Current Practice
This video is a juxtaposition of real video and audio, creating a startling scenario in which the typical actions usually played out in Middle Eastern war-zones is brought home, quite literally.
What you hear is taken predominantly from footage released 2010 via the Freedom of Information Act of US attack on Baghdad in 2007 and other such similar videos. The moving images are from a police helicopter observing the 2012 occupy oil protests in London.
Everything has been finely cut, producing an impactful and cohesive correspondence between video and audio in an attempt to present a hyper-realistic narrative which puts the context of war and combat in our own environment.
My current artistic practice is about the detachment of society to the harshness and severity to the acts of war occurring on foreign soil. Not that we aren't aware, but rather our own lived experiences are not equal to these occurrences. Instead, if anything, we are dehumanised by the bombardment of commodity-like, packaged news articles in the media which exhibit scenes of far away wars, tragedies and death among other mundane new stories. Furthermore, we live in a culture of video games which increasingly seek to enhance the realism of war and combat, glorifying its existence. I am fascinated by the where the lines becomes blurred between this virtual reality and the facets of modern warfare, most notably by the use of predator drones piloted by men and women who sit a computer console with a joystick, 8,000 miles away from the combat zone, yet only 8 inches, as if it were just another video game. I guess that why the call their targets bug splats...
All original videos can be found on YouTube.
Side by Side studies involving video game war simulations and actual war footage (captured in stills) has proved to be very productive in forcing the audience closer to the images and trying to decipher what is and isn't real.
These ladies' hands look like they could be holding guns and knives in the positions I have doctored them anyway, so it actually becomes very believable, but their evident characters pull you back from fully believing it.
#DroneUbiquityProject
The Image of the drone itself could be elevated by bringing it into the realm of commodities, like pop art and consumerist bought propaganda war posters. Idolising the image in a seemingly harmless way, but while also multiplying its existence onto everyday objects and purchasable consumerist goods allows a harmless familiarity associated with the aesthetic of the image itself to seep into our subconscious, supplementing our already held ignorance to its real and serious use on foreign soil.
Using Photoshop to maipulate my photograph of Duck bleach, I have changed the brand name to "Drone". The hyperrealist exectution of this edit, coupled with the first person perspective of the image, evokes the feeling that the adience are actually holding the object themselves. However, due to familiarity of the product, the subversive alterations are still noticable.
Relating to my investigation and statistical facts about drones and their operation, I have manipulated the products' ability to "kill 99.9% of germs". Instead I have replaced it with the actual accuracy of drones strikes upon intended Al Qaeda targets, as gleamed from my research. Even if one cannot grasp what that exactly relates to, I think there is a startling shock that it is almost the opposite of the high percentage one would expect from the packaging.
I have produced the labels for soup cans and various product, printing them to physically wrap around the original products. This hyperrealist transformation is uncanny and I have even used my products in a small photoshoot on the shleves of the supermarket.
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