Roicke uses found footage of the time combined with patterns from comics about Vietnam that with their grid strongly remind of works by Roy Lichtenstein. Roicke highlights to which great an extent the Vietnamese jungle became inextricably intertwined with the corresponding jungle of military weapons and helicopters involved. The sheer inconceivable mass of soldiers and helicopters develop a hallucinatory situation allowing for becoming ‘High on war’ a slogan which some US-soldiers even wrote on their helmets.

The idea to Chopper came up when I was researching for my dissertation on the influences of the war in Vietnam on American pop music. The starting point was much broader and included more fields of pop culture than music alone. Comics were one of these leftover cultures. It was quite interesting to see how they portrayed the war. Comics like The Nam and The Punisher didn’t fulfil the cliché of the shallow (pop) Culture Industry. On the contrary they drew an critical image of Vietnam that wasn’t just black and white, bad and evil. While I skipped the comics for the MA dissertation I still had the idea of using them for a video on the same issue, how Vietnam changed pop and sub cultures. At first I used mostly scans of the mentioned comics in a video-comic collage but then I got more interested in the mesh of the comics itself and the close relation the TV screen mesh.

The videos 26/20 (SOL Where is it?) and Panzer will also be presented, both on separate large screens. The Vietnam Pop Maps and the 3D helicopter posters are completing the show. The Metal Years will continue after the gallery’s summer break until the 11th of October. For more information visit the Natascha Mehlhop Gallery website.