This film was only available during the Computer Baroque online exhibition, which ran from 14 April-14 July 2009.

Video by Paul Garrin
Music by Elliott Sharp
Music produced by Paul Garrin and Elliott Sharp
Editing and Special Effects Paul Garrin and Ralph Scaglione
Post Production Broadway Video
Thanks to Media Alliance

The TV Evangelist Pat Robertson proclaims that «In a free society, the police, the military are God’s special envoys». Digitally processed glorified images of police and military on parade are juxtaposed with images of riots from around the world. Yuppies sip champagne while the militias attack demonstrators outside a picture window.

Paul Garrin, who produced the video sequences for Nam June Paik's sculptures, was an early proponent of 'camcorder activism'. Using his footage of the Tomkins Square riots, he created this classic piece of polemic, expressing his outrage through digital video effects that literally attacked their own subjects.

Paul Garrin began working with video while studying fine arts at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York. He went on to produce definitive and visionary works that encompass a full spectrum of analog and digital media from video to the Internet, exploring media and the social impact of technology on society, and issues of media access, free speech, and public/private space.

Since 1989 Garrin has been working with interactive media. From 1982-1996 Paul teamed up with Video Art Legend Nam June Paik and emerged as one of Paik's most important collaborators, producing literally hundreds of works that fill Paik's video installations in museums and private collections around the world.

Garrin's well known documentary of the Tompkins Square Riot, 1988 in NYC, shot with a home video camcorder, exposed through the media the willful police violence against demonstrators and bystanders and became known as the spark which ignited the 'camcorder revolution', and in turn inspired the late playwright and then East Village resident Jonathan Larson to create the character named Mark, styled after Paul's real life, in the musical RENT.

Image courtesy of Video Data Bank