The Voice of Their Guns Single channel video on monitor with sound Dur: 10m 20s 2011
Notes:
The Voice Of Their Guns implements post-production as a tool in the construction of historical narrative. Appropriating a recorded communique from the Symbionese Liberation Army*, this video work makes connections between the early experimental artists film & video and the current wave of 'experimental documentary' by employing historical audio documents to activate imagery. Through post-production grading a false historiography is produced that negotiates a position between the virtual material surface of video and the historical voice of ideology. The title and the activated visuals nod to the CRT 'gun' technology that produces the analog television image.
* the Symbionese Liberation Army were a radical left-wing revolutionary organisation based in California in the early 1970s. Their most notorious action was the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst. This communique forms a part of the narrative of that action, being one of many recorded messages sent to the media to highlight the organisations ideologies and communicate their demands.