“Future Fear: The Flood Reimagined,”
A Master of Divinity thesis exhibition of Xerox transfer prints on paper
that explore contemporary and historical images of apocalypse.
Exhibition March 19-30, 2007
Union Theological Seminary’s James Memorial Chapel.
John Shorb
Filed under: Apocalyptic art, James Chapel, M.Div Thesis Project, Union Seminary | Leave a Comment
My Statement
When we open the newspaper or any news website today, we find articles portending the world’s end in various ways: global warming, oil peaking, disease spreading, war overtaking. Many voices warn us that we are living in extraordinarily turbulent times.
Yet we know that the Bible is packed full of wars, ecological destruction, and social upheaval. While our contemporary social locations are vastly different from the Hebrew Bible context, we live amidst strong tendencies toward apocalyptic vision. This apocalypse focuses on social ills, environmental collapse, and U.S. imperialism. It has its own prophet-saints (Al Gore, Cindy Sheehan, Ralph Nader) who attract fervent believers.
Twentieth-century theologian Karl Barth famously said that theology should be done with the newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other (Time, May 31, 1963). I have taken this edict literally. My artwork, Xerox-transfer prints on paper, has two main elements: three 15-foot scrolls that hang from the columns and 13 pieces on the wall. They reflect contemporary and historical images of apocalypse, mixing passages from the Bible and other ancient sources with contemporary media images taken from The New York Times and Google. By using only black and white, I wanted to create a graphically dynamic piece reminiscent of political posters — something that you may see on the street, and that has been used since the origin of printing.
I have concentrated mainly on the Flood story from Genesis 6 and other Hebrew Bible connections to apocalypse. I see the Flood story as an origin of apocalypse, as the first genocide in the Bible, and as an environmental disaster. The three main scrolls depict different themes: war, environmental disaster, and disease. These themes surround us daily. The United States is presently involved in a war in Iraq and has a military presence in Afghanistan. Environmental collapse often seems imminent: hurricanes multiplying, polar caps melting, water rising. We have consistently heard reports about the spread of bird flu, HIV/AIDS, mad cow disease, Ebola, and other diseases. These scrolls take on these contemporary apocalyptic strains and link them to biblical and ancient stories of apocalypse.
Sometimes we might believe that we are causing the end of the world. At other times, it all seems cyclical without such dire implications. My work is a meditation on the fragility and strength of our world. We live through floods, wars, and disease, yet we continue to fear the unknown future — repeatedly imagining the end of our world.
Filed under: Apocalypse, Bible, Disaster, Disease, Flood, Genesis 6, War | 1 Comment
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