Study for a Flag

 

Study for a flag, version 2

Study for a Flag. A flag of resistance. 

Since early in the year, I've been looking for, and playing with options for displaying an American flag that communicates something about the current state of the country.

I remember first seeing an upside down American flag in the TV miniseries Amerika starring Kris Kristofferson. 

Promotional graphic for Amerika

This was in 1987, and I found it a powerful image. I think it was attached to a vehicle in a commercial I saw. I soon learned of its significance to communicate distress. This signal has been displayed much in recent years...and much in recent months by political partisans across the spectrum.

It's not the signal I'm interested in sending. I guess it's fitting, to flip the flag, but I worry it undercuts the significance of the intended gesture in the service of demonstrating displeasure. It's also lost that shocking impact I felt upon first seeing it. I will say that we are in a state of existential distress of the kind I've certainly not known. 

I first envisioned a shroud for the flag; something that signals something not quite right, something that has changed. The thought being the shroud is transparent, but slightly obscuring, but also protective; a covering that can be removed once sanity has been regained, and the threat of stain has receded. 

First version of the study.

My first question was what color would the shroud take. I chose black for the first parry, even though it evokes a sense of mourning that I want to avoid. It's not unfitting to acknowledge a sense of mourning, but I don't want to connote a sense of resignation or concession. White is another option, and I may try that too for another iteration to see for myself, but that option seemed to me to convey another level of. acquiescence.

Just in the last week or so, I happened upon the flag of the Sons of Liberty. An array of vertical stripes, five red, four white, known as the Rebellious Stripes, sometimes adorned with the segmented snake of the first colonies, sometimes plain. 

Those Rebellious Stripes are embedded in our American Flag and I knew they could be foregrounded. I'm now thinking of the version of the USS Enterprise in the Next Generation Series that in times of high conflict, would be separated, with the "saucer" of the ship holding the command deck would advance on it's own as a more nimble war vessel, preserving the extended crew and families in the section left behind. A tenuous comparison, but the point is that the signs for action, for rebellion, are embedded in the DNA of the image. 

With this alteration, I feel I've arrived at a point near completion. It brings what felt passive to something much more active. The contrast between the shrouded composition and the naked red and white stripes is stark and jarring. Front and center is the coursing blood and rigid bone of resistance that rests at the heart of what this corpus is intended to be made. It's an act of preserving the essence of the whole while showing one's intentionally Rebellious Stripes.

Time to scale up and play more with materials. I expect to have a large version ready to display on October 18th for the No Kings observance.

Study for a flag - Rebellious Stripes.