This is a video of appropriated video game footage. This is the game that Adam Lanza was playing for weeks, leading up to the Sandy Hook school shooting. I removed the native audio and replaced it with uplifting, reggae music, to create a soundtrack dissonance. You may also notice that the player never fires a single shot, and the outcome of the simulated massacre is still the same. The intention of the piece is to raise questions about the nature of violence in the media and its role in our current gun violence epidemic in America. Music: "Work It Out (Instrumental)" by Afro Omega, licensed by Audiosocket.
I wanted to create a piece that juxtaposes the banality of an evening walk through a neighborhood, to the audio of George Zimmerman's 911 call the night he killed Trayvon Martin. How does the audio clip change the way we feel as we move deeper into this suburban neighborhood? How do we reconcile a sense of security with the realities of privilege?
Recoil (2016), a short film by Leif Carlson, appropriates film clips from American cinema to create a new conversation on America’s gun culture. These clips present the various ways guns are depicted in film, which introduces the gun as a character itself. Though no gun is fired and no acts of physical violence are depicted, Recoil shows that the language used around guns and the handling of guns creates a violent and unsettling atmosphere.