Green Room (v)
Date: 5th January 2009A looped single channel video, documenting the anticipation and preparation for treatment of mass casualties within conflict.
After two years of negotiations between the Wellcome Trust, Imperial War Museum and Ministry of Defence, Cotterrell was invited to observe the Joint Forces Medical Group at Camp Bastion in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. He underwent basic training, was taught the rudiments of battlefield first aid and was issued with body armour. In November 2007, he flew in an RAF C17 from Brize Norton to Kandahar, the sole passenger in a plane loaded with half a million rounds of palletised munitions and medical supplies to join Operation Herrick 7.
A companion piece to Serial Loop, Green Room is an alternative vision of the same event: the arrival of casualties at Camp Bastion for treatment after a Major Incident. Medics prepare for the entrance of their assigned patients. Doctors, nurses, technicians and observers shuffle, chat and arrange the scene, their bodies and faces concentrated on the tasks to come over the next four hours. Like actors preparing to enter the stage, the players here come forward and withdraw from the camera’s gaze as they consider the work ahead of them.
Materials:30 Minutes, High Definition Video projection.
Categories:
Gallery , Installation , Series , Site Neutral , VideoNews:
TheArtFund RUSI: Remembrance in a Modern Society - 10.03.10, David Cotterrell : Kino Eye, AMH 2010 : Humanities at the Cutting Edge - 05.07.10, Bearing witness: the role of war artists in the 21st century - 26.10.09Bibliography:
A Heavy Reckoning: War, Medicine and Survival in Afghanistan and Beyond, War and Art : A Visual History of Modern Conflict, Uncontainable: Leonardo Electronic Alamanac, Art in the Danger Zone, War and Medicine, Krieg und Medizin, Bloody RealityExhibitions:
Aesthetic Distance, Saving Lives: Frontline Medicine in a Century of Conflict, Uncontainable : Broken Stillness, AfghanistanAwards:
War & Medicine : War Artist CommissionTalks:
Culture in a Time of Conflict (a), Culture and Consequence, David Cotterrell in Conversation, TED : How I Almost Lost My Faith in Photography (v), Bearing witness: the role of war artists in the 21st century, David Cotterrell War and Medicine, BBC Radio 4 Today : Injury and Conflict (a), David Cotterrell Film Screening, BBC Radio 4 : The Two Minute Silence (a), Army medics on the front-line (v), RUSI : Subjective Views (a), David Cotterrell on Afghanistan (v)Downloads:
War and Medicine : Interview Transcript, War and Medicine : Artists Diary, David Cotterrell : Kino Eye, RSA Lecture : Culture in a Time of Conflict, TimeOut : Military Responses, RSA Journal : Art and Conflict, Guardian G2 : Bloody RealityReviews:
Yorkshire Post : The Silence That Still Resonates, artsandecologyblog : Afghanistan - art and war, artsandecologyblog : David Cotterrell - Truth in the mundane, ameliasmagazine.com : Aesthetic distanceSponsors:
