Sharrod (Turn/Twirl)
2011
HD Digital Video
Continuous Loop
From Jason Lahman’s essay The Warriors’ Turn: Compassion and Control in Jason Hanasik’s Militaria for Art21
“The body of a soldier is not his own. The body in service to the nation is the representative of an idealized form with a set of particular functions connected to the programs of peace-keeping/warfare. In his classic text Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault discusses at length the way the human body of the warrior is programmed to be the component of a larger machine, to immediately respond with particular moves to command signals. This draws in a closely-related subject of memorized movement: dance. Authors as far back as Plato (in his discussion of the pyrrhic dances) have pointed out that dance and military maneuvers have a long, entangled lineage. Through the calculations of gesture many bodies become one–or at least create the appearance of oneness.
In the film-loop "Sharrod (Turn/Twirl)" the subject is recorded as he turns 360 degrees while holding himself in the position of salute. In the small room at Krowswork where this was projected, I had the feeling that I was some sort of a clinician watching for the slightest twitch, an authority figure judging the ability of the cadet to maintain his posture. The sheer tedium of this performance becomes a kind of yogic exercise for the watcher–and fascination leads to other emotional responses: pity, respect, horror, consternation. Issues of age, class, gender, race, authority, and tradition flash like little sparks, troubling the surface of appearances. One wonders what the REAL story of this man/child is. How is it that we as a culture give so little thought to the actual lived experiences of those in the armed services? What hopes, impulses, feelings are flowing beneath the crystal surface of Sharrod’s eyes? I was surprised at the compassion this footage elicited in me, not because I felt bad for Sharrod, but because it suddenly became clear to me how much energy all of us exert performing our “selves” in order to manifest that image which the gaze of others has necessitated.”