2 channel video loop
2 minutes

North American and Middle Eastern boys play out their fantasies and impressions of inherited wars.
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The Handshake (2006)

DVD, 2 minutes, video loop

On December 20th, 1983, Donald Rumsfeld (U.S. Secretary of Defence – 1975-77 and 2001-06) met with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad as President Reagan’s special envoy to establish support for Iraq in its conflict with Iran. The US was eager not to let an Iranian victory interrupt Middle East oil supply and transportation of oil to its own shores. For the next five years, until Iran finally capitulated, the United States backed Saddam’s armies with military intelligence, economic aid and covert supplies of munitions, including, according to recently declassified documents, chemical compounds.

Although photographs and video footage of Donald Rumsfeld’s 1983 meeting with Saddam Hussien were readily available, they were notably absent from U.S. media coverage of the Iraq war. Any journalistic mention of Donald Rumsfeld’s key role in aiding the Iraqi leader was similarly absent.

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In 2006, amidst an endless White House public relations campaign promoting surface patriotism and the continued need for war in the Middle East, I rode the subway home each day to Brooklyn and watched in the distance a tattered flag flying furiously in the wind. It seemed so beautifully at odds in its state of decay. It became for me a new symbol, speaking volumes about a history of US foreign policy and the worn rhetoric used to sell democracy to the world. Eventually over a period of about 2 months the remnants of the flag fell from the flagpole. It was never replaced.

2 channel video installation
1 minute DVD loop

Oh Dude breaks with the heroic or benevolent war narrative that commonly frames images from Iraq as they are presented to a mainstream Television audience. In displaying segments of footage outside the framework of a news narrative, a clearer perception arises, a closer view of the realities of technological warfare.

Background
In April, 2004, during the US led Fallujah Offensive, a video clip was released by the Combined Press Information Center in Baghdad as part of their regular briefing sessions. It showed an airborne missile attack that took place over the city of Fallujah on April 10th of that same year.

The video, as seen through the cockpit monitor of an attacking F-16 bomber, shows a group of about 30 people moving down a street between buildings. From this vantage point it is impossible to tell who these people are: civilians or rebel fighters. A request to attack is made and immediately given the go ahead. Ten seconds later an explosion is seen in the area where these people are moving; a voice from the cockpit exclaiming: “Oh Dude”

Due to its explicit content and ambiguous nature this footage was never broadcast by mainstream American media outlets, but was made available by various alternative news web sites.

In a war of information where statements and images released by the US military are carefully chosen to represent a benign motivation, this video clip is an irregular document. Like the Abu Ghraib photos, which disclosed the interrogation activities of American prison guards, this video reveals the random nature of American airborne military strikes.

In a wider sense, the piece also explores the distance that exists between a Television viewer and the realities of a war zone, creating a self-reflexive moment – “if this is closer to a reality of what is happening, let me revisit and re-examine the narratives that I have digested…”

Perspectives and points-of-view
In re-presenting this incident I did not want to posit the viewer as a perpetrator of a missile attack by placing them inside the pilot’s cockpit or the pilot’s point-of-view. My aim was to create a site where the incident could be witnessed, where an audience could find distance to observe the events taking place before them.

By creating two screens displaying simultaneous and inter-related content (stock footage of an F-16 pilot in motion and the actual cockpit video), a third perspective is made available, a space to choose and shift one’s focus between the pilot’s presence, his point-of-view, his actions and the results of his actions.