dorothy schultz
the uncovering
2003
mixed media
7x10x2ft
Over one million Iraqis are believed to be missing in Iraq as a result of executions, wars and defections, of whom hundreds of thousands are thought to be in mass graves. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), in cooperation with the interim Iraqi Human Rights Ministry, has implemented a program to identify remains in graves and collect evidence of past atrocities for future prosecutions. The program was developed in consultation with Iraqi specialists, international human rights groups, and forensic experts. In response to this program, and the atrocities these civilians have faced I’ve created my own uncovering of a mass grave. My mass grave consists of an unidentifiable body cast along with other appendages. I documented this piece by videotaping the excavation of these “bodies” from a construction site. I worked in conjunction with a construction crew to document this piece. The crew agreed to use a crane in lifting my bodies out of their “graves”. I then researched all the missing or dead Iranians I could find to manipulate in a computer program. I then created my own computerized voice to read off these names in the same manner as one would read a role call. I then imputed a speaker device within my main body cast to travel to the other piles of appendages. Each pile of appendages then utters a faint sounding of the identities for each lost individual. These identification devices then assume the basic human characteristics the bodies had once exhibited in life, to speak beyond the grave.
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