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Untitled
Interactive video projection and sound
Projector and Computer, 2004-05

236.2x315 in | 600x800 cm wide
8 mins interaction looped

In this wall projection, are seven figures, all dressed up in the camouflage – which has become increasingly fashionable after the War on Terror Campaign. First in the West, and more recently, spilling East onto the streets outside my home. Now I can walk into shops two blocks from where I live and buy camouflage gear. Camouflage makes you feel Cool and masquerade Terror. Terror is quite Cool.

Click on the figures and they move, they copy, they imitate. Click one, click two, choose a leader, become a leader and the rest follow. If they stop, click them up and they join.
Exercise 1 – 2 – 3 – 4. One Bend, Two Bend, Three Bend, Stay.
Look Straight – Don’t See – STAY

I have a bag, I have a phone, my neighbour has a phone, my phone, I don’t have a phone, I don’t have a shopping bag, but I need to JOG for it. Jog Jog Jog Stay on the Spot. Jog Jog Stay Stay

March Free Speech Free Press Free Market March Market Market March Free Speech No Speech No Press Market Market Market march March

Shut and Be. Shut and Eat. Don’t Interrupt. PRAY.
Fun Merry Meery Merry Fun Fun. DO or OUT. Aim 1234 Right Kill 1234 Left Aim 1234 Shoot Shoot Aim Shoot 1234 1234 1234 4,4

Dumb-ed in a capitalist society, we enjoy being programmed. We find instant satiation and loss of memory in turning ourselves into puppets. We allow media, electronic extensions of ourselves now in hands of a corporate often with state support nexus to think for us and amputate individual reasoning (McLuhan). Mental and physical activity slips from the mechanical to the mindless deteriorating into fear, chaos and violence against an enemy does not exist in a world where global consent is hijacked to fight a war in search of weapons which were never there. Everybody Bend; Dont Talk, Dont See, Dont Hear. Gandhi said so.

The project recalls a psychology where a combination of healthy physical exercises can help in slow and intense indoctrination of the mind by intense State military drills, local Hindu right wing RSS cadre exercises or new age courses to make you fighting fit.

The interactive loop keeps slipping into mindless violence. Violence – which his no longer just a fashion but is being internalized, morphing the emptied vulnerable self to become a source to project it towards the State, which is no longer the sole entity that has monopoly over the legitimate use of violence.

Shilpa Gupta