Watch artist Meiro Koizumi discuss his newly-commissioned video work Battlelands. Working primarily in video and performance, Koizumi’s works investigate the boundaries between authentic and staged emotions. They often present everyday situations transformed into sites of tension, involving conflicts between duty and desire.
In this new work, Koizumi is working for the first time with non-Japanese subjects, engaging United States veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Five veterans recount traumatic experiences during these past military conflicts, while wearing body-cams that record images of their current domestic spaces and everyday landscapes in the U.S. The video poetically articulates how these difficult memories of war continually mix with daily life for these individuals, creating emotional, psychological battlelands.
Meiro Koizumi: Battlelands is organized by PAMM Chief Curator Tobias Ostrander. This exhibition is presented by Bank of America with additional support provided by Knight Foundation.