Two days before the 11th of September 2001, Commander Massoud, the most credible opponent to the Taliban was murdered. Two al-Qaida suicide bombers posing as journalists killed him with an exploding camera or camera belt at his camp in Afghanistan's remote Panjshir Valley. The connection between his assassination and 9/11 is certain, but this act has been almost completely forgotten because of the magnitude of the events a few days later.
Constructed with a tv monitor connected to the dissected body of a video camera lying on a table, the piece Exploding Camera is a kind of destroyed medium able to produce live an experimental historical film reinterpreting the events of war since 2001. The camera works, but the lens has been taken out and is not used anymore. By using simple external light in the room, the video images are produced live by direct illumination of the camera's light sensor (CCD). A transparent disc containing a few photographic positives is placed between the lights and the CCD. The pictures are projected onto the CCD when a light is turned on. Illuminating the picture with different angles makes the image appear to move. By using theatrical methods and turning the exhibition space into an experimental film studio thought of as a battlefield, the Exploding Camera expresses, in relation to a historic fact and through its process of image production, the stupidity and importance of the actual facts.
