Joseph DeLappe: dead-in-iraq

Title:

dead-in-iraq

Artist(s) and People Involved:

Medium:

Online gaming performance/intervention projected video installation

Artist Statement:

dead-in-iraq commenced in March of 2006, to roughly coincide with the 3rd anniversary of the start of the Iraq conflict. I enter the online US Army recruiting game, America’s Army, in order to manually type the name, age, service branch and date of death of each service person, who has died to date in the War in Iraq. The work is essentially a fleeting, online memorial and protest for those military personnel who have been killed in this ongoing conflict.

I enter the game using as my login name, dead-in-iraq and proceed to type the names using the game’s text messaging system – the ‘text-to-speech’ function is used to read my input and the reactions of the other players. As is my usual practice when creating such an intervention, I am a neutral visitor as I do not participate in the proscribed mayhem. Rather, I stand in position and type until I am killed. After death, I hover over my dead avatar’s body and continue to type. Upon being re-incarnated in the next round, I continue the cycle. As of 15/06/09, I have input 4042 names. I intend to keep doing so until the end of this war. As of this date there have been 4313 American service persons killed in Iraq.