Louis in Lusaka: Sleeping bombs: Security blankets

My mother, Barbara Todd, and I have been planning Sleeping bombs: Security blankets for several weeks. The project will utilize the connections I have with Mines Action Canada interns and other disarmament campaigners around the world. Here is the project summary:

This is a proposal for funds to support the production of a collaborative artwork addressing the issue of landmines and cluster bombs in an innovative and thought-provoking way. Sleeping bombs: Security blankets will be a joint project between Barbara Todd and Louis Century. The artwork will express the complex and interconnected nature of global conflict and its impact on human lives.

The artwork will consist of fifteen small quilts, each representing a single survivor’s story. Textiles will be collected from the home areas of the survivors – textiles that are culturally specific, locally produced and personally meaningful to each survivor. With these textiles as a backdrop, other textiles that are representative of the producing country of the weapon that injured the survivor will be overlaid. This second fabric will depict the particular model of landmine or cluster bomb that caused the injury.

Below each quilt, the survivor’s narrative will be more literally portrayed, using photography, testimonials and physical artifacts. Through these various media the survivor’s story will be told: how and when he or she was injured, how the injury affects his or her life, as well as information about the weapon in the quilt and the fabrics used.

The project will offer both a general understanding of the global nature of arms production, trade and use, as well as an honest and intimate glimpse into the subjective personal experience of individual survivors. Instead of representing a simplistic victim-aggressor narrative or commodifying the textiles of a given culture, the artwork will express the complicated and at times paradoxical narrative of military violence and civilian impact, using the diversity and complexity of textiles as a parallel narrative.

The age-old significance of textiles as protectors – used for sleep, care and warmth, the very antithesis of military violence – adds potency to these representations. The particular nature of landmines and cluster bombs – that they lay latent and explode unexpectedly, as if sleeping only to be awakened by a farmer’s foot or a child’s hand – will be evoked through the textiles.

If you're interested, email me and I'll send you the full proposal. Though the budget is substantial, our short-term priority is to obtain the funds needed to acquire materials and collect stories before the MAC interns return to Ottawa in January – just $1,000 or $2,000. If you have any advice on funding, let us know!

Here are some previous works by Barbara Todd, for those unfamiliar with her. You might also check out this earlier entry.