Item 3196 - City Under Siege

Video

City Under Siege consists of 1 continuously looping DVD. The video image is displayed on multiple TV sets that are stacked on top of each other in a street facing window. If the exhibition space has no street-facing window that can be viewed by the public, the TVs may also be suspended from the ceiling like those found suspended in airport terminals with the news displayed on them. There is no sound on the installation. City Under Siege examines contemporary representation of war in the media. The particular image under investigation first became predominant in the broadcast news media during the Gulf War. It is of a wide, high angle shot, recorded at night from the roof of a building looking out over a city, usually Baghdad. The shot stays static while the city below is bombarded in a fire show. There does not appear to be any life represented down there, no blood or exploded body parts. There doesn't even seem to be a camera operator as the image never moves or reacts to a bomb dropping. The shot is almost green which denotes the low light “night vision” used to photograph it. The image has an abstraction to it, like it could be from a computer game. Is it even real' For this work Vancouver is the city framed, which then also lends itself to parallels with the 9/11 attacks on New York City. The title for the work uses the same dramatic vernacular of war reportage slogans such as “War on Terror”. The first installation of City Under Siege took place in Nelson, BC while the 2010 Olympics were on in Vancouver. Current issues and media coverage at that time included stories about the huge cost of security for that event, a cost that had risen significantly since the original bid made prior to 9/11. So the viewer relationship to the work had its own particular dialogue unique to the time and location of the installation. Ticker tape text scrolls along the bottom of the image, streaming text quotes from a variety of sources that ruminate on the media and society in lieu of breaking headlines and stock market figures. The image settles back down to a dark, quiet city and the cycle is repeated.

Press: No; Catalogue: No; Itinerancies: No; Online archive: No; Television: No

Països: Canada

Revisar Subtítulos Master es dvd NTSC falta sinopsis en catalan falta sinopsis en castellano This work is a video installation. Installation instructions are sent with DVD preview copy.

• Catalan

• Latin