Sony DCR–PC120E. Disassembled

Directed by Sean Snyder

In the video Sony DCR–PC120E. Disassembled, 2007, Snyder literally deconstructs a Sony MiniDV camera, identified as the one used in producing Jihadi video material. The model, now obsolete, was the first to feature a Bluetooth function that enabled the direct exchange of data. The video involves two operating cameras of the same model, one of which is recording the process of the other being disassembled until it ceases to operate. Caught in the reflexivity of a narcissistic mirror and removed from any outer context, the camera ceases to be the medium – a device of transmission and distribution of information – and becomes a subject with its own point of view and its own destiny. The photograph Apparatus, 2007, depicts the same camera. By exposing the materiality of its inner mechanisms Snyder obliquely references to images of disassembled technological devices and the obsession with technology in contemporary war.