Growing up close to the military town of Aldershot surrounded by gun ranges, training areas along with
exotic and elaborate experimental warplanes constantly over flying from The Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough; living immersed in the The Cold War Machine normal and familiar. Regularly, on most nights we would go to sleep with the not so distant constant gunfire echoing across the Fox Hills. I found it's soporific regularity comforting. It wasn't the idea that the guns provided security it was more visceral. The gunfire was softened by the pine forested low terrain of the common it drifted down to ripple out over the Blackwater Valley flood plain where the developing post-war suburbs spread less than a mile from the ranges where the bullets were spitting from the rifle barrels. The softened territory of the War Machine Peace was home. |
War as a subject for art approached with aesthetic objectivity; a contradiction emerges.
A space opens up somewhere between entertainment and
critical engagement with the subject.
critical engagement with the subject.
a predatory machine assemblage
of flesh, metal, oil
of flesh, metal, oil