Art Encounter: Paul Chan, New Orleans, & Baghdad

Paul Chan’s work has enlightened my existence as a film student by showing what first appears as simplicity, may really contain. Specifically in Waiting for Godot and Baghdad in No Particular Order, Chan creates a work of art in just a few steps. For Baghdad, it required a camera and plane tickets to Iraq, and what unfolded was a snapshot of time before Iraq’s current existence, a state of war. For Godot, Chan repurposes a play and an outdoor space in which to produce it. However, there is obviously more than meets the eye in regards to the simplicity of Chan’s artwork. So instead of discussing simplicity, the work Chan produces is more about the impact that such simple ideas can hold.

Of course, Paul Chan’s projects are never confined to just one “part.” Baghdad also applies a website with a profound abundance of information, leading the viewer of the website to countless sources of information. The typical viewer of a film may peruse the internet for more information on a film he or she enjoyed or wanted to learn more about, but usually just finds information on the cast and crew and what the star of the film is doing next. But Chan’s site has more impact, it delivers extra information that furthers the film’s agenda. The agenda is not to sway or persuade the viewer, but to give a translation of what he encountered while creating his work. This concept of translation is even stronger in Waiting for Godot.

So much of what the modern individual learns is from a corporate media, whose goal is to quickly inform with minute detail, as to fit in enough commercial advertising between the sports report and weather report. Hurricane Katrina is no different, after countless news reports, Dateline specials, Presidential addresses, and watching Oprah travel to the Superdome, New Orleans is still waiting to be rebuilt to a point where its previous inhabitants can return knowing that their city will be there, although never the same. Paul Chan may have had this in mind when he decided to use Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. For those citizens of New Orleans who already returned or who never left, the “wait” needed to be addressed. While the production itself is simple, only requiring two main actors, “a country road, a tree, evening,” Godot had an impact on the community, who immediately recognized the relevance of the play. When a local play appears in a baptist ministers sermon, it is quite obvious that the community can feel the impact that a play can hold. Of course, all plays can be interpreted in different ways, but to citizens of a destroyed hometown, the interpretation is along the same general lines. The citizens of New Orleans are questioning why they are waiting for their home to be built, and what the chances of reconstruction occuring are. The relation to the play is so profound, it almost seems as if Waiting for Godot was written right after Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans, not over fifty years ago. However, patience is constantly questioned, as it is human nature to constantly move and renew.

Chan’s work’s use simplicity in execution to empower simple concepts that have the impact of a meteor, whether we question our reasons for war on people that seem shockingly familiar, or we question our constant battle with patience. Battling with patience is even more difficult when the wait is for something that isn’t clear when it will happen or what it will be. Will New Orleans be a dystopian wasteland, will it take its destruction as a chance to improve, or will it simply exist as a collective of people waiting for some sort of answer as to what to do next?