Word: warred
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Wodiczko tries to achieve verisimilitude in this piece with visual and auditory effects, without relying on his usual documentary measures. Yet he still encounters the problem of exploitation. By creating his own narrative and dialogue, he projects his perception of the defining characteristics of war onto the audience...
Inside the room, viewers become witnesses to an unfolding story, played out through the windows and accompanying sound. The scene begins uneventfully, but ominously. Pundit-like voices discussing a Middle Eastern war flood the room, and then sounds of everyday life replace the conversation. The shadow of a soccer ball flits by the projected window. Other voices chatter in Arabic while music plays in the background. The scene seems unexceptional, but the shadow of a helicopter signals the chaos that is to come...
What is most frustrating about this piece is how close Wodiczko’s depiction of war comes to feeling real. He manages to truly immerse the audience, particularly with the absence of apparent gore, but the dialogue he pairs with the images is ineffective. The men talking seem as if they are reading off a script; what they say is a clichéd version of what one might expect soldiers to say, and the way that they say it is stilted rather than realistic...
...introduces Wodiczko as an artist who has expanded the definition of a veteran to refer to any victim of war. With “...Out of Here: The Veterans Project,” Wodiczko attempts to transform the audience into veterans. He transports them into the center of the kind of confrontation that is an everyday reality for many. However, because audience members remain protected by the walls of the warehouse environment, and by the fact that they cannot directly participate in the narrative, they remain as spectators...
...images and scale, instilling simple images with significance. His choice to project closed fists on a government building carries much more weight than the booming loudspeaker that often accompanies these images. Wodiczko shouts with all his strength to turn the audience’s attention to the horror of war, but the terrible images and stories he portrays hardly need amplification...