EYES ONLY, 2014
Eyes Only is a two-screen video installation juxtaposing news coverage of Michelle and Barack Obama dancing at the 2008 presidential inauguration with thermal-imaging drone footage of a couple kissing on a roof: one depicting a moment of intimacy between a couple watched by millions, the other between two people unaware that they are being watched.
The work’s title is a bureaucratic abbreviation of a top secret security classification: FOR YOUR EYES ONLY.
Eyes Only, 2015. Split-screen video installation; 22" consumer-grade TV and 19" military-grade monitor.
"...the 'war on terror' [is] quite literally a war against an emotion (like 'pity' or 'love' or 'hate'). It is thus a war on a projected spectre or phantasm, a war against an elusive, invisible, unlocatable enemy, a war that continually misses its target, striking out blindly with conventional means and waging massive destruction on innocent people in the process."
W.J.T. Mitchell