Green Room

A looped single channel video, documenting the anticipation and preparation for treatment of mass casualties within conflict. After two years of negotiations between the Wellcome Trust, Imperial War Museum and Ministry of Defence, Cotterrell was invited to observe the Joint Forces Medical Group at Camp Bastion in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. He underwent basic training, was taught the rudiments of battlefield first aid and was issued with body armour. In November 2007, he flew in an RAF C17 from Brize Norton to Kandahar, the sole passenger in a plane loaded with half a million rounds of palletised munitions and medical supplies to join Operation Herrick 7. A companion piece to Serial Loop, Green Room is an alternative vision of the same event: the arrival of casualties at Camp Bastion for treatment after a Major Incident. Medics prepare for the entrance of their assigned patients. Doctors, nurses, technicians and observers shuffle, chat and arrange the scene, their bodies and faces concentrated on the tasks to come over the next four hours. Like actors preparing to enter the stage, the players here come forward and withdraw from the camera's gaze as they consider the work ahead of them.