BODY OF WAR

Film for installation and cinematic presentation

HONORABLE MENTION, San Francisco Dance Film Festival 2012

JURY SPECIAL MENTION, IDN Festival 2010

"A tool for heightened awakening, a radical challenge to our prejudices regarding our understanding of conflict, its sacrifices and its resolutions...
A sublime work revealing a shocking tenderness" 

William Fowler, curator of artist moving image at the British Film Institute
for Eikon Photography and Media Art Magazine, November 2010

"Rarely have horror and beauty been so intertwined... cut to the bone"
Rita Felciano, danceviewtimes.com, March 2012

Body of War reflects on how a man becomes a soldier through the relentless repetition of acts of violence. What happens to the psyche as it learns to transgress social principles and integrates the willingness to kill? Set in the geography of the Normandy Landings and punctuated by testimonies of retired and serving soldiers, a mise-en-scène of visceral hand-to-hand combat is gradually deconstructed – inviting the viewer to engage in the relationship between human intimacy and the brutality of war choreography. A poetic observation of the momentary collapse of the heroic, the piece stages the pathos of military strategy by using documented mise-en-scène as a form of discourse as opposed to celebration, in this way Body of War is as much an ode to the human inside the soldier as a questioning of military structures.

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WATCH TRAILER

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A hectic fight is gradually dissected into slower and slower repetitions, revealing the context of training as a rehearsal for killing. Through this breakdown of close combat, the film progressively reveals the ambiguity that arises between brutality and love in the intimate act of waging war. From the visceral to the reflective, Body of War follows military training in reverse, constantly juxtaposing the fight (the organised collective) with the human being (the individual), prompting questions regarding the transformation and use of a person as instrument in the interest of a government. Voice interviews of retired and serving soldiers who have experienced recent wars (Iraq, Bosnia) offer personal testimonies, therefore broadening the context.

At a time when military death is delivered at a distance and machines provide the interface between enemies, Isabel Rocamora has chosen to go back to ground-troop skills training; hand to hand combat, directly working with the military (a core of 4 ex-soldiers from Britain and a chorus of 10 French serving soldiers). The combat technique employed is Krav Maga, a military form originating in Israel and now practiced by many armies worldwide.

The gestures of closeness and emotion revealed by the performance of combat at reduced speed uncannily remind of sacred iconographic images such as the Pietà: the Virgin Mary holding the dead Christ. In order to bring out this connection the scene is offset to Arvo Pärt's Kanon Pokajanen (Canon of Repentance, 1997); a dissonant choral piece of sacred music considered a strong reference within the religious culture of the late 20th Century. Following a primarily conscious treatment, this sequence invites an immersive viewing, a suspended time for human empathy urging reflection on the inherent contradictions it presents.

Body of War is set in Normandy: on the beaches of Néville Sur Mer and the only landing strip left in the region, Cherbourg Airport. Sites architecturally haunted by disused bunkers – casemates built in 1943 by the Germans as part of the Atlantik Wall. There is a paradoxical juxtaposition between the windy, desolate sand dunes engulfing the modern ruins of large concrete blocks and the fiercely physical, loyal bodies of the soldiers in training.

If wars are commonly fought over territory, this film invites a double feeling of pre and post territory – of rehearsal for and residue following a relentless, sacrificial conflict. In this way Body of War uses the Landing geography not as direct historical reference, but as archetypal post-war site. This juxtaposition exposes a sense of irony regarding our willingness to forget history and re-ignite conflict.

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This piece is part of The Intimacy of Violence exhibition, a solo show which poetically considers the nature of military training in a series of interrelated moving image works and still images. Positioning Body of War as the central work, in a consciously reiterative way the surrounding pieces play on the military theme of repetition, by quoting the main film to expose further questions on the psychology and representation of conflict and its defence systems.

The exhibition premieres at Galeria Senda and Arts Santa Monica Museum in Barcelona from the 10th May to the 12th June 2011. See also Fear, Defence, Disappearance and The Speed of Violence.