"The faster I breathed, the scarier it became ... this fear of death. All I wanna do is pull the trigger if I need to," a man's voice mutters, trembling.
The imagery on the film screen isn't from a Hollywood war movie. There are no battlefields in sight, and this is no high-paid actor. Instead, there are two empty kids' beds, piles of stuffed animals, bright morning light creeping in through the bedroom window.
This is just one of many emotionally intense moments from Japanese artist Meiro Koizumi's hourlong video "Battlelands," on exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) beginning Saturday.
Koizumi asked seven veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to wear bodycams while navigating a day in their regular, domestic lives back home in the United States.
Traumatic memories slip into otherwise mundane moments. The wars continue in the veterans' minds. Grim experiences haunt them.
If this sounds like a boring formula for an infomercial or public service announcement on veterans with PTSD, don't worry — it's not. As depressing as the subject matter is, these videos are more cinematic than a simple documentary.
With cameras strapped to their bodies, the veterans show an awareness of speaking for the camera — and for an audience — that casts them as amateur actors in a sense. At the same time, the raw, unscripted nature of their terrifying recollections from the battlefield brings viewers into an emotional and psychological space that feels authentic.
In all of their narrations, they begin in the present, observing their surroundings, but at some point they disconnect and travel back to the past, on uncertain, dangerous terrain overseas. They are discovering charred bodies of dads who will never see their daughters again. Entering houses at 3 a.m. with machine guns, searching for insurgents. Getting rocks thrown at them by little kids. Watching prisoners who are only teenagers sleeping on small mats on dirt floors.
