Richard Mosse

RICHARD MOSSE, KILLCAM, 2008
HD VIDEO AND YOUTUBE DOWNLOADS
05:52 MIN QUICKTIME MOVIE HD
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST +
JACK SHINMAN GALLERY, NEW YORK

The intersection of violence and popular culture, particularly in the form of video games, is made apparent in Richard Mosse’s Killcam (2006). Working in Walter Reed Veterans Hospital near Washington DC, Mosse witnessed scores of wounded US war veterans playing Iraq–themed combat video games on several giant plasma screens. Pairs of veterans, some of them amputees, some of them suffering post–traumatic stress disorder, had teamed up to fight against other teams of veterans in the streets of Baghdad or Fallujah or in Saddam Hussein’s palace, inside the game world. In alternating and seamless sequences, video footage of wounded veterans playing Call of Duty IV is cut into leaked footage downloaded from YouTube and other streaming video websites showing actual killing of insurgents by US and coalition forces in Iraq. The voices in the YouTube clips merge almost indistinguishably with the voices of the young soldiers at Walter Reed, all of them affected by adrenaline and post traumatic stress disorder. Whether it is America/Iraq, video–game or reality, the borders between here and there, real and virtual violence seem breached and reversible.