The Visiting Tank

‘The Visiting Tank’ was written by Gerry Hemingway as part of a program of Chamber Works, originally performed and recorded for Tzadik Records in 1999. It was around that time that the war in the former Yugoslavia had left it’s legacy of destruction, devastating so many lives. Gerry composed this piece in a kind of narrative format, imagining, in sound, a story about the war from the perspective of the children who survived it.

A version of “The Visiting Tank” was first shown as a projection behind a live musical performance as part of “Step Across the Border,” at the Kleintheater, Luzern, Switzerland in 2010. The visuals were ‘scored’ to the sound through the subjective layering of abstract and figurative textures and images. That projection was a guiding layer in this new single-channel video.

Much of the source material came from posted internet video source material from Bosnia during the time of the war. These images are integrated through abstraction, color, and textures, woven between sound and image. The performance developed into this single-channel piece.