Could you explain what you’re showing at Liverpool?
What I’m showing in Liverpool is a 20-minute long edited video projection of my intervention into the America’s Army game. So it’s basically from my perspective, recorded directly from my computer screen. When I’m inputting the names, it shows me over and over again arriving at the start of the game: I drop my weapon and start typing. The game is happening around me as I’m doing this, and I get killed, and then I end up floating over my dead avatar, and I keep typing until the next round starts and then I do it some more.
And you’ve also done this live?
The first live performance was actually on 4th of July [2007] in Banff, in Canada. It seemed an appropriate 4th of July thing to do. I thought people would be bored. It’s a rather tedious process. But people were really fascinated and quite moved by the experience. Particularly for people who don’t engage in these kinds of games, the first time you see somebody get killed it’s a little jarring. You get inured to it, and that’s part of the point of it as well. As you see this over and over again, the typing in of the name starts to become a reenactment in text, and then the soldier gets killed.
Have you considered applying this to Afghanistan?
On the day that President Obama announced the surge of troops, I created a new avatar for the America’s Army 3 game, [and] I have started a new project. Instead of typing of the names, I’m actually doing a verbal roll call. It’s the same process, where I don’t participate, I go in and using my Logitech [headset] I start reading the list of names and date of death, name, age, rank of soldier, and so on. What I found is, as soon as the game starts and I open my mouth and say, “October 1, 2001,” one or two of them are yelling, “Shut the fuck up,” blah blah blah. But after about the second name, it gets really quiet. And the game keeps playing but it’s like they understand what it is, and – it’s having a different kind of impact, I think.
All of this started with thinking about Ted Koppel when he went on Nightline [and read the names of America’s war dead], and that was so controversial. And I’m just thinking, “He’s reading their names! That’s such a traditional, reverent kind of respectful thing that we do at all memorial sites, after wars and disasters.”