ID 517: Special Topics in Art and Politics: A Not So Simple Case for Torture was a course at CalArts in Spring 2007. The class explored the government-sanctioned use of torture in war and interrogation, investigating primary documents from the Department of Justice that justified these practices. The title referenced Martha Rosler's video, A Simple Case for Torture, or How to Sleep at Night (1983). The course was taught by Sam Durant and featured guest speakers including Martha Rosler, Dev Nathan, Ashley Hunt, and Gabriele Schwab. The class culminated in a group exhibition and a monograph published by Onestar Press.

In the summer of 2006, Moreno worked in a silk-screening warehouse in San Antonio, TX, near Lackland Air Force Base. Each Friday, new graduates from Air Force basic training received "flight t-shirts," which the warehouse printed. Moreno collected the test prints, later incorporating them into the quilt Invisible Warmth. The work pairs the shirts with sports border fabric, transforming utilitarian garments into a soft, layered object that evokes the invisible psychological conditioning embedded in military training.

The quilt's domestic form sits against the imagery on the shirts — squadron mascots, aggressive slogans, unit insignia — making visible the psychological conditioning embedded in military ritual and the pop culture vocabulary through which it circulates.

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Date: 2007, Los Angeles, CA
Medium: Mixed-Media | Installation | Archive | Sculpture
T-shirts from the U.S. Air Force, sports border fabric and wooden dowel, 84" x 53"