Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991–2011 was an exhibition at MoMA PS1 that looked at how over 80 artists from the Gulf and across the West had responded to the prolonged military conflict in the region. Other Means designed the catalog, which was conceived as a reader pairing newly commissioned texts with essays and blog posts written during the wars.
Appropriate Appropriation
As kids in the early ’90s, we experienced the Gulf War through the jingoistic T-shirts, trading cards, and on-air graphics that flooded the U.S. market. This visual language felt like an obvious jumping-off point for our design process.
However, once we started sketching, this appropriation felt like condoning, or even celebrating, the fanatical patriotism of the era instead of critiquing it.
Instead, we copied the typography of Foreign Affairs, a neoliberal think tank publication that was hawkish on the war with Iraq, as if it were a new journal called Theater of Operations. For the reprinted texts, we referenced the editorial typography of print journalism from the time.
In our early conversations with the curators, we discussed the rich history of publishing and bookmaking in Iraq, and knew we wanted the object-ness of the book to recall this tradition. By combining all of these references, the catalog feels stuck in a specific point in time, like a war that has officially ended but whose effects will haunt the future.
As kids in the early ’90s, we experienced the Gulf War through the jingoistic T-shirts, trading cards, and on-air graphics that flooded the U.S. market. This visual language felt like an obvious jumping-off point for our design process.
However, once we started sketching, this appropriation felt like condoning, or even celebrating, the fanatical patriotism of the era instead of critiquing it.
Instead, we copied the typography of Foreign Affairs, a neoliberal think tank publication that was hawkish on the war with Iraq, as if it were a new journal called Theater of Operations. For the reprinted texts, we referenced the editorial typography of print journalism from the time.
In our early conversations with the curators, we discussed the rich history of publishing and bookmaking in Iraq, and knew we wanted the object-ness of the book to recall this tradition. By combining all of these references, the catalog feels stuck in a specific point in time, like a war that has officially ended but whose effects will haunt the future.
As kids in the early ’90s, we experienced the Gulf War through the jingoistic T-shirts, trading cards, and on-air graphics that flooded the U.S. market. This visual language felt like an obvious jumping-off point for our design process.
However, once we started sketching, this appropriation felt like condoning, or even celebrating, the fanatical patriotism of the era instead of critiquing it.
Instead, we copied the typography of Foreign Affairs, a neoliberal think tank publication that was hawkish on the war with Iraq, as if it were a new journal called Theater of Operations. For the reprinted texts, we referenced the editorial typography of print journalism from the time.
In our early conversations with the curators, we discussed the rich history of publishing and bookmaking in Iraq, and knew we wanted the object-ness of the book to recall this tradition. By combining all of these references, the catalog feels stuck in a specific point in time, like a war that has officially ended but whose effects will haunt the future.
Applications
The catalog employs a sober typographic language lifted from Foreign Affairs, an academic policy journal that was hawkish on the war. Reprinted texts appear in a style reminiscent of mainstream print media from the time. The artworks run alongside these texts in chronological order, disrupting the flow of information while unfolding the narrative of this prolonged conflict through artists’ responses to it.
