ETO: Looking back

Obviously there is the historical aspect, but here we simply look back at the origins of this specific theatre... with digression as point of departure:

The re-Attribution for the Antwerp Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Joannes van Buyten - (from the Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art)

The work is commonly attributed to Huibrecht, or Hubert(us), Sporckmans (1619-1690) and dated 1660. Further research now provides strong evidence that the portrait was actually executed in 1648 by another Antwerp master, Frans Denys (1610-1670).

Above the case stand statues of Cosmas and Damian, the patron saints of Antwerp physicians, and Mary Magdalene.4

re/beuys twin towers)

Though well known in the northern Netherlands, it seems that this picture is the only one in the southern Netherlands (Belgium) and in Antwerp to boot... the rooms mentioned on the Stadswaag are long gone, we used to party there in the eighties (19-eighties) where cafés and dancing/clubs were chock-a-block at the time...

Vor allem das Tieranatomisches Theater Berlin faziniert mich.

One of the most interesting buildings housing such a theatre, operations or anatomical as they say, in this case ‘Tieranatomisch’ (animalanatomical)... which seems more akin to my own concerns as (preditor) editor of the ‘La Jeune Avrill’ Zeitschrift für Haustiere... there are more disturbing instances, among which the anatomical theatre in where it seems black slaves were snatched to provide specimens...

(Jefferson...)

But that is straying too far, since we want to stick to the ETO and its immediate heirs, the various military-industrial complexes that make up the western defense alliance – for a while people thought we didn’t need it any more, but the end of the cold were has thrown up equally irritating threats, and even the thaw between east and west does not seem as thorough as initially thought...

SOSETO

SOS was the separate ‘services of supply’ administration and organization within the ETO, itself split into ETO and MTO (Mediterranean theatre of operations) and all under SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) later SHAPE (Supreme HQ Allied Powers Europe) near Mons since 1967.

APO 871 is SOS operation staff in Cheltenham (planning staff in London APO 887)

(from useful info on ‘tothosewhoserved’ site...

The theatre of operations was in this case a vast landscape encompassing various cultures grouped together in pro and con entities fighting fiercely – each other – millions of men and women jettisoned into scenes and situations –enactments with real blood & guts, death and injury – grand historical conflagration as depicted in vast monumental paintings commemorating lost causes and hapless victories...

The theatre had log left the controlled surroundings of the amphitheatre or the anatomical circus – it had become a mediatized performance gallery- high-performance no doubt, but nonetheless, a grand happening for newsreels around the globe.

SosEtoApo as the directors pulpit, the writers scribbling room, the stenographers patch: there where the concept is transformed into figurines running for their lives across strategy maps, lines in the sand and models being pushed around on a board representing the territory afield, far afield, and real lives endangered...

Represented by acronyms and numbers, abbreviations and short handles, the language is modified to fit, concepts such as snafu and awol become commonplace, cigarettes dangle from lips well into the twenty-first century, a taste for excess alcohol and dope still with us today... but then the theatre never really abates either – smaller scenes played out in more or less far-flung climes, often as a result of this major production of WWII...