Hold your Gun Arm Steady to Keep the Color of the Flower: The Propeller Group and Le Brothers

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Bibliographische Detailangaben
Beteiligte: Hatton, Brynn
In: Journal of Visual Culture, 17, 2018, 3, S. 286-298
veröffentlicht:
SAGE Publications
Medientyp: Artikel, E-Artikel

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Umfang: 286-298
ISSN: 1470-4129
1741-2994
DOI: 10.1177/1470412918802670
veröffentlicht in: Journal of Visual Culture
Sprache: Englisch
Schlagwörter:
Kollektion: SAGE Publications (CrossRef)
Inhaltsangabe

<jats:p> This article analyzes artistic interpretations of the AK-47 and M16 by two contemporary collectives based in Vietnam, The Propeller Group and Le Brothers (active 2006-present and 2008-present). The American-made M16 and the Soviet-made AK-47 rifles were both mass-produced in the 1950s and popularized during the Cold War, and served as shorthand visual cultural cues signaling political affiliation with either bloc. By returning to these loaded icons of violence and political solidarity, and employing tactics of Third Cinema films and manifestoes of the late 1960s in which gun imagery and metaphors are pervasive, both artist collectives decouple the iconic rifles from their historical entrenchments and open up new spaces for reimagining political kinship in the era of transnationalism by way of globalized capitalism. </jats:p>