In 2010, Teru Kuwayama, with two other photojournalists, Balazs Gardi and Tivadar Domaniczky, all three embedded with the American army in Afghanistan, launched Basetrack, an online documentary project whose content was produced by enlisted soldiers and their families. The initiative was innovative at a time when blogs and social media were only beginning to realize their true social potential. Basetrack let 1,000 deployed marines share words and pictures with their families, those for whom war is more personal than political. Along with their pictures and the ones posted by their wives and parents, announcements of fallen soldiers and accounts of missions were uploaded on a dedicated Facebook page, providing community-based news which the media was unable to report. Basetrack combines two parallel realities, two forms of anguish which are relieved by reducing their length.
Adapted for the stage by En Garde Arts, Basetrack Live could qualify as what Bertie Ferdman, in an interview with Anne Hamburger, called “citizen theatre.”(1) En Garde Arts has made its work strictly community-based, and social media is perfectly suited to their mission. Conceived by Edward Bilous of the Center for the Innovation of the Arts at Juilliard, the live version of Basetrack has become an audiovisual performance installation. The soundtrack sets the pace for the photo and videos, which appear one after the other as the music swells. The voices of the soldiers become like the lyrics of the composition:
“I am John, I was born in Ohio, I have been in Afghanistan for 4 months,” “I am Michael, I was born in Texas,” “I am Pedro,” “I am Christopher,” “David,” “Adam,” “Andrew,” “Jonathan,” “Derek,” “Justin,” “Shawn, “Rakesh,” “James,” “Christian,” “Genaro,” “Aaron,” “I am AJ Czubai.”
Read the full article in the French version of L’Oeil.
http://www.bam.org/theater/2014/basetrack
(1) http://howlround.com/citizen-theater-anne-hamburger-on-basetrack-live
