Dangerous Games

Dangerous Games, 4’43’’, 2008

“In over twenty countries around the world, children are direct participants in war. Denied a childhood and often subjected to horrific violence, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 children are serving as soldiers for both rebel groups and government forces in current armed conflicts. Dangerous Games is a work of fiction.” 

In a small house with oversized furniture, located in a rice field in Asia, some children wearing army clothes and weapons, start playing war, creating between each other two armies and using children’s toys, laser weapons, machine guns and helicopters. Slowly, as the game progresses, they start imitating war scenes as seen on TV, such as negotiations and death scenes. At the end of the film, the children are coming out of the house and they deposit their weapons in front of it. The smallest child comes out in the end with a burning bramble stick in his hand and lights the pile of weapons. All the children leave while the pile is burning.

“Dangerous Games” is the central panel to a 5-channel video installation by Marina Abramovic called, “8 Lesson of Emptiness with a Happy End.” The other channels of this installation are alternative images of a waterfall, an island, and a Spirit Tree, in contrast to the violent connotations on the central panel relating to spirituality in Laos. 

Video courtesy of Marina Abramovic Archive.