Shock & Awe by Ethan Rafal – San Francisco-based artist and book maker

Join us for a presentation of Ethan Rafal’s Shock and Awe. A twelve-year, autobiographical project examining the relationship between protracted war and homeland decay, Shock and Awe is a meticulously crafted image, text, and found object journal that blurs the line between author and subject, and personal and authoritative histories. Completed over countless years traveling the United States, the project pulls from the traditions of documentary photography and writing set on the American road.

Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the work, the book presentation is both a reading, and a show-and-tell. The performance will last approximately 40 minutes, followed by an open discussion about the issues explored in the project.

Ethan Rafal is an artist and photographer based in San Francisco. His work deals with the individual and collective experience of violence, and the ways in which subsequent representations of violence inform personal and national mythologies. Photography is an essential ingredient in his practice, due to the unique relationship between image and violence, but his work employs performance, installation, video, new-media, and social-practice methodologies. He teaches, mentors, helps run an art space, and collaborates with Art For a Democratic Society in the Bay Area, where he has been based since 2007. He attended Reed College.

This event is free and open to the public. There will be walnut pie.

More info about the project:
http://ethanrafal.com/

Video: https://vimeo.com/49786000

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