COPvid 2020: John Sims

John Sims
COPvid 2020
Digital image
2020

Overview: A large blue planet has a police badge emblazoned across it, rather like a continent surrounded by oceans.  The center third of the badge is cast in shadow. Twelve American flags protrude into space from the planet's surface.  In the background dozens of identical blue police planets also surrounded by tiny flags,  float in space, filled with darkness and dust.

Mark Auslander: John Sims' new digital artwork "COPvid 2020."  accompanies his 14 June 2020 commentary in the Orlando Sentinel,   "Dear Police: We can’t trust until you change", written as an open letter to "The Police."  The work draws a clever implicit parallel between the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus (engaged with through Sims' recent video game "Korona Killa" and the metaphorical virus of endemic racial terror. The twelve flags flying from the surface of each planet are reminiscent of the American flag planted on the moon's surface by the Apollo astronauts, and equally evocative of the protein spikes of the novel coronavirus. Those protein spikes, it should be remembered,  function as camouflage through which the virus in effect mimes helpful proteins, tricking the cell's walls to allow it entrance into the cell, where viral RNA hijacks the cell's internal mechanisms, turning it in a device of its own destruction, ultimately starving the body of life giving oxygen.

Similarly, the artist may be suggesting, claims to patriotism are cynically deployed by "Law and Order" political leaders and law enforcement to infect the body politic with the virus of racial violence.  There might even by a sly allusion to the claims by the police of limited immunity for violent transgressions: our national political and jural system is increasingly revealed as immuno-compromised, unable to defend its citizens of color against aggressive, armed over-policing.

I find myself thinking of the tiny planet on Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince, in which the Prince must be forever on guard against the voracious baobabs that threaten to devour his entire miniature planetoid.  Are the flags themselves, used an alibi to justify excessive force and prevent civilian oversight, similarly corrosive of the body politic, as each Planet Police spins out of control, a universe unto itself,  accountable to no one? 

Another way of reading the image is as an insatiable Borg invasion force, or a deadly squadron of Imperial Starfighters, straight out of Star Wars, flying from the Death Star on attack trajectory.  Perhaps Darth Vader himself casting his ominous shadow across the police badge.  Is Planet Alderaan next in line for annihilation, as the Empire seeks to bend the galaxy to its will, its knee to the neck of all who dare resist it?'

Russell Smith:  Each look at John Sims' image reveals another layer of meaning.  Closer inspection reveals that the shield bearing the phrase  “American Police” is in fact the seal of the City of Minneapolis. Thus, the artist invokes the horrific death of George Floyd, while emphasizing that the now notorious Minneapolis Police Department is not unique, but at heart  just like all of the other police departments in the U.S., both large and small.  We are not simply dealing with individual officers or specific police departments that are 'bad apples," but rather an entire "planetary system" of systemic racism.

Each flag bears a blue stripe through its middle, eclipsing the red and white stripes. Here we presumably see a reference to the “blue line of silence” which mandates that police protect their own, no matter what atrocity has been committed.   This culture of silence, denial and cover-up, tragically, has been incorporated into the American Way, and millions of people of color are paying the price.

Rev. Avis Williams:  There are twelve months in a year, and twelve flags surround each Police Planet.  Are all police departments the same every day of the year, biased against black folks?  Perhaps the darkness around the smaller part of the badge suggested that not all officers feel the same as the majority of their fellow officers.  Some officers desire to do the right thing and treat all people as equal, as human beings, and seek to come out of the shadows, into the light. 

The flags are stuck in dozens of planets but these flags are stationary, not blowing in the wind but fixed in the cold vacuum of outer space.  These officers and departments, large and small, want their current way of doing things to remain the same,  frozen in place: they do not want the winds of change and transformation to blow their way.  The flags, planets, and badges are symmetrical, though not the same size.  The badge covers and controls the planet, holding Righteousness, Justice, and Fairness down, like an officer's knee on George Floyd's neck in Minneapolis, like an officer's knee kicking Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta, like an officer standing on the shoulder of Rayshard Brooks, all as these men lay dying in the darkness of Injustice and Racism. 

The planet resembles the Coronavirus model shown in Mr. Sim's previous work. The darkness of this Virus is ravaging the black community in disproportionate numbers compared to the white community.   Yet, in Mr. Sims rendering, there is light underneath and in the midst of the darkness.  Viewing this work as a person of faith,  I know that there remains hope that the God of the Universe, presiding over all planets large and small, will do right.  The Lord is the light of the world and will overcome the darkness of this age, in time, and the time is now for Injustice and Racism to end!  The time is now for light to overcome darkness, bringing Equality, Justice, and Righteousness front and center.