Formation VI, 2012
This video work is set within the US military’s simulated version of Afghanistan. Rather than using this training software to simulate violence or military encounter, instead Pailthorpe gives a group of miniature US soldiers and Taliban fighters the simplest of orders: run. Through this minor gesture of resistance, a striking aesthetic of repetition from the simulator’s own code is revealed. Unable to recognise each other thanks to a hacked setting, the multiple of each enemy body creates a kind of corporeal sculpture. As is prevalent in military vocabulary, reference to the collective body (such as the Marine Corps) connotes the machine-like structure and strength that follows a military formation of disciplined bodies. Perhaps the most universal and often political of human actions, running is used by Pailthorpe as a device to uncover pockets of resistance from within even the most closed, controlled and constructed environments: military simulations.