These are stills from a multi-channel video installation. This piece was inspired by the American military tradition of dropping or handing out food to citizens of countries that we are in war with, or trying to help after a war. This started in WWII, with the Berlin Airlift in 1948. Made famous by Gail Halvorsen (Uncle Wiggly Wings), american soldiers dropped candy and food from their planes, to the starving citizens of Berlin. This habit continues to current day, including "Operation Candy Drop" in Iraq, beginning in 2007. America also has a long history of entertaining troops abroad by sending sexy models or singers to assuage their war stresses. Bubble Gum Pop examines the ways in which aesthetics are employed during wartime, and the ways that these aesthetics are metaphoric. Soldiers and Pin-Up Girls chew bubble gum, forming empty speech bubbles, as the implied silence refers to the inability to describe war; the emptiness of potential acts of protest speech; the Sisyphean circumstance of a seemingly unending war.
