Jessica Lynch narrated and played by Kay Copeland.

Click here to view a segment (20.4 MB, Quicktime)

On March 23rd, 2003, the 507th Maintenance Company was ambushed near the town of Nasiriyah, Iraq. Eleven soldiers were killed and five were captured by Iraqi soldiers as prisoners. Among the POWs was a 19-year-old blonde hair blue eyed female soldier named Jessica Lynch from Palestine, West Virginia. Jessica’s rescue story quickly took center stage and her ordeal was used by the government to deflect negative attention away from the Iraq war. The Jessica Lynch incident ultimately extended beyond her persona to engage the nation in discussions of gender, race, war, and patriotism.

Sources ranging from her personal biography, internet images, and news articles were used to generate a fictional Jessica Lynch who engages in a philosophical meditation on war. Notes and images “collected” by Jessica becomes the basis of this self- reflexive video diary where she confronts her past and discusses her personal friendship with best friend Lori Piestewa. “Dear Lori” combines both original and found footage to explore personal and collective memory, the media, women in war, and the notion of nationhood.

Click here to view clip (3.8 MB, Quicktime)

“The ‘self’ or ‘me’, which is experienced on the one hand as more private, more essentially at the center, and on the other hand as participating across the bridge of the body in the world, is ‘embodied’ in the voice, in language. The goal of the torturer is to make the one, the body, emphatically and crushingly present by destroying it, and to make the other, the voice, absent by destroying it” (49).

-The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World, Elaine Scarry

The above quote served as one of the sources of inspiration for this piece. The idea that the self can be embodied and represented in the voice provided a lot of the visual imagery in the video. Notions of disembodiment, individual and national identity, power, seduction, and sacrifice are explored throughout the piece. This is perhaps the most politically overt video in comparison with my other work. 

Screenings:

• Evil City Film Fest, New York, NY
• National Museum of Women in the Arts Film Festival, Washington, D. C.
• San Diego Women's Film Festival, San Diego, CA
• Spark Contemporary Art Space: "Spark Video International" screening, Syracuse, NY
• Bushwick Film Festival, Brooklyn, NY
• Whitehot Magazine Festival, New York, NY
• Artist Collective: "Modern Day House of Horrors", Brooklyn NY
• Screen Capricious DVD