Artist Talk: Lisa Barnard and Debi Cornwall (Online)

Barnard and Cornwall have a long association with the artistic probing into complex topics such as modern warfare, world politics and artifice of war.

Lisa Barnard’s publication Hyenas of the Battlefield, Machines in the Garden, provides a fascinating study into the 'unholy alliance' between the military, the entertainment industry and technology, and how they converge in commerce and live combat. Barnard explores how the development of digital and the emergence of virtual reality contribute to war tactics, likening the faceless anonymity of remote violence to that which is produced by the video games industry.

Debi Cornwall’s Necessary Fictions explores the ‘fantasy’ of America’s engagement with war post 9/11 and its performative relationship with the military. Photographed at training grounds and featuring actors in role play, Cornwall highlights the cultural production of a ‘forever war’ and the complicity of imagery in crafting this simulated world. Her new series Model Citizens expands this further, inviting inquiry into how fictions are restaged and packaged into convenient histories and current realities. Debi Cornwall is the recipient of the Prix Elysée 2023: https://elysee.ch/en/

Presented by the V&A’s Parasol Foundation Women in Photography programme, in collaboration with Photo Elysée.