“War Zone” by Nicolas Maigret

Title:

War Zone

Artist(s) and People Involved:

Creation Year:

2014

Medium:

Single-channel video

Duration:

9:00

Artist Statement:

War Zone: Reproduction of Historical Missile Launch Trajectories Using Google Earth

War Zone explores the military background of mainstream technology. In this video work based on historical facts, the artist reconstitutes three missile trajectories with a subjective camera angle using Google Earth. This work articulates around haunting high technologies by introducing cues of their military origins. Here we focus on the missiles, the ancestor of the space program and satellite launches, whose shots and cartographies we use on an daily basis.

So we follow the trajectory of a V2 rocket, developed by the Nazis and launched from the Netherlands to London in 1945. Then a Scud rocket launched from Kuwait to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War, and finally an air-to-ground missile launched from Israel to Gaza in 2014. Riding our missile in the style of Dr Strangelove, we find ourselves wondering about the evolution of those instruments of death. From the poor precision of a V2 to the surgical strikes of Israel, the country with the largest number of start-ups, particularly in cyber-defence, and where the military is the prime crucible of innovation. This work is based on data gathered on newspaper archives, interviews, blogs, historical facts.