What is on view is a clear block with a barrel-shaped crack through its core. The block is housed within a base-lit vitrine that foregrounds a video screening slowed-down footage of two projectiles fired from opposite ends through a violently wobbling gel. The video – shot at 20,000 frames per second and slowed down to be received by the human eye – captures the journey and point when a 762 bullet fired from an AK-47 collides with a 556 bullet fired from an M16. On first viewing, the ‘AK-45 vs. M16’ by The Propeller Group can be summised as a reduction of the war to a central point – that of two bullets, two ideologies, colliding into and against each other. As the bullets enter the block, the ballistics gel – meant to take on the consistancy of human flesh – flails and recoils on its perch. Removed of flesh-tones, the translucent ballistics gel, captured violently reverberating in the video, feels theatrical – almost as though it is a Tango caught in water. Yet the footage and indeed the vitrine-housed ballistics block of ‘AK-47 vs. M16’ feels entrapped as a futuristic and clinical exhibit. Captured this way, ‘AK-47 vs. M16’ raises questions about the aesthetics of violence and indeed the violence of aethetics.
