In the projection, carried out on 9 and 10 November 2010, the artist worked with Polish veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan using a decommissioned Honker Skorpion 3 military vehicle of the type used by Polish troops in Iraq. The weapon platform at the back of the vehicle was replaced with a “projection platform” with audio-visual equipment through which sounds and images were “fired.” Projected on the front walls of Warsaw’s buildings, the texts spoke of issues faced by Polish war veterans and their families, their traumatic war experiences and difficulties in adapting back to civilian life. The projection had been preceded by a workshop with the veterans and their family members, during which sound recordings were made. Selected material endorsed by the participants was then turned into an audiovisual projection using special computer software. The veterans participated in the “shelling” of the city with their testimonies in several places in Warsaw: on the first day, on the side wall of a building very close to the elegant Krakowskie Przedmieście street and the façade of the Grand Theater – Polish National Opera, and on the second day, on the façade of the Warsaw University of Technology building and the tympanum of the baroque Krasiński Palace.
Organized by the Profile Foundation, Warsaw, with the support of the City of Warsaw and the United States Embassy in Warsaw, and in collaboration with the Association of Poles Wounded or Harmed on Foreign Missions. The project was curated by Bożena Czubak.
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Krzysztof Wodiczko is an author of over 80 projections in various places around the world, on building walls and public monuments in urban space, which he animates with the images and voices of homeless people, immigrants, victims of family violence or marginalised minorities. He is also an author of vehicles and instruments allowing those who, deprived of their rights, remain mute and invisible, to speak out and gain a presence in public space. Multimedia artist, theoretician, university professor, former director of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, MIT (Cambridge, Massachusetts), currently running a programme called Art, Design, and the Public domain at Harvard University and teaching at the Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities (SWSP).