Artwork Details:
Artist(s)
Michael Rakowitz
Title
The Ballad of Special Ops Cody
Date
2017
Medium(s)
Stop motion video
Dimensions/Duration
14 minutes 42 seconds
Edition
3/3
Credit
Commissioned by Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
Photo Credit
The Ballad of Special Ops Cody
Michael Rakowitz’s film The Ballad of Special Ops Cody (2017) takes as its point of departure the figure of Special Ops Cody. The US infantry action figure was sold on US military bases in Kuwait and Iraq and was used by an Iraqi insurgent group in 2005 to trick the US government into believing they were holding an American soldier hostage. The toy soldier enters a vitrine at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago to ‘free’ the Mesopotamian votive statues on display, bringing up complex questions around the restitution of museumised objects.
