Fallujah Meditations
2008. Audio & video installation, carpet on floor (variable size) 7 min.
The point of departure for this video is footage from the American attack on the town of Fallujah in Iraq in November 2004 during the so-called Operation Phantom Fury. The clip shows an American soldier who shoots to death a wounded, unarmed Iraqi in a mosque.
The original recording lasts for about one minute, but Lange has radically slowed down its pace and edited the material. In this lingering pace, the fatal moment almost comes to a full stop, which allows the viewers to pay full attention to every detail. The soundtrack is that of a man’s voice hypnotically reciting how to penetrate ever more deeply into one’s own consciousness in order to finally create a new visual blueprint of reality.
The journalist who filmed the scene was under the protection of the U.S. Marines as an embedded journalist. The Marine investigators subsequently concluded that the soldier had acted in self defense, no charges were ever raised.
Watch excerpts of the work installed in Tromsø Kunstforening, 2008
Read Camp Dreamland, catalogue text by Line Ulekleiv
Installation view, Steneresenmuseet