All's fair in Love and War

In her video All's Fair in Love and War, American artist Rebecca Loyche's theme is, as it has been in previous of her works, weapons and violence. The viewer encounters an American male, approximately thirty years old, athletic and sportily clad. He is a weapons specialist who trains people how to handle weapons. In a series of four sequences, with great expertise he explains their development and how they are used on people. Guns are his first topic, but in the final sequence he dramatically demonstrates how to kill a person with just one thrust of a knife – which part of the body to stab – and how long it takes for the person to bleed to death. His presentation remains unemotional and very precise all the way to the end.

Due to the static camera and the close-ups, the viewer can hardly retreat; rather, the impression is of being in the same room with the protagonist. Loyche places the weapons expert in private living quarters, the conservative, middle-class décor of which contrasts with the brutality of the video's content. She blends the supposedly neutral characteristics of a documentary with a consciously arranged interior. In this way, she undermines the already fine line of demarcation between a seat of domesticity and a theater of war. (Mara Wallat)