Statement on The Emperor's New Toys and 2004

A childhood friend of mine had a bulletin board covering one wall of her kitchen in the house
she grew up in. It was covered, collage style, with photographs, stickers, dried flowers, drawings,
poetry, and other assorted oddities that struck her mother's fancy. Out of this visual cacophony,
I remember a sticker bearing the slogan "Children Learn What They Play. Don't Buy War Toys."

The notion that mankind's history of warfare can be traced to G.I. Joe and his familiars is the
sort of over-simplified scapegoat rhetoric that only ever makes a catchy bumper sticker. Still,
the idea that children's playthings are made to emulate machines of atrocity is highly disturbing.

This body of work is directed at the absurdity of both war toys and war itself. Created at a time
when the news is consumed with war coverage, these pictures aim to disturb the viewer with
their familiarity- they depict traditional toys and classic games in scenes imitative of those we
read about every morning.

The images in The Emperor's New Toys use Green Army Men figures and board game pieces to
illustrate war as play and play as war. They speak about the ability of war toys to bring horror
and devastation into our lives as entertainment. They also aim to address the political approach
to war as a game of strategy, where soldiers are maneuvered like gamepieces by far-off masterminds
whose stake in the game is comparably insignificant, but whose absolute victory is essential.

The video stills in 2004 strive for a sense of perverse reality. Though the images very obviously
display toys, the distance between the subjects and the end result of the process, combined with
the distortion achieved through the layered media, give a sense of believability to the pictures.
The filtering of the image from staged diorama, to videotape, through television, and ultimately
back onto film mirror the many venues our news goes through from the moment the events occur
to the time we actually become aware of them through the television, newspaper, radio, or internet.

- jen ryan