feb15 (2003)
sd dv
4.20 min
shot with Luke Duncalfe
A document of the anti-war march that took place in Auckland on February 15, 2003, in protest of the then impending Iraqi-American war. Not so much an objective view as a reworking of messy, handheld footage, my video attempts to mirror the confusion of imagery and sound that is my most vivid memory of the event. War is a serious subject, yet in the carnivalesque and oddly family-friendly atmosphere of the Auckland march, our geographic and cultural isolation from Baghdad and Washington seemed emphasised. On a hot summer’s day in New Zealand the reality of war and death felt improbably distant.
Editing the video in the first weeks of the war, I struggled with colourful banality of my material. In the face of global marches involving millions of activists our local protest seemed rather thin, and in the end the shape of the work remains true to the confusion of agendas that informed my experience. Later in the day, as I ate brunch and watched other protesters leave, it seemed effortless to slide back into a splendid oblivion.