Now More Than Ever (Change Without Chaos)

Tony Schwensen

Notes from the artist:

This project grew out of my need as a resident alien to better understand the political history and landscape of the United States. Living in the US whilst the election campaign of 2008 unfolded, my lack of knowledge of the system's machinations as well as the cruciality of media representation for any candidate, led me to begin researching the history of televisual presidential campaigning in the US. What is generally regarded as the watershed moment of television in terms of political representation in the US is the first presidential debate between the Vice President Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy in 1960. Nixon chronically misunderstood the power and function of his mediated image, and this is considered to be the decisive moment of both this campaign and the future of presidential campaigning in the US. His failure here intrigued me.

I was intrigued by the ongoing negative depictions of Richard Nixon in the work of Matt Groening, as well as what I interpreted to be the idolisation of previous presidents, akin somewhat to worship ( there is perhaps no separation of church and state, in fact the state can be viewed as the church and it is worshipped as a god in many ways). I needed to understand the what how and why of Nixon, and began an extensive program of investigation, reading all of his writings, reading psycho-biographies, histories and interpretations, both historic and contemporary and reading broadly across the impact of Nixon on and into the US.

Being Australian, where corruption is in some way accepted or expected, I struggled to understand why Nixon was so demonised. After all, he is only the President who got caught. In the words of John Lydon, no one is innocent.

I had a moment of realisation about the necessity of a demonised Nixon in and for the history and psyche of the Unites States whilst looking up at The Apotheosis of Washington, the fresco painted by Constantino Brumidi in 1865 and visible through the oculus of the dome in the rotunda of the United States Capitol Building. This mural depicts George Washington literally becoming a god, surrounded by thirteen maidens. And in the manner of Yin Yang, if one has a god, one requires a devil.

My readings of and about Nixon led me to reflect upon his achievements in terms of foreign policy, specifically in regard to China.

Nixon's overture to the Chinese government, his meeting with Mao in Beijing in 1972 certainly heralded the beginning of global economic engagement for China , perhaps foreshadowing the decline of the US as a manufacturing powerhouse. But certainly an achievement.

One of the direct knock ons from this was the gifting to the United States of panda bears, the opening of panda diplomacy. And wonderfully, or woefully, Nixon reciprocated with two Musk Oxen, one of whom died immediately on arrival in China and the other of which lost all of its hair.

Again whilst walking through the mall in Washington, DC, and looking at the Washington Monument and the Lincoln memorial, I experienced another realisation. The panda bears in the zoos of the United Sates, can and perhaps should be regarded as the Nixon memorials.

This is apt in many ways, especially when one considers the interrelationship between Nixon's initial inability, grappling with and consequent failure to understand incorporate and sublimate the televisual presence necessary for a contemporary politician, definitely from 1960 onwards ( footage of Nixon's resignation speech in 1974 is more than indicative of his return to 1960 form), and the panda's inability to adapt, evolve in a Darwinian usage of the word, as perhaps best expressed by British wildlife presenter Chris Packham who described pandas as being' a species that, of its own accord, has gone down an evolutionary cul-de-sac.”

It could be argued that Nixon too is an example of a politician who meandered down an evolutionary cul de sac, and given the linkages between the two, it seemed an appropriate basis from which to commence an investigation, which has manifested as a series of portraits of pandas, each named for members of the Nixon administration and a performance.