War List CODEX

“Violence & the culture it consumes/perpetuates is a fundamental condition lodged in the core of human experience. It is simultaneously private, public, self-intimating & collective.” To make visible this phenomena, I began research in 2014 to compile a timeline of ‘every war, battle, revolt, revolution, siege, sacking, rebellion, bombing & insurgency’, from 3000 BC to the present. This database is the foundation of this collaborative performance-installation & research project. The title refers to Susan Sontag’s seminal book, ‘Regarding the Pain of Others’, where she questions the validity of decontextualized representation (within war photography).

Through this comprehensive timeline forming a database of all human conflict, the project will narrate a history of war, conflict, & violence as the most continuous, omnipresent & ongoing history of humanity, ‘a civil war on a planetary scale’ & evidence that the collective history of human conflict is second only to the history of language/music.