I recalled an art piece at The Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg which used projected words and a massive screen. This inspired the direction in which I wanted to go with my art piece, I decided I was going to use projections and visuals I created to get my point across of the media’s influence on the American’s perspective during the Vietnam War. Focusing on the My Lai Massacre, I showed visuals of the horrific tragedy of the massacre in a disorienting way. Using keynote I created a video with images from the My Lai massacre shown in all different directions, upside-down, right side up, and flipped horizontally. This created a disorienting effect which was to represent the various different perspectives and confusing during this time in history. I also created visuals using quotes from newspapers, soldiers, and Vietnamese people and showed words that describe what happened. When I finished creating my conceptual art it consisted of 3 projections, two of which had 9 various images and quotes displayed at one time and the third with words describing the incident. 

Below is one of the videos that was displayed on the screen:

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After creating these visuals I was ready to put them together to create my conceptual art for exhibition night. When I first went to set up my piece there were a couple complications regarding set up and how I could create an immersive experience using 3 projectors and 3 projector screens. I ended up setting the projectors up in a semi box shape them I used a white photography sheet over the projectors to make it look like one screen. Overall I’m very happy with how my piece ended up looking, However if I would have done this to a larger scale in a professional gallery I would have liked to use more projections on the ceiling and floor to make an experience that is fully immersive and shows the true horror of the Vietnam War. I also regret not taking a lot of photos in the moments of creation as I would have liked to display them within this post.

 While people were walking threw the exhibition I explained my concept art to them by sharing the idea and story and how that created the concept art. It was very interesting hearing opinions and feedback on my art as a bunch of the visitors to our exhibition were alive around the time of the Vietnam war. One conversation I had with an older man was very insightful, listening to what it was actually like to see the horrific images displayed on television. This was probably one of my favourite exhibitions that I’ve done with PLP as I was able to have deep and meaningful conversations with people regarding the Vietnam War. 

Following this exhibition and reflecting back on the process of this project really showed me the great lengths of learning I did through the entirety of this unit. I especially found it interesting to bind together two drastically different areas (aka the Vietnam War and Conceptual Art) and create a project that helped me understand the topics on a completely different level. Within this project I was able to advance my video creation, editing and technology based skills. Including also making real world connection and a truly deeper understanding to the events that took place in the Vietnam War. I will definitely look to apply the skills I’ve learned in this project to my work in following years. 

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