Lisa Vinebaum

Blow Up 03:45, Color, Stereo, GB, 2005

A young woman blows herself up in a small men’s only mosque in London’s East End. In depicting this extreme act of violence, the work seeks to explore the irrational fear of the Other that is the product of the climate of fear generated by the ‘war on terror’. Blow Up is an experimental work of narrative fiction. It is a thematically and visually challenging artist’s video that grapples with the complex subject of urban/Western suicide terrorism, cultural and religious identity and otherness, the traumatic aftermath of events such as 9/11 and 7/7, and the dangerous consequences of the war on terror. Filmed on a mobile phone Blow Up draws its visual inspiration and aesthetic from the haunting images captured on mobile phones by victims of the July 7th London bombings.