"YOU CAN KILL A MAN WITH A PENCIL":
REPORTAGE FROM THE FRONT LINE OF THE PEACE MOVEMENT

It was a policeman at Faslane military base, home of the UK’s Trident nuclear missile submarines, who said “You can kill a man with a pencil” when he removed my drawing equipment.  He had arrested me for lying in the road as part of a blockade of the base.  I doubt you can kill anyone with a pencil, though you could commit genocide with the weapons at Faslane, however his words provide an interesting provocation about the power invested in designers and artists.  Although all weapons are designed few designers probably aspire to design things that kill.  However some art and design practitioners claim powers from the opposite end of the spectrum, to prevent war single-handed, with the dexterity of their art harnessed to a peaceable ethic. 

This paper presents practice-based research about war-reportage that questions such pretensions.  It begins by tracing the history of reportage, from its inception in Soviet Russia where its radical potential derived from collective experience, to the present, where its status is linked to objective detachment.  The war artist is a heroic practitioner, going into war zones to reveal their horrors and re-present them as art.  However as Susan Sontag suggests (2004) this tactic clearly hasn’t prevented war.  The paper discusses Sergei Tretyakov’s early Soviet reportage where the practice of reportage and activism were indivisible.

The paper concludes with a discussion of research based on my reportage practice – drawing while taking part in non violent direct action against the UK’s weapons of mass destruction.   Influenced by Tretyakov in replacing detached observation of war with peace activism, this research aims to challenge war through collective protest.  Through analysing the drawings the paper discusses problems and potentials in this approach.

Bibliography
Tretyakov, Sergei (1927/1992) ‘We Are Searching’ and ‘We Raise the Alarm’ from Harrison C and Wood P (eds) Art in Theory 1900-1990, Oxford: Blackwell