Wag the Dog

The work is comprised of three 16mm projectors with different speeds all aimed at a screen so that the images overlap in a montage. Each reel has different images, like a dog lapping water or a nuclear blast, and is projected on a loop of around a minute. With each reel being a different length, and each camera running at different speeds, the piece offers a unique viewing every time.

Further increasing the uniqueness of the piece, the screen which the films are projected onto rotates so that the movie jumps back and forth from the wall to the screen.

“It’s important everyone is able to see and think for themselves,” says Runne. “All the images come together in my mind to give a very clear description of the war, but that’s not to say my opinion is the only one that matters.”

Mimicking the Hollywood presentation of the war, Moosang and Runne used 16mm film and made the piece esthetically complex and stunning. They wanted to draw people into their uncomfortable political statement. It’s a conscious move away from the art-less political work of the recent past.

“We’re now in a wired age where we all have access to all the information and to be unaware of what’s going on is impossible,” says Moosang. “This work would have failed if it was like art in the 80′s or 90′s. For me the age of didactic political art doesn’t serve us any longer.”

Protest with The Blair Bush Project at Kelowna’s Alternator Gallery from Fri August 22-October 3.

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