That Was Then Video

That Was Then, 2014, Single Channel 1080p Video, Stereo Audio, Running Time: 13:50 mintues

Project Statement

That Was Then is a Single Channel Video with the actual audio reporting of the first hours of Operation Desert Storm on CNN. It takes the viewer through the initial bombing stage of Baghdad in 1991 with reporters Peter Arnett, Bernard Shaw, and John Holliman. The live coverage was significant because it was unedited and established CNN as a credible news agency and the notion of 24 news. I remember as a young man watching the CNN footage and thinking, like most everyone, that the footage looked like a video game. It appeared hyper-real. I have taken this audio and synched it with video footage that I shot at a Fourth of July fireworks display in the US to comment on the close link between the past and present.

Questions asked by this work include:  What is our relationship to war?  How has the concept of 24 hour news changed since its inception?  How has the reporting of information from the battlefield changed throughout time?  What is considered newsworthy now?

That Was Then (Video Still), 2014

That Was Then (Video Still), 2014

That Was Then, 2014, Single Channel 1080p Video, Stereo Audio, Running Time: 13:50 minutes

That Was Then (Video Still), 2014

That Was Then (Video Still), 2014