Torture terror tranquility

[Martha Rosler] Martha Rosler reads from her essay accompanying the re-emergence unchanged of her 1983 videotape A Simple Case for Torture, or How to Sleep at Night, accompanied by a screen saver of images on her computer.

A Simple Case For Torture, or How to Sleep at Night, Revisited

I.

In 1982 I picked up a copy of the leading newsmagazine Newsweek with a painting on the cover, a modest portrait of a seated, ordinary looking young woman, but with exposed breasts. The headline was THE NEW REALISM. I flipped through to the first article, a full-page guest editorial, “The Case for Torture.” I was shocked, as I was meant to be, for this article was a provocation. US president Ronald Reagan was belligerently ratcheting up the Cold War, smashing Jimmy Carter’s détente by planting nuclear Cruise missiles in Western Europe … and some obscure nut had made his way onto Newsweek’s front page arguing for the US to embrace torture as policy? Officially, of course, the nation was on the side of justice and human rights. Torture by the Latin American military and death squads reportedly took place under the eye and even the tutelage of the US—all unreported in the mainstream. News of widespread torture and brutalization of prisoners and suspects in Vietnam had likewise been swept under the rug. As signatory to the Geneva Convention, the United States insisted on the need for dignified and humane treatment of military prisoners—at least in public.