Who, What, Where, When, Why and How (2009)
Who, What, Where, When, Why and How, 2009, Rod Dickinson in collaboration with Steve Rushton
Live Performance 11 July 2009
Single channel video installation with Teleprompter
Synopsis:
'Who, What, Where, When, Why and How' was a live performance that was based on, and simulated, a government press briefing. It took place once at in SMART Project Space' in Amsterdam on the 11 July as part of the exhibition "Performing Evidence", curated by Anke Bangma.
'Who, What, Where, When, Why and How' was set in a meticulously constructed press conference environment, two actors delivered a 45 minute script composed solely of fragments of press statements from the cold war onward that focused on the way in which similar declarations and political rhetoric have been repeated and reused by numerous governments across continents and through the decades to justify acts of state sanctioned violence.
Television and the moving image have long shaped not only how dramatic events such as conflicts are perceived, but also how and if they happen. And although the wide variety of sources (from speeches as diverse as Lyndon Johnson and Saddam Hussein) seemed to be seamlessly woven together irrespective of context and date their provenance was made simultaneously evident to the audience in the live event via synced autocue style text scrolling up a screen off set on both sides of the audience. In the video installation a synced auto cue faces the projection screen serving the same function.
Mirroring real press briefings, the live address was filmed and photographed. The footage forms the basis for the subsequent video piece. But the obvious presence of the cameras was also more fundamentally connected with the ways in which the press statement is part of feedback mechanism where it is carefully constructed for the template of television and current affairs programmes which disseminate it, and which in turn shape political and social reality.
Although the focus for current media coverage of conflict is often on the DIY film making techniques used during terror campaigns, and journalists embedded with troops on the front line, it is the long established government press briefing that is the primary tool to construct a rationale and morale for conflict in democracies.
'Who, What, Where, When, Why and How' was photographed by Nicki Musgrave and filmed by Phil Hargreaves and Patrycja Cudak.