Safe Distance is video that was recorded during NATO air strikes against Serbia and Montenegro in 1999. Videotape shows electronic cockpit of the US Air force plane. There were 4 airplanes flying from NATO base Aviano in Italy to destination in Serbia. Mission objective was to bomb several targets in the area around city of Novi Sad. On the way back, after mission was completed, one plane was shot down. Tape (Sony Super 8) was found near the place where plane crashed in Fruska Gora Mountain (National Park – around 60 km from Novi Sad) in Srem region and it features electronic cockpit with basic graphical interface and voice communication between pilots. Videotape is regular document of flight used by command structures to analyze efficiency and success of every mission. Tape presents these last moments before plane was shot down.

Interface of this cockpit is completely reduced, cold, black & white. Cold electronic display is pixelated presentation of outside reality with basic position information (longitude & latitude), time, etc. The first impression of video is that this is an excerpt from flight simulator, because we tend to regard similar graphical interfaces as something that is basically virtual representation. Comparing to contemporary popular simulation games, cockpit of this airplane looks as an obsolete seventies style game.

Main promise in today’s warfare is institution of safe war, war without casualties, and whole campaign against Serbia and Montenegro was based on the premise that this is not actually a war; it’s just a humanitarian intervention with some collateral damage. This video provokes the myth of non-lethal military campaigns, a myth that was (and still is!) constantly fabricated in western media.

The fact that multinational corporation Sony, produces tapes used by US Air Force, shows the transnational nature in today’s global warfare. This symbolical point, Sony tape in US Air Force plane, unfolds US – Japanese capitalistic axis (Sony built its empire thanks to strong business relations with post-WW2 Occupation Forces).

This footage was presented several times in Serbia and Montenegro and abroad. It was presented as part of World-Information.Org exhibition in Museum of Vojvodina, Novi Sad, March 2003 and in Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade in April 2003; Kunsthalle, Vienna, May 2003, Transmediale Berlin 2004…

Screening this footage in public space had elements of demystification of today’s warfare. It reveals personal drama of pilot in the plane that still can be shot or killed. Before 9/11 US administration had problems explaining to American citizens its foreign military actions (especially after military action in Somalia failed) and therefore they created a myth of non-lethal warfare, a clean war with zero casualties and occasionally and ironically called ‘collateral damage’.

Video produced reaction among local people, because the war from 1999 was somehow erased from collective memory (although only 5 years passed since the end of the war). It was a certain reminder of what were exact results of of Slobodan Milosevic politics that provoked war and confronted alliance of 19 NATO countries, and also it was a reminder of what western capitalistic governments sometimes consider as legal tools in processes of ‘world democratization’.